Valentine’s Day Cards by Aimee

Hello crafty friends! Aimee here today to share a brand new set of Valentine’s Day cards by Lori. I love making Valentine’s Day projects and these cards were the perfect thing to make for my 3 kiddos. The best thing about these cards is they came together quickly and I had fun choosing which colors I was going to use for each one.

Lori has the set of 4 in her shop here. There is also a “Hugs” card in the set. You can find these sweet cards in the Silhouette Studio here, Valentine Card LoveValentine Card KissValentine Card Hugs, and Valentine Card XOXO.

For each card I just happen to have matching sequins and twine in my stash for each of the colors along with 3 red buttons. I really adore how these fun little cards turned out!

Thanks for stopping by today!
Aimee

Valentine Red Truck Shaped Box by Aimee

Hello crafty friends! Hope everyone had a very merry and happy Christmas! Now that all of the Christmas crafts are done and checked off the list, I’m going to gear things towards Valentine’s Day! Aimee here today to share a tutorial on the adorable Red Truck Shaped Box but instead of Christmas I’m going to share how to turn it into a Valentine truck!

After uploading the file into Silhouette Design Studio, I resized the truck to a bit smaller size and deleted the trees. You can find the Red Truck Shaped Box file in the Lori Whitlock store or in the Silhouette Design Store.

If I’m changing the look of a project, I will change the colors of the cuts to give me a better idea of which papers to use. To give the truck a Valentine look I changed the colors to red and pink.

Here are my pieces after I cut them all out. I used Simple Stories Kissing Booth papers because I absolutely love the red gingham pattern paper.

To give the truck some dimension, I added brown inking around the edges of each piece. It makes the truck look a little dirty and what is a truck without a little dirt/mud on it?!?!

Adhere this piece to one of the ends of the box. It serves as the front of the truck after you’ve glued the truck pieces to the sides of the box.

Adhere all of your truck pieces together. It makes it easier to adhere to the box.

And now your box is complete and you get to decorate it!!

How adorable is this little truck filled with a bunch of red and white Hershey kisses and some Valentine heart note cards?

Hope you’ve all enjoyed this Valentine’s Day Truck Box tutorial and are ready to start on creating your own Valentine’s Day crafts! Thanks for stopping by!

Aimee

It’s Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas

 

Anita here with a fun tutorial to make this gift set.  I love to quilt and embroider as much as I love to paper craft and I was thrilled to recently discover that Lori Whitlock has embroidery files that she has designed, many of which mirror her paper craft SVG files.  You can find her gorgeous embroidery files at Embroidery Online.  I will give you all the links in the post .

I bought shrink film from Amazon and used Lori’s Print & Cut Stamps Christmas Cookies which you can find here in her store .  I resized the image of the gingerbread man so that it would come out the size that I wanted.  I then printed the image onto the shrink film through my laser printer.  Just let it dry for a few minutes before coloring it.

I then used my Copic markers to color the shrink film.  I knew that the colors would deepen once I shrunk the image so chose my colors with that in mind.  I used R37, E11, G14, G07, E99 for the gingerbread man and Y08, E99, R37, G07 for the Gingerbread house.  Be sure to punch a hole in your shrink film before you put it in the oven and remember that the hole shrinks also.  The directions say to bake the film on parchment at 300 degrees for 2-3 minutes but I found that my heat gun worked much better as I could control the plastic as it shrank.  Below is the before picture.

Here is the photo of the shrink plastic after it was  done.

I went to Embroidery online and bought the bundle which had all the Christmas embroidery files that I wanted to use for this project.  It is called Christmas Time by Lori Whitlock.  You can buy the collection or the individual embroidery files.  I embroidered the phrase It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas on a piece cotton.  I then finished the edges and glued it to the front of my tote.  I also embroidered my daughter-in-law’s name on the top of the apron as this set is for her.  She is an amazing baker.

I then strung my two adorable gingerbread embellishments on some yummy twine, added a bell and glued that down as well.

I really love to match things and  have been so excited to make this project.  Here is a close up of all the goodies that I put inside the basket.

