26 May 2018

Simply Crafty SVGs Father's Day Blog Hop



Welcome to the first ever Simply Crafty SVGs Blog Hop! THE HOP HAS NOW CLOSED, but you can still visit all the blogs on the hop for some great Father's Day inspiration.

The winner of the $5 Simply Crafty SVGs Store Gift Voucher for this blog is Jill Beattie - CONGRATULATIONS Jill! 

I have a Father's Day card for ultra cool dads for you using the cute Side-by-Side Box Card with additional surf elements from the Surf 'n Swim Box set and the Surfer's Paradise Card.






This was such a fun make, I loved adding all the little details. I've shared how I made some of my favourite parts with you below.

To find these and other great files click here: Simply Crafty SVGs 

Thank you for participating in the Father's Day Blog Hop featuring Simply Crafty SVGs' files. To enter for your chance to receive a Simply Crafty SVGs' Gift Certificate you must leave a comment below and follow this blog. The more blogs in the hop you visit and comment on, the more chances you have to win! 

Contest runs from 05/26/2018 12:00 AM EST to 05/28/2018 11:59 PM EST. One WINNER from each blog will be awarded a $5 gift certificate, and one GRAND PRIZE WINNER will be awarded a $10 gift certificate based on all comments from all blogs. All winners will be announced June 2, 2018 on the Simply Crafty SVGs Blog. You can check back here to see if you are a winner on THIS blog! 

Please continue the hop by visiting the next crafter on the list!
2. Janet ⇚ YOU ARE HERE
3. Julie
4. Lena
5. Leslie
6. Nancy

Make sure you visit each one, leave a comment and follow 
so that you have more chances to win :)
Do visit the store and try one of Simply Crafty SVGs files. 

There a lots of free SVG files to try too!




Flames Paint Job

My first customisation was to the vehicle's paint job. I 'borrowed' the layered flames from one of the surfboard boxes. It needed minimal re-sizing to fit the body of the vehicle. I cut duplicate copies and trimmed the flames by hand so that all the flame design on all panels aligned correctly.





Wheels

The tyres were cut from black cardstock with a shiny finish and layered for added dimension.  The rims are cut from matte silver metallic cardstock and trimmed with metal stars.






Licence Plates

I added small plates both back and front which can be customised in all sorts of ways.  I used the Stencil Font which came with Microsoft Office.







Surf Board

The surf board comes from the Surfer's Paradise Card and has an added 'Dad' decal; just a simple oval shape with an offset and the letters cut from the top layer (written in Ariel Bold). Don't forget to keep the counters (interior parts from the cut letters) as they are so easy to mislay! The assembled board is then mounted onto the central brace.






Here's a list of all the bits and pieces I used.

  • American Crafts Textured Cardstock (white, red, yellow, orange)
  • Centura Pearl Black Cardstock
  • Silver Metallic Cardstock
  • Tim Holtz Ideology Adornments Metal Stars
  • Self-Adhesive Square Gems (red & orange)
  • Bead (for door handle)
  • Beacon Zip Dry Adhesive
Do contact me if you need any additional information.

Follow me on Instagram for extra crafting inspiration!


25 May 2018

Cut your Own Stencils with the Silhouette Cameo




Hello, Janet here with a media I haven't tried before ... Silhouette Stencil Material (the non-adhesive variety). It comes in a pack of six letter-sized, thick, plastic-y sheets. My first thought was that it would be perfect for making stencils to use with a mix of pigment ink and glitter paste. I was impressed with the resulting stencils and mask, so have shared the process of making, and using the stencils, together with the finished card, on the Silhouette UK Blog.

These are the designs that I used:


I loved using the stencil material and have all kinds of projects in mind for this stencil and for others! They can be used with glitter paste, mousse, texture paste, or sprays and mists.  I think I'm going to be busy!



Do you make your own stencils? I'd love to hear your ideas and suggestions.






