Princess Shopping and Card Making All In The Same Morning...

Good Day Everyone!

First, thank you Sheila for having me here today on your blog!

We hope you all are having a great day and getting inspired to create. Recently I was up at dark thirty and was waiting for my local Target store to open while enjoying a cup of Krispy Kreme Dark Roast coffee and a couple of HOT delicious donuts.

This same day was also our great nieces 3rd birthday party. Happy Birthday to our very sweet KK (Kennedy)! Her birthday is all about Sofia The First. So off to Target I travelled to see what I could find. I found a lot of options and finally settled on some Sofia accessories. A Princess needs a lot of accessories and Target had some great options today at a good price.

No gift is complete until you have the right card and in this case it needed to be a Sofia card. Well I looked in the party section and in the cards to no avail. What is up with that? They have invites, thank you notes, but no cards? Hmmm maybe they were just out do to the recent ice/snow storm we had here in NE Georgia.

I came home and did some Google image searching and found this image.

I opened it up using my Silhouette Designer software and traced the image.

Using the trace window I clicked on Trace Image. Then I drew a box around my PNG image. Deselected the High Pass filter. Increased the threshold to 93%. Click on trace and detach.

I clicked on my image and moved her over on the mat and then moved her silhouette off the mat. I save these for use as stencils on my mixed media projects. Just a simple cut and we have a perfect stencil for Sofia. Now I need to resize Sofia to fit in an A2 size envelope. Click on Sofia and go to the Scale feature. Use the Lock Aspect Ratio and change her height to 5.5"

Now I am ready to add the cut line to my image.  I selected my image and clicked on the CUT LINE (scissors) icon. Then I have to select the type of cut line and I choose the CUT EDGE option as I want it to cut the outline and not the details.  You see it puts the RED cut line around the outer edge of my image. I will have a perfect cut!

Now I am going to open the REPLICATE menu.  Select my image again by clicking on it. I chose the Mirror Right option and then used my directional keys to move the new image to the left until its attached where I want it. Holding down the shift key and clicking on the left image now I have both images selected and to make sure they are welded together I am going to click on the CUT LINE (scissors icon) again and choose the CUT EDGE.

Simple and easy! Now I'm ready to print the image but I need to use the Silhouette Registration Marks so I get the perfect cut card. I click on the Registrations Marks Settings Window and then select the Show Registrations Marks box.  I click on File --> Print and send this to my printer that is loaded with the cardstock or photo paper I want to use.

Once printed I load it on my cutting mat and send the file to my Silhouette.  I tell it to automatically detect the registration marks and it does. Then I get to tell it what kind of paper I am cutting and I can adjust my blade setting based on its recommendations and click on the CUT button.  Once cut I used my ScorPal to score it and used a soft lavender marker to write in it.

Here's a quick shot of the finished card!  I could have made 10 cards in the time it took to write this tutorial, but alas I did not do so!  I am enjoying using my Silhouette, but alas I adore my Cricut and will still be using her and my sweet Gypsy! 

The Silhouette is so easy and very convenient when you need the perfect card or accessory for your gift.  I could add some small pearls to this card, but KK is three so we are not going to do that on this card. Maybe on a scrapbook page, but not her card that she will be touching.

Thank you for stopping by today and happy crafting! Have a blessed day!

Donna Lee

Birch Tree And Deer Silohouette - Masculine NoteCards

Hello Crafty Friends!

Donna Lee here with StampinNScrapinWithDonnaLee here today!  Thank's Sheila for having me over.

Nature is one of my favorite places to go to pray, meditate, and work out. At work we received a Christmas card from a vendor that had a couple of deer in a forest of birch trees. I loved it and wanted to try and make some general note cards using the idea of birch trees and deer. These cards are great for men or women, but I always need men cards, so I am making up a few different ones to have handy.

I was blessed to get a Silhouette Portrait over the recent holidays and while I was waiting for it to arrive I watched quite a few tutorials on You Tube and on the Silhouette America website. I saw many videos where they found images on Google and were able to use the trace feature to make a stamp or to simply cut the image. I made some basic notes on 3X5 index cards to use when my machine showed up.

