Hi everyone, it’s Traci and I’m back today with a tutorial for wrapping words in a circle.  I fell in love with Lori’s adorable new birdhouse.  I plan to make several to hang from a tree decoration, but you could also fill this little box with candy for a sweet little gift.

For the tutorial, I want to show you how I wrapped a phrase around the window of my birdhouse.

Step 1:  Move everything except the house portion off of your mat in the software.

Step 2:  Click on the Text Style Window and find a font you would like to use.  I used Lori’s Cutie Pie font.  Type and size your phrase somewhere on your mat.   Phrase ideas:  “Home Tweet Home”, “From Our House to Yours” , “A Gift For You”, a name or address …. endless cute possibilities!

Step 3:  If you double click on your phrase, you’ll notice a green box around your phrase and a little circle with an x in it.  Click on this little circle and drag it over to the window of your birdhouse.  When you hover the word over a line, the letters snap to the shape of the line.   You may have to play with the size of your font and the character spacing to get the letters to line up around your shape.

Step 4:    To move your word up around the outside of the circle, you will use the grey sliding bar that appears through your letters. If you place your curser along that bar and slide upwards, your letters will move up and out.

Step 5:  Now, you will want to print just the round phrase on the paper that you want for your birdhouse.  Highlight the entire birdhouse and go to the Fill Color window.  Remove the yellow color (but leave the birdhouse lines) so that the yellow doesn’t print on your paper.  Be sure to also make your paper size 8.5×11, and show your registration marks.

Step 6:  If you highlight your phrase, and click on the “Line Style” window, you’ll notice that the lines of your letters are probably set to 0.0 points … be sure to increase the line thickness to 1.5 so that you see the letters when they print.

Step 7:  Now send your paper through your printer.  Cut the birdhouse out with your silhouette machine and assemble all of the cute pieces into an adorable decoration or gift.

Thanks for stopping by Lori’s blog!  I hope you’ll come visit me over at Artsy Albums and say hi!

Traci