18 May 2018

Make Duct Tape Flowers with your Silhouette Cameo



Hiya, I'm a real fan of duct tape, and use it for all kinds of jobs around the house and garden.
This week I had the opportunity to try out Silhouette Printable Duct Tape Sheets. I thought that they'd be great to use for the flowers on an outdoor wreath, as they were sure to be more durable than those made from cardstock.

I chose to make the Flower Wreath, Spring from Snapdragon Snippets, as it didn't have too many flower layers. Here is a list of the materials that I used to make the wreath.


Info on how I put the wreath together can be found on the Silhouette UK Blog.





Making Flowers from Duct Tape Sheets

The Silhouette version comes in sheets that can be cut with scissors, or a digital cutting machine. It comes with a backing sheet too - so I managed to not stick my fingers together for once!



The sheets can be used in three ways:

(1) Print - they can be printed with any pattern you choose. Here is a shot of some of the crazy patterns available somewhere in the world (from the book, "Crazy-Cool Duct Tape Projects" by Marisa Pawelko)!



(2) Cut - with scissors, die cutter or Silhouette/Cricut. The flower petals for the wreath were cut from unprinted  sheets. Rather than kiss-cut the sheets, I chose cut settings that would cut through both the tape and it's backing sheet. This gives the petals more 'body' and allows them to be layered without the adhesive side sticking to lower layers of petals or the wreath.



(3) Print & Cut - contour cutting with Silhouette. I did these plain-ish leaves, but cut shapes could be filled with virtually any colour or pattern.



You can see the finished wreath over on the Silhouette UK Blog.

What would YOU make with crazily printed duct tape?

16 May 2018

Anyone for Tennis? Cutting intricate pieces in Vinyl

Wimbledon and USA Open Tennis Cards made by Janet Packer (Crafting Quine) from the "At The Ball Park Card' by Simply Crafty SVGs.

Hiya, Anyone for tennis? Today I've adapted the At The Ball Park  card file from Simply Crafty SVGs into a tennis card - in fact TWO tennis cards! Thinking of the Grand Slam Tournament, I've made a US Open as well as a Wimbledon version.




Living in the UK, I don't see many baseball games (live, or televised). However, tennis features much, much more, and Wimbledon was always such a HUGE event in my household as a child. I couldn't find any dimensional tennis cards out there, so I thought the fun baseball card could be successfully adapted.

I substituted the baseball and starred balls for tennis balls, and used tennis rackets in place of the baseball bats.  The court was a little more tricky and I sliced off the baseball field and welded on an offset of the tennis court.

For my card I needed some tennis images, and I found these open source ones at Openclipart.org. However, although they can be downloaded as SVG files, they aren't what you'd call 'cut ready'.

Tennis Racket by johnny_automatic
Tennis Court by netalloy
Tennis Ball by casino

I'll have a separate post on how to manipulate the new images ready for cutting, but in this post I'm concentrating on cutting out the intricate bits in vinyl (and a surprise material)! Now, I should emphasise that all the original pieces will cut fine; it's just my new bits that were too intricate to cut from cardstock.


Tennis Court Lines

The court lines are cut from white vinyl.

Wimbledon and USA Open Tennis Cards made by Janet Packer (Crafting Quine) from the "At The Ball Park Card' by Simply Crafty SVGs.


The Wimbledon court has card stripes to represent the grass courts used in the UK ...

Wimbledon and USA Open Tennis Cards made by Janet Packer (Crafting Quine) from the "At The Ball Park Card' by Simply Crafty SVGs.


whereas the US Open court is flat blue to represent the hard courts used in the USA tournament.

Wimbledon and USA Open Tennis Cards made by Janet Packer (Crafting Quine) from the "At The Ball Park Card' by Simply Crafty SVGs.


The cut for the lines could have been paper (the one on the right), but paper would have been tricky to adhere without some glue residue, so self-adhesive vinyl was a 'cleaner' way to go.

Wimbledon and USA Open Tennis Cards made by Janet Packer (Crafting Quine) from the "At The Ball Park Card' by Simply Crafty SVGs.



