Delicate Cuts with the Silhouette Cameo

The possibilities of die cutting are fascinating to me.  I have been working on lots of new projects and experimenting to see how intricate I can make my designs.  I wanted to share a few sneak peeks at some original images I have been able to cut with my Silhouette Cameo.

I think of these cuts as "cobweb lace" since some many of the lines are about 1/16 of an inch and some are even thinner.  I am using the tip of a quilling tool to hold the cuts for the photos if that helps you understand the scale.

I am amazed that these cut so well.  I was able to just lift the finished designs from the mat with only a few tiny pieces that needed to be pushed out.

Several people have asked for more information about the Creative Memories software that is on sale this month.  Memory Manager 3.0 is the photo editing and organization software and StoryBook Creator 4.0 is the digital scrapbooking (and so much more) program.  (Both programs are 35% off until the end of April (so Memory Manager is $25.97 and StoryBook Creator is $42.22 - if you already have an earlier version of the program, the upgrades are also on sale).

Photo editing makes such a difference - you can often turn a "so-so" photo into something really special.  I used Memory Manager to edit this photo.

After you edit the photo, you can get creative with the many design and layout tools in the StoryBook Creator program.  I used an oil painting effect on this photo.

You can start from a blank page or work with professionally designed templates to create your layouts.  The StoryBook program comes with over $75 worth of free digital content and you can also use digital content obtained from other sources in the program.  

If you'd like to see the full original post about these photos and some more digital pages just click HERE.

In honor of National Scrapbook Day, there will be a 35% off sale on all digital content from Creative Memories from April 27th (Friday) to May 5th.  There will be lots of other items on sale and I'll have the details for you in another post.

I'd be happy to help you with specific questions - both of these programs are easy to use and have lots of advanced features for a very reasonable price (particularly when they are on sale!).

Today is the last day to leave a comment to have a chance to win a card kit from the class I taught last week.  Click HERE to go to the post about the class and leave your comment with a helpful tip for your fellow crafters!  I'll draw and post the names tomorrow.

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Sue Pelland "Leaves Galore" Quilting Templates

Last week we had a very interesting speaker at my quilting guild. Sue Pelland, of Sue Pelland Designs,  is a quilter who loves to do applique work, but as a busy Mom, she was frustrated by the time it took to cut out all of the pieces for applique.  She invented a set of templates to allow you to cut curved applique pieces with a rotary cutter and one of the curved templates (they come in three sizes).

She showed us lots of quilts and did a demo with her bright orange curvy templates.  There was a camera set up to project the view of her cutting on a table (so the next couple of pictures are of the projection on the wall.

You can cut many variations and sizes of shapes.  Here she has cut some basic leaf shapes.

After moving the template to a different position, she cut these "S" curved shapes.

Sue uses a chalk line to snap a grid on the background fabric and then the placement of the shapes is easy and everything stays straight.  Before cutting the fabric, she adheres a very lightweight and flexible fusible web called "MistyFuse."  She can cut four or five layers at a time to quickly make bunches of leaves.

This tiny miniature quilt was made to showcase some fabric "inchies" (are inchies still popular with papercrafters?  I haven't seen much talk about them lately...).

The segments are fused and a blanket stitch is worked around the edges.   The thick inchies are simply adhered with fabric glue.

The "S" curved pieces can be combined to form a ribbon or a rope effect.  She worked on a craft sheet and overlapped and ironed the shapes together so they could be lifted as one unit and placed on the background cloth for the quilt.

I have some photos that I took at the meeting (mostly from a chair with a small camera but I think they will give you an idea of the beauty of these quilts).  I was inspired to see how she came up with an idea to fill her need and was able to bring it to market to help other applique artists and quilters.

The long blue lines in this quilt are actually the background showing through below the appliqued curved shapes.  The orange shapes represent koi in a pond.

The templates were used to curved the diamond shapes in the center of this quilt.  This is all applique - not curved piecing.

Some of the leftover shapes were used to create the outer border on this quilt.

This placement has both basic leaf shapes and some trimmed shapes that form the poinsettia.