The last thing that I did was made a card that used the SVG cut file which matched the embroidery.  I used Lori’s new Christmas collection called Celebrate Christmas.  The cut file can be found here in Lori’s store and here in the Silhouette store and is called Look a lot Like Christmas Phrase.
That’s it for me.  Hope that you have a wonderful holiday season.

Hugs,

Anita

 

Make a Silhouette Advent Calendar!

Have you seen the Advent Calendar that is available in the Silhouette Store this year?  Last year it was only available as part of one of the Black Friday bundles but it was so popular, that Silhouette has made it available as a stand alone project this year!  It features a pyramid-shaped shadow box and 25 pre-cut  triangular boxes, which fill the shadow box. Its so simple and fun, and now is the perfect time to make one!  Normally, it is  $39.99 – but between now & October 31, 2018, you can purchase it for just $24.99, using my exclusive code LORI and by clicking HERE.

The Advent Calendar arrives completely blank. Silhouette gives you a download card with a code that you can redeem for a set of cut files to customize your calendar. Also, included in those cut files, are 4 Christmas scenes that you can cut and install in layers behind the boxes. After all your boxes are removed, you then reveal a fun layered holiday scene!

To redeem this download card, simply open the Silhouette Design store, click on your name & this screen will appear.   Then click on Redeem a Promotional Download Card — and a screen appears where you can enter the 16 digit code that is hiding underneath the silver scratch off area on the card.  Once you have entered this code, click on “Apply Card”, and the designs will download to your library.   

Once you’ve downloaded the files, it’s time to get started customizing your calendar!  Here’s how I embellished my calendar…To start, I opened Advent Calendar Box Faces file.

Next, I un-grouped and removed pieces all except the triangles.

I created 1 inch circles using the left tool bar, To do this, select the oval/circle shape. Then hold down the shift key and drag your mouse while holding the left mouse button. When you’ve drawn the circle, release the mouse button first and then release the shift key. You can resize the circle as needed.

I then used replicate tool to create 25 circles

I then added the numbers to my Pattern Fills library and began filling circles with numbers. I’d like to give you the number set for FREE just for reading along this far in the post : ) CLICK HERE to download the number set.  (click on the link then the three dots in the corner and click “download”)

After I was finished with the numbers, I added fills to the triangles to coordinate with the number fills. Did you know you can simply drag and drop pattern into the triangles directly from your computer window? No need to upload them into your pattern library. Of course adding them to your library is great, but dragging them in from your computer window is sure handy and quick! I used the digital version of my Celebrate Christmas Collection.

You may choose to use a portion of a pattern fill by using the pan pattern tool in the fill portion of the side panel tool bar. To move the pattern to your desired placement, hold down the black circle with the crossbars and pan the pattern to your desired placement.

After you have filled in the patterns, place your numbers in desired triangles. You can use the align tool to help you center them in each triangle.

Repeat this process until you’ve filled all 25 triangles.  When complete, you will want to group each number and triangle. Then, carefully set up your triangles to print and cut. Depending on your printer, this can be done on 8½”x11″ or 12″x12″ sheets.

Basic Print and Cut Instructions:
1.Open the Page Setup Panel and change page size to 8.5×11 (or whatever size paper you’re using with your printer)
2. On the Page Setup Panel, click on the third Tab over. Set registration Marks Style: Type 1 CAMEO (or Portrait if that’s what you’re using)
3. Send the file to your printer and print on white cardstock.
4. Load the sheet of printed cardstock on your CAMEO Mat in the top left corner just as shown on your screen.
5.Click on the Send Tab.
6. Choose your material, Action = Cut, choose your tool.
7. Be sure to select the image on your cutting mat and then choose CUT EDGE.
8. Send. (your machine will read the 3 registration marks with it’s optical eye and then cut the triangles out precisely).

Once you have everything cut out it’s time to assemble. Simply glue the triangles to the front of the boxes. The scene in the back is numbered and has little tabs that insert into the advent calendar base making it easy to put those in place. 

Here’s a finished view of my Advent Calendar! I’m super excited to use it this holiday season!

And, as you remove the boxes each day, it reveals a darling layered shadow box scene.

This advent calendar is such a fun way to celebrate the season! And, it was fun to customize it with print and cut and my Silhouette CAMEO.  This calendar is available for just $24.99 through October 31st when you use my exclusive code LORI and by clicking HERE!