Silhouette Tutorial by Mendi

Today I thought I would share one of my new favorite techniques that I utilized on this fun layout about my daughter dressed as a butterfly fairy from last Halloween (although I think this butterfly theme would work so well for Spring and Summer projects too).

The focus of my layout (and my tutorial today) is this beautiful butterfly cutting file which I enlarged to take center stage on my layout.

Below is my video tutorial (For the clearest picture, please click on the gear in the bottom right portion of the screen and select one of the HD options).

To complete my layout I used the following cutting files designed by Lori Whitlock:

Borders (Silhouette Store only)
7 Borders, Tabs & Corners (Silhouette Store only)
Butterfly (Silhouette Store only)

Tutorial: Stitching with your Silhouette

I love all the tutorials our Creative Team has been making! It’s fun to learn new things! Check out how easy it is to make faux stitching lines on your die cuts. Take it away Brigit…

I love stitching but sometimes I just don’t have the time to pull out my sewing machine so I’ll create it in Silhouette Studio and do a print & cut.

For this project I used Lori’s Bracket Shaped card and the pinwheel from the Layered Shapes along with Lori’s Patriotic Picnic digital collection, which I love!!

First place your card on the mat and ungroup, fill the top layer with your digital paper.  Select all, go to Line Color and click none.

Select your top layer, go to the Offset Window, select Internal Offset and set your offset distance, I used .075.

Now the internal offset you just created should be selected, go to the Line Color and select the color you want for your stitching.

Next go to the Line Style Window, select your dash line and I like to change my line thickness to 1.25pt.  Check the Print Lines of Selected Shapes box.

This is important, with the stitching still selected go to the Cut Style Window and choose No Cut, you only want the stitching to print and to cut around the top layer piece.

After that’s complete I like to group the top and stitched layers together.

Here’s a closer look, I used the same steps on the pinwheel, you only need to do one of each color and duplicate to make it easier.  I added some stars to the blue to make it look like the American flag.

I loved the pinwheel so much I created a larger one on a barber straw and placed it in a glass jar.  I added some Stars and Stripes Trendy Twine and a couple of flower elements from the Patriotic Picnic collection.

I hope this tutorial has helped and you get to make some faux stitching on your projects too!!

New at Jessica Sprague

Debuting this weekend at JessicaSprague are 3 different kits you can grab for 25% off. That is a great deal! Get them for this price while you can! SALE ENDS SUNDAY!

LIFE TEMPLATES SET 15

layout by Chrissy Guido

Lori Whitlock- Life Templates Set 16, Basic Life Cards, Basic Journal
Cards, Patriotic Elements,Lazy Summer Days

layout by Kim Lund

products: Life Templates Set 15 and Lazy Summer Days

Life Templates Set 16

layout by Chrissy Guido

Lori Whitlock- Life Templates Set 16, Basic Life Cards, Basic Journal
Cards, Patriotic Elements,Lazy Summer Days

LIFE TEMPLATES SET 17

layout by Chrissy Guido

Lori Whitlock -Life Templates Set 17, Kraft Frames, Brown Basics,
Everyday Stamps,Celebration Stamps, and Sweet Memories Arrow

 

 

Using your Eraser Tool

Tutorial by Traci:  A Fun Way to Use Your Eraser Tool

Hi everyone!  I’m excited to share a fun tutorial with you today.
Although we love to cut Lori’s adorable shapes out of paper, today I will share how you can cut your shapes to pop up from the paper.
First, add the shape you want to use to the page in your software program.

Next, move the shape to the area where you will want it to pop up from the page.  Resize your shape and ungroup the pieces if necessary.

For my page, I also rotated the butterfly slightly.
 
Next, select your eraser tool on the left toolbar.  If you have the Designer Edition of Silhouette Studio, an Erasers window will appear on the right side.
Select “Outline” and if needed, “zoom” to see the lines better (hour glass with plus sign at top). Then erase the areas of your shape that you do not want to cut.
If you don’t have the Designer Edition software, you can still use an eraser, but the steps are a bit different.
First click on ‘Point Editing’.  A bunch of grey points will appear on your shape.  (You may have to click on “Simplify” before the points will appear).
Next, click on the points you want to erase.  When you select each point, click on ‘Break Path’ in your Point Editing window.
This will make the lines stay broken. Now you should be able to erase the areas that you do not want to cut.
 

 

I also wanted to add a border that would pop up from the page so I repeated the steps above for the border.

 

For the border, I erased the top cutting line of the shape so that it would fold up from the page.
 
So, as you can see I did not cut anything out, I just made it so that it popped up from the page.
Here is the final page layout.  A fun little page about my adorable niece, Hannah, who is, of course….Cute As A Bug!

Traci Penrod
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