Category: Tutorial

Specialty Media Products with Christine

Don’t forget, today is the last day you can get these prices with this Silhouette promotion. And, with the FREE SHIPPING on all orders over $25 going on right now this is a pretty sweet deal!! Be sure to use code: LORI at checkout and you can shop right HERE.
Would you like to see some of the specialty media products in use? Christine has a very fun Halloween project to share with us today.
Have you got your Halloween decorations out?  I have, but I wanted to add a few more pieces and thought that this banner would be super cute to hang in my kitchen window.  As soon, as I saw the file, I thought glitter would be great on the bats and web.  I looked in my stash, no black glitter, so I remember that I had my Silhouette Double Sided Adhesive Paper Starter Kit which had all of the things I needed to make this banner extra fun!
The double sided adhesive paper cuts really easy.  Just make sure that when you send it to your Silhouette that you have changed it to the preset for this type of paper.
After it is cut, I gently lifted the outside portion of the paper and set it aside.

Then I used my pick tool and weeded out the middles of the letters and web. Below you can see the process.
In the starter kit, you get this great little spatula.  It makes lifting off the pieces very easy.  You want to make sure that you lift off all of the layers of your cut piece.
I probably should have taken a picture of me putting the glitter on the bat, but this was the first piece I did.  What you will need to do is lift off the white paper from the top of your piece.  You will see the sticky layer underneath it and then a bottom sheet that is yellow.  After you peel of the white paper, you can sprinkle glitter on it.  Be sure to mash it down into the sticky layer so that you get good coverage.
I always keep a few of the Silhouette mat cover sheets around and they come in handy when playing with glitter.  Just bend the sides together and put the excess back in the container.  Another tip I thought I would share is to use a lint roller to clean up the left over glitter that clings to your mat, table, and you! 🙂
In this picture, I am putting on the flocking material.  This also came in my starter kit.  It was the perfect spooky green for my letters.  The flocking really needs to be worked into the sticky part of your piece.  I took a pinch and then rubbed in many times to achieve a good coverage.
The one thing that I liked about this material is that when you pull off the yellow backing to stick it where you want it to go, it’s not super flimsy.  It doesn’t easily stick to itself which makes sticking it down and placing it just where you want it very easy.  Once it’s down, it’s there, so make sure you are careful.
Here is my finished banner.  This file comes with all of the pieces that you see.  It’s kind of a small banner when you first pull it onto your mat, so I sized it much bigger before I ungrouped it.  The banner pieces are around 4×5 but if you were putting this on your mantle, you would need to go much bigger than that.  I really love this banner because it is so versatile.  You could change it up with a few extra character files to a birthday or Christmas banner.
Lori Whitlock products used:
Other Products used:
Silhouette Double Sided Adhesive Starter Kit, use cod LORI for 30%, ends today!
May Arts- Web Ribbon and Cording

Silhouette Tutorial: Organizing Your Shapes by Mendi

Are you finding yourself with a growing collection of SVG files which you’ve acquired from outside the Silhouette store?  While it is fairly easy to import them into your Silhouette library, I’ve found myself really missing the color thumbnails that come with the shapes purchased directly from the Silhouette store.

I’m happy to say that with a little creativity I was able to find a couple different ways around this which have solved this problem and made a huge difference for me when I’m searching for the perfect shape from within my personal library!  Today I thought I would share my little tricks with you… (On a side note, make sure to click on the gear in the bottom right-hand corner and select 1080p to view the video at the highest resolution).



Of course no blog post seems complete without a project to share so I decided to create a card with the cutting files used in today’s video.


This card was made with the beautiful Reflections: Fall collection which Lori designed for Echo Park.  For my pocket, I used Lori’s folder cutting file by stitching down the sides and inserting a journaling card from the collection for a fun interactive element.


I hope you’ve found the tutorial helpful.  😉

Silhouette Tutorial: Fabric Transfer with Brigit

Hi everyone!!  Here’s a fun tutorial on creating a fabric transfer treat bag using SSDE.  It’s such an easy project and comes out great on these cotton muslin bags, so cute for a special Halloween treat.

I used Avery Light Fabric Transfer paper, but whatever you use make sure you read the directions, I believe with their dark fabric you don’t have to do a mirror image.  Other brands may be different also.

I used Lori’s Halloween Embellishments 1 set and the happy halloween from the Halloween Titles.  I ended up adding a witch’s hat to the ghost and a circle for the moon just to fill in the design a little more.