This quilt was one of my favorites

 More leaf shapes combined in a different way for this mini quilt.

This large quilt uses all three sizes of templates for the center, the leafy border and to trim the serpentine edge of the quilt before finishing.

I know that a lot of my readers have at least dabbled in quilting and I thought this new technique and tool might be interesting to you.  There are some video demonstrations of the tools in action on Sue's website, Sue Pelland Designs.  She also has a blog and a newsletter which are linked from the main webpage.

I really enjoyed her talk and demonstration and the quilts were all so vibrant with color.  I hope you'll stop over to her site to take a look.  Even if you are not a quilter, there is a lot of design inspiration that will transfer nicely to papercrafts!

Lettering Delights Sale

I thought you should know that Lettering Delights is having a Clearance Sale on some items that will be discontinued in their store.  There are some great bundles and the individual items are only 50 cents each if you don't want everything in the bundle.  Click on "What's New" near the top of the page to find the special sale bundles or choose individual items from the bundles.

Lettering Delights also has a new Thin Line Fonts bundle for pen writing and drawing,  The fonts work with Make the Cut software and a compatible cutting machine.  The entire bundle is $50 (regular price would be $70) and you can buy any of the four individual sets of ten fonts for $15 each.  The bundle also includes some rustic line drawing sketches that are very nice.

If you go a little crazy shopping, there is a code for $25 off a purchase of $60 or more.  Just put STEPANDSAVE in the box at checkout.

If you have any questions about the quilts or the Lettering Delights items, please let me know.

I hope you have a great day!

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Upcycled Notebook - Print & Cut with Cameo

Today I have a different sort of project to share with you.  When I taught the class at the Community Center, I was asked if I could "fix up" a book for visitors to the Art Space (where my work is hanging right now) to leave comments.  Apparently the old book got filled up or was misplaced, so a new book was needed.

 This plain spiral bound book was given to me as the starting point, along with the newspaper clipping of some art tools in the photo below.

I am not sure exactly where this image came from but it looks like fairly standard clip art.  I decided I could adapt it and make it more colorful for the book.

The first step was to edit my photo to create an image with high contrast.  I needed to make it easy to trace in the Silhouette Studio software.  I used the Creative Memories Memory Manager 3.0 software to do this (on sale this month for only $25.97).

I brought the image into the Silhouette Studio software, traced the shape and did some node editing to produce areas that could be individually colored.  Then I created two labels for the front of the book and for the inside pocket.  The label shapes are from the free set of images in the basic Silhouette software.  The words are typed using a font on my computer.  I used a rectangle sized to fit the cover to check the scale of the images I was creating.

When I had everything sized properly, I placed the images on the mat to fit an 8 1/2 x 11 inch piece of white cardstock.  I added the registration marks and printed the page on my regular home printer.

After I printed the page, I placed it on the mat and loaded it into the Silhouette Cameo.  These are my perfectly cut out images.

Here is the leftover white cardstock on the mat.  The small square and the two "L" shapes in the top right and bottom left corners are the registration marks.  The machine reads these automatically before cutting out the images.

The colors were all added in the Silhouette Studio program, including the color gradient on the paintbrush tip.  The background is a print called "newspaper grunge" which was one of the weekly freebies on the Silhouette site.  I created the shadow layer using the offset feature in the program.

I chose bright yellow for the cover so it would be easy to spot in the gallery area.  I made sure to use plenty of strong adhesive and paid particular attention to the edges since the book will be handled a lot.  If I was creating the book, instead of adapting an existing book, I might have laminated the covers but I think this will hold up just fine.

There was an inside pocket on the notebook so I thought this would be a nice place to hold some cards from the exhibiting artist in case people had questions about the work on display.

The same bright yellow base cardstock, font and label shape makes the inside match the cover.

The last detail was to add a pen that would stay attached to the book (the pens for visitor books always seem to wander off!).  I cut a length of ribbon and added some Scor-Tape to one side.  Then I wrapped it around the pen cap several times to secure it.

I used some more Scor-Tape on the other end of the ribbon and fastened it to the inside back cover.

