Category: Heat Transfer Vinyl

Canvas Halloween Projects

Hi there paper crafting friends!  It’s Michelle Starcher, aka the Bookish Designer, popping in on the blog to share a few canvas signs I put together this weekend.  Both signs feature paper from one of Lori’s newest collections from Echo Park Paper, I Love Halloween.  This set is loaded with spooky, cute graphics and traditional Halloween colors.  For my signs, I used two Halloween word art files:  Hocus Pocus Broom Co. (SVG, Silhouette) and Apothecary Shoppe (SVG, Silhouette).

I have been wanting to create a canvas project using Lori’s word art files for awhile now, and these Halloween files were the perfect excuse!  For both projects, I used black canvases available at Michaels. The canvases come in a variety of sizes, including the 10×20 and 12×24 sizes I used for my two canvas projects.  Typically, I use white canvases, but for my Halloween projects, I wanted to try using the black.

When I opened the files in Cricut Design Space, the files were a lot smaller than I needed them to be for my canvases, so I resized them to fit my canvases.  For the Apothecary Shoppe canvas, I resized the file to be about 8×16 to fit on the 10×20 canvas.  I used permanent white vinyl for this project.  I added paper from Lori’s I Love Halloween collection and lime green ribbon for a little extra color on the project.

For the Hocus Pocus Broom Co. project, I resized the file to about 11×17.  For this project, I used Iron-On vinyl and my Cricut Heat Press.  Using the iron-on material was much easier than using the vinyl when it came to weeding the project and transferring the word art to the canvas.  However, I had to remove the canvas from the wooden frame in order to apply the word art.  It wasn’t hard to do though, just make sure you have a staple puller and staple gun on hand to put it back together.

For my final touches on the Hocus Pocus Broom Co. canvas, I added striped paper and some orange polka dot ribbon to finish the project off.  I added the paper using Tacky Tape.  In my experience this works really well when adhering items to the canvas.

I really like how the projects turned out, and I am excited about all the new word art Lori has available in the shop this week to create some Christmas canvas projects.

Until next time,

Michelle

Merry Christmas Eve Family Pajama Shirts

Happy Christmas Eve! I hope that you have everything ready for Christmas. And if not, never fear, you have a few more hours of last minute shopping, wrapping, crafting! Today my family will open matching pajamas.  I added reindeer to the shirts to give them that special custom flare.  You can find this reindeer in the SVG shop and Silhouette Design store.

Image 1

The font is Lori’s Longhand Font. In the Silhouette Store.  In Silhouette Studio, you can curve text to a shape.  While you have your text box selected drag the circle to the shape you’d like to curve it to.  Move it around a bit until it’s in the right spot.

I hope that you have a wonderful Christmas Eve and a very Merry Christmas!

Using Multiple Colors of Heat Transfer Vinyl with Kathy

Hi Everyone and Happy Thanksgiving!  It’s Kathy today with an easy tutorial showing how to keep a design’s shape and spacing when using multiple colors of heat transfer vinyl.    I wanted to create some Holiday decor gifts, and I though some seasonal throw pillows would be fun.  I found this Joy Love Peace Believe Tree design in Lori’s Shop (here in the Silhouette Store) and decided to add it to a throw pillow.

I loved how the different tiers were different colors and wanted to make sure I kept the shape.  Here ‘s how I did it…

I started by loading the file into my Silhouette Software.  Next, I sized it to fit on my pillow case.  My pillow was 18″x 18″ so I knew I wanted the design bigger than the original.

I selected all parts of the design and right mouse clicked and selected group.   This allowed me to change the shape of the whole design uniformly.

I clicked the corner of the design and dragged it to the size that I wanted.  It is bigger than the mat, but I just needed to make sure that all of the green elements fit on the mat at once since that was the largest area of a single color in the design.

Once it was sized properly, I ungrouped the file.  I then double checked that all elements of each individual color were grouped together, ( all the reds in one group, all the green in another) since I wanted to cut them at once, and in their original place in the design.

I dragged the red words and the star from the mat, and then mirrored the green words on the mat (you always want to do this when cutting words in vinyl)  Notice they are still spaced as in the original design.   Next I hit send.

I added the green heat transfer vinyl to my mat, with the shiny side down,  selected the proper media from the menu, and set my blade depth to 2 and sent to cut.  (for my design I used Siser Heat Transfer Vinyl in Green, Red and Glitter Gold)

I repeated this process with the red and gold pieces of the design.  Notice the red also maintain their original spacing.

One the vinyl was cut, I weeded out the negative space so all that was left were the parts of my design.

I centered the design on my pillowcase.  (I purchased this plain pillow case on Amazon.)

To start, I ironed on the green since this was the largest part of my design.  I put a piece of parchment paper over the clear plastic holding the design and ironed on a cotton setting, no steam for 10 seconds per each part of the design.

Next, I peeled off the plastic (be careful, it can get hot!) leaving only the design on my pillowcase.

To make sure it was ironed on well, I covered the design with my parchment again and ironed it a little more.

I then repeated this process with the gold star and the red words.  It was easy to correctly place the red words because of the way I cut the pieces on my mat.

Once I ironed on all of the pieces, I added the pillow fill to the case and done!

This will make a fun, festive gift, I have plans on making a few more for friends, after I finish my turkey of course!  That’s it for me today, thanks for stopping by to peek!