I ungrouped and colored all the pieces, you won’t see the ghost if you use white so add a black line around him, I made it a little thicker under the line style window and then checked print lines of selected shapes.  After you place everything where you want select all and group.

The bag I used is 5″ x 7″ so I resized my design a little larger then 4.5″ x 4.5″, I wanted some space on the bottom and top and some on both sides.

With your design selected click on the Replicate Window and select mirror right, you can move the original off the mat or delete it if you want.  Place the mirrored one in your printable area and print it out.

I cut out around the whole transfer leaving a little border, you could create a shadow layer and do a print n cut but I didn’t want to waste the top margin of my transfer paper.

Use a hot iron without steam, again read the directions of your transfer paper.  I recommend a hard flat surface, not an ironing board. Iron any wrinkles in your bag first so you have a nice area for your transfer

Here it is finished, I slowly moved my iron from side to side and then bottom to top for about 45 seconds.  The colors really came out great.  I tied some Trendy Twine to the end of the bag’s string and pulled it through till it came out the other end so I would have some nice Halloween twine as my tie instead.

Hope you’ve enjoyed this project, you can visit me at http://www.brigitsscraps.com, thanks for stopping by!!

Silhouette Tutorial by Traci

Hi everyone!  I’m excited to be sharing a neat tutorial with you today.  Have you ever thought about using photos in your Silhouette software?  I had never given this much thought until recently when I wanted a banner to match my pictures.  I will walk you through this technique today, and give you three different shape ideas for using photos with your Silhouette or Cameo machine.
First, choose a photo and a shape that you want to use.  For my layout, I knew I wanted a banner at the top of the page that matched my pictures. I work on a MAC, so I can just drag my photo into the software, but another option is to click on “File” at the top, hit “Open” and then choose a picture from your computer.
Once you have both your photo and shape(s) open, drag the shapes off to the side, ungroup and resize as necessary.
(For my banner, I didn’t want the little holes at the top of each piece so when I ungrouped them, I deleted the holes).
Enlarge your photo if needed to accommodate the size shape you want to cut out.
In order for you to see everything better, I made my shape lines black and thicker…but you don’t have to do this.
Move your shape(s) over on to your photo and place everything where you want to cut it out.
For mine, I wanted the varying leaf colors on each of my banners, as shown below.
I zoomed back out on this screen shot, but once all of your shapes are in place, go to the “Modify” window (little icon in upper right corner with the M).
With all pieces highlighted (photo and shape), click on “Crop” — this removes all areas which are not shared by at least two shapes.
Once you click “Crop”, you are left with the shape filled with your photo.
Here is another example that I used for this project.  I cut this cute picture of my son into a tag by following the same directions as above.
Once you have your shaped photos, you will want to highlight everything and open the cut style window (little scissor icon).
Be sure that the cut lines around your shapes are red by clicking on “cut” on the “Cut Style” menu.
Now you will treat this just like a Print and Cut.  (See an earlier tutorial on Lori’s website for Print and Cut directions).
Here is the layout.  As you can see, I also created offsets for the banners and tag to help them pop off the page a bit.
The offset feature can also be found in another tutorial on Lori’s site.
I hope you enjoyed this tutorial.
Here is another example using a photo to create a matching title 🙂
Have fun with this technique!  I’d love to hear how you will use photos in your Silhouette software so
please visit my blog at www.artsyalbums.com and share your ideas with me!
Traci
Lori’s Cutting files used in this project:

Silhouette Tutorial by Corri: Thanksgiving Labels

Today we have Corri sharing these beautiful Thanksgiving labels, take it away Corri… 

Hi everyone!  We always host Thanksgiving Dinner at our house and set it up buffet style.  I thought it would be fun to have some cute signs to label all the yummy dishes.

I started with this bracket label.   I re sized it to 4″h x 4-1/2″w (make sure the aspect ratio box is NOT checked)

Then on the replicate menu along the top select fill page.

This feature allows you to adjust the size of the cut to make sure you get as many as possible from one 12 x 12 sheet.   The bracket points on the left and right make it very easy to line this up for scoring.

I cut some pumpkins and flag shapes to add to my buffet markers for a useful and easy way to dress up Thanksgiving dinner.

These could also be used as place markers or treat bag toppers. You could add some candy or a cookie to a bag and then staple this to the top.  The paper I used here is from the Echo Park – Reflections Collection that Lori designed.