Once I received the Portrait and got it set up, I made a quick birthday card for my Grandson using the trace feature and some simple images of Autobots and Rescue Bots that I found using Google Image search for his party that falls on Christmas Eve. He loves the Rescue Bots cartoons and I knew he would recognize this emblem of the Autobot.  It was easy to trace and reassemble on this card.

Here is the inside of his card with the Optimus Prime image I located using Google image search and was able to trace and cut. You can size it perfect to your card or project and I love that! I also appreciate that its a free image and I will only use it for my personal use.

After having played with several images and using different features on the trace window for practice, I was ready to tackle something with a little more detail.

I went out to Google and searched for birch tree deer and then clicked on images. This is the image that most closely matched my inspiration card.

It took me about 10 minutes to get this traced to my satisfaction and then I was ready to cut my layers using two different colors of 80# card stock.

I used just one side of the cut from my cocoa card stock to mount on a turquoise piece of card stock. The colors are not right in these photos so I apologize. It looks good with the kraft card base that is an A2 size and the turquoise mat is cut at 4X5.25. I am going to do this cut again using a silver foil paper on top of a brilliant blue mat and I think the contrast will be even better. 

I love the look of using silhouette images on cards that are based on nature. Here's a look at my cuts for my 2nd card. 

You can see I used some very narrow pieces of 3D foam tape to create that extra dimension on the card.

I layered the lighter natural colored card stock cut just off set about 1/16th of an inch to create a shadow. I also used some chalk ink to distress the trees and a red marker to color the bird.

Making the frame was really easy on the Silhouette. Again, I used 3D Foam Tape from Close To My Heart to pop it up to meet the height of my trees and deer. The tape comes with two widths in the pack which is really nice for those thinner cuts.

It's easy to group and ungroup an image on the Silhouette so that you only cut what you need. To be honest I was worried about learning the ins and outs of a new machine, but I love it and have been able to figure most things out pretty quickly. 

I am working on cutting a stencil of another image of birch trees and birds, so I will share that in the near future. I want to do a little more mixed media, so stencils are something I need to be able to make.

Thank you for stopping by my Stampin N Scrapin studio today! Check back again soon for more projects! 

Blessings and Peace!

Donna Lee

One More Christmas Card! Featuring Joys Of The Season

Hello Crafty Friends! Welcome to She's A Sassy Lady! 

I am Donna Lee from Stampin N Scrapin With Donna Lee. Thank you Sheila for inviting me to share here today!

Today I want to share just one more Christmas card that is easy to make using the Joys Of The Season Cricut cartridge.  I've cut the Rocking Horse card on the page below at 5.37 inches using my Gypsy.

 I set the width of my card to 8.5 inches and the Gypsy set the height for me. Cricut Craft Room will do the same.

Using my Gypsy, I was able to size my rocking horse to fit perfectly over the cut out on the front on my card. My rocking horse and it's layers are all cut at 1.75 inches. I cut the blackout, shadow, and the layers.  On the layers I used the hide contour feature to hide different pieces so that I could cut the tail and mane in a different color. Below is a picture of all my layers.

I use a Scor Pal to score my card base.

I used a piece of DCWV glitter card stock behind the window. This gets covered up on the inside of the card.

Now it's time to adhere the layers of the rocking horse. For these small pieces I prefer to use my glue pen or Tombow Liquid Mono Adhesive.

The brown shadow has dimensional adhesive on it to pop it up just a little bit. I used Stampin Dimensionsals from Stampin Up as it's the perfect height.

His saddle, bridle, mane,tail and the accent piece are next. They are cut from DCWV card stock. I was able to use my scraps for all of this card, except for the card base. 

For my sentiment I went to Close To My Heart Artbooking Cricut Collection. It's cut at 4.25 inches. I did not use real dial size. It's cut using scraps of Recollections Foil paper from Michaels.

A good glue pen is best way to adhere this.

Thank you for stopping by She's A Sassy Lady today! I wish you all a very blessed and Merry Christmas and a safe, healthy, and prosperous New Year.

 

Blessings and Peace,
Donna Lee