Getting Back to Crafting

While the summer activities of being outdoors, vacationing and entertaining visitors has kept us busy, it seems like it has been ages since I've made anything. To slowly get back into the creative mode, I made some business cards for my blog. I designed them in the Silhouette Cameo by inserting my blog header and adding the addresses at the bottom. You might say - that's not your blog header. Well, it was a few days ago. I am constantly changing things and I suppose that's what comes with being a creative person.

As it turned out, I couldn't cut them on the Silhouette because the machine wanted to cut out the addresses at the bottom of the cards. I don't understand why that happened. The machine cuts red lines and the font didn't have red on them. That tells me that I need to watch more YouTube videos on working with font on the machine. I wound up cutting them out with my old fashioned paper trimmer.

Next, I cut out some images from The Graphics Fairy blog. I enjoy doing this from time to time. I showed you some I had done before here. I thought I would give you a little information on how the Silhouette works. Before I purchased mine, I appreciated seeing how people used theirs. 

Below you can see I downloaded images and printed them off. The lines around the corners and black square on the top left are called registration marks. The Silhouette detects these marks after the images have been printed so it can cut them out. It's pretty amazing how it works.

Here they are all cut out. What do I do with these images? They can be used for scrapbooking, making cards and other things as I will show you below. It's nice to be able to make my own die cuts any size I want.

I also cut out this sweet little patriotic girl.

And then just so happened to visit Harriette's Look at the Birdie blog and I saw an image of a glass container with vintage red, white and blue poker chips. 

When I saw them I immediately ran downstairs and got mine out of the basement cabinet. I love the look of them in a clear container! The patriotic girl fits right in with mine! So that's another thing I do with my images; I decorate with them. Thank you, Harriette, for the inspiration!

I will show you how I made a card with the Silhouette. Here you can see I made two copies of the crown, flipping one to make the back of the card. See the red lines around them? They are called offset marks. You can either cut directly around the object or have some edging around it. I created the offset marks so the images could be held together at the top to make the card. These are the red lines I mentioned earlier when I was talking about how the machine cuts red lines.

So after I planned my card and created cutting lines around the image, I printed it off and applied it to the sticky cutting mat. 

I loaded the mat into the machine. The Silhouette will detect the registration marks and then cut out the images. It works directly with the computer and does what the computer tells it to do.

The crown card is cut. I removed the scrap paper from around it, 

closed it, and embellished it with a green jewel. 

I made bunny and lilac cards too.

I had been wanting to make this Mary Mary Quite Contrary interactive paper doll for some time now. I had tried several times to cut it with the Silhouette but couldn't figure out how to make the cutting lines for each piece. They were all too close together. I learned that I had to ungroup all the pieces and work on each piece individually. I know a scissors would work just as well, but I wanted to cut it out on the machine.

Here I am preparing the cutting lines.

Once I printed it off, I colored it with some pencils I found in the basement. 

Here the pieces are cut out, ready for holes to be punched and for brads to hold them together. I used a hole punch from my card making stash that makes tiny holes, just big enough for the brads to go through.

And here she is! She would be a good project for a little girls get together, slumber party or something like that.

Well, it feels good to have finally made some things. I hope you have learned something about the Silhouette and The Graphics Fairy if you were not familiar with them before. Had you been on a crafting sabbatical like me?

Sharing with Brag Monday, Metamorphosis Monday

The Silhouette Blog, Make It Pretty Monday
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