Tennis Net

Now the material chosen for the net might come as a bit of a surprise. It is actually some trimmed, self-adhesive, paper lace.

Wimbledon and USA Open Tennis Cards made by Janet Packer (Crafting Quine) from the "At The Ball Park Card' by Simply Crafty SVGs.


Very quick and easy to apply.

Wimbledon and USA Open Tennis Cards made by Janet Packer (Crafting Quine) from the "At The Ball Park Card' by Simply Crafty SVGs.



Tennis Rackets

I cut the tennis racket bodies from wood-look vinyl for a retro look. They could also have been cut from silver, or coloured vinyl, to resemble steel, aluminium or carbon fibre.

Wimbledon and USA Open Tennis Cards made by Janet Packer (Crafting Quine) from the "At The Ball Park Card' by Simply Crafty SVGs.


As it is would have been difficult to adhere the paper handle on top of the vinyl, I trimmed off the handle first, before applying it to the cardstock backing piece. Then it was an easy matter to apply the paper handle onto the racquet.

Wimbledon and USA Open Tennis Cards made by Janet Packer (Crafting Quine) from the "At The Ball Park Card' by Simply Crafty SVGs.


Sentiments

The sentiments were written in LW Classic in the Silhouette Studio software and then cut from white vinyl. I love how it is possible to design custom sentiments without having to rely on using stamps or someone else's phrases.

Wimbledon and USA Open Tennis Cards made by Janet Packer (Crafting Quine) from the "At The Ball Park Card' by Simply Crafty SVGs.


You'll noice that I have cut extra dots for the exclamation mark. I find that this is good insurance in case one is lost along the way.

Wimbledon and USA Open Tennis Cards made by Janet Packer (Crafting Quine) from the "At The Ball Park Card' by Simply Crafty SVGs.



Tennis Balls

I LOVE how these tennis balls turned out. They are made of two layers, the white under part, and three separate yellow/green top pieces. The American Crafts cardstock was the perfect colour! As an aside, do you think that tennis balls are green or yellow? My husband says yellow, but I say green.

Wimbledon and USA Open Tennis Cards made by Janet Packer (Crafting Quine) from the "At The Ball Park Card' by Simply Crafty SVGs.



Here's the finished US version of the card.

Wimbledon and USA Open Tennis Cards made by Janet Packer (Crafting Quine) from the "At The Ball Park Card' by Simply Crafty SVGs.


I like them both. Which is your favourite?


4 May 2018

Foil and Vellum Bows and Boxes

Ways to cut Silhouette Rose Gold Printable Foil - Kiss Cut and Die Cut. Tutorial by Janet Packer (Crafting Quine) for the Silhouette UK Blog. Uses files from the Silhouette Design Store by Nilmara Quintela, Felicity Jane, and Jamie Cripps.


Hiya, I've been making gift boxes this week in my favourite colour combination; Mint, Rose Gold and White. Love 'em!

I have a post over on the Silhouette UK Blog with information on cutting the Rose Gold Printable Sticker Sheets. I have two methods, so pop over if you'd like to read about how to use those techniques in your projects.


Ways to cut Silhouette Rose Gold Printable Foil - Kiss Cut and Die Cut. Tutorial by Janet Packer (Crafting Quine) for the Silhouette UK Blog. Uses files from the Silhouette Design Store by Nilmara Quintela, Felicity Jane, and Jamie Cripps.


I used the foil to decorate these pretty Carousel Horse Box gift boxes by Nilmara Quintela from the Silhouette Design Store.

It is a quick and easy file to put together, great if you are making a number for party favours. The base is designed so that it doesn't need adhesive and the box is held closed with a short length of ribbon.  As I don't have bow-tying superpowers, I adapted the box so that it would stay closed without the ribbon. I also made these foil and vellum bows  to add a little more pizazz!



The bows I used are:
3D Bow file by Felicity Jane.
3D Layered Puckered Bow by Jamie Cripps.

I can't decided which one I like best, can you?