I dropped the book off at the Community Center last Friday so it will be ready for any visitors who come by today.  I was able to do the project quickly and easily with the Silhouette software.  If you have any questions about how I did this, just leave a comment and I'll try to post a more detailed explanation.

It is raining cats and dogs here, but we really need the rain so I am trying not to complain.  At least we got one good weekend day - Saturday was beautiful!

I did a lot of experimenting with pens this weekend - and got some interesting results... I'll be posting more about that soon.

Have a wonderful Monday. 

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Happy Earth Day!

Today is the celebration of Earth Day.  There are all sorts of activities and initiatives for Earth Day - you can read more about it on the Earth Day Network site.

A couple of years ago, our town passed a ban on single-serving water bottles at Town Meeting.  State approval was never obtained so it was basically a symbolic gesture.  Last year, the ban was proposed again and rejected, by a vote of 265 to 272.  Town Meeting - that great New England tradition starts tomorrow and, once again, there is a proposal to ban single-serving water bottles.

It will be interesting to see what happens this year.  There are good arguments on both sides and I am sure the debate will be lively.  We try to bring our own water in reusable bottles when we go out.  I used some vinyl to decorate the bottles two years ago.  They are still in use and going strong.

  

If  you'd like to see the details about making the water bottles, click on the photo of the bottle to go to the original post.  Vinyl is easy to work with and this would be a fun project to do with children - they can choose some favorite images for their personalized bottles.

There is still time to sign up for  Spring Training 2012 , just click the image above to go to the information page on the Ella Publishing website.  You can use the code LEOTARD to get 10% off.  There are lots of great prizes from a variety of companies (Adobe, American Crafts, 2Peas, Ormolu, Jo Totes, Lawn Fawn, Becky Higgins, LLC, Whisker Graphics, Stampin' Up, Studio Calico, Scrapbooks Plus, and more!) that will be awarded during the class.

Spring Training 2012 will have five expert coaches including Erin Cobb (Photography), Wendy Smedley (Organization), Nichol Magouirk (Technique), Lisa Dickinson (Design) and Tammy Morrison (Scrapbooking Fitness and Fun!).

I am ready for the sessions to start tomorrow and I hope some of you will be joining in as well!

Have an environmentally friendly day!

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Where in the World is your Vagabond?

After such a long post yesterday - I have a quick Saturday post for you today.  Do you have a Vagabond?  I got mine last Christmas.  It is an awesome machine with so much power.  At first I thought I didn't need an electric machine - I can turn a crank(!) - however, if you have a lot of things to cut out it is a huge help.  The Vagabond can also cut and emboss thicker materials like grungeboard, chipboard, fabric and acrylic - easy peasy!

If you go to the Where in the World is your Vagabond? post on the Sizzix blog you will find a promotion for Vagabond owners to get a free additional sheet of  vintage luggage stickers to decorate their machines and a set of gauge keys that will help you make sure that the sandwich you are using with various items (steel rule dies, embossing folders, sizzlits dies, etc.) is the correct thickness to go through the machine safely.

The promotion started over a month ago and I finally had a chance to have my photo taken on Patriot's Day.  I decided to bring the machine to the site of the start of the American Revolution, the Old North Bridge in my hometown of Concord, Massachusetts, because it is a "Revolutionary" machine.  The suitcase design is very innovative and the machine rolls the material through with a push of a button instead of many turns (or revolutions) of a handle.

I did get a few looks from the Park Rangers when I posed for my husband to take this photo but they were too polite to ask what I was doing with my tiny suitcase!  You can just see a bit of the famous Minute Man statue on the right side of the photo.

I'll link up this post to the Where in the World is your Vagabond? post on the Sizzix blog and then in 4 - 6 weeks the stickers and keys should arrive in the mail.  There are more details on the Sizzix blog and the offer is available to Vagabond owners worldwide.

We have lots of projects around the house planned for this weekend but I hope to get some crafty time too.  Don't forget to leave a comment on yesterday's post if you want a chance to receive one of the extra card kits from the class I taught this week.

Have a great weekend!

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