Which foils work with the Foil Quill?

The We R Memory Keepers Foil Quill must be the most hyped accessory for digital cutter machines in years! I don't always invest in new products quite so quickly, but I've been looking for a way to add foil to my projects for a long time and the WRMK  products that I already have are such great quality, I thought that it would be worth the investment. I wasn't wrong - I love this accessory!

By co-incidence at the same time that my Quill arrived I obtained a bag of mixed foils, so I've been able to test a few different types of foil with the Quill, and I thought I'd share my results with you here. This is not a comprehensive test of the all foils available in the UK, but might help those of you who already have some foil in your stash, and aren't sure if they will work or not. I'd read that the Quill should work on card with heat-activated foils, but not those that are toner activated. I didn't really know what type of foils I had, so I trying them out seemed a sensible move.

We R Memory Keepers Foil

The foil that comes free with the Quill is 6" wide by about 43" long (just guessing the length, as I'd used some of all three of the rolls that came with my Quill). The rolls you buy separately are wider at 12", I think (at the time of writing mine are still on back-order).

Settings:
I foiled some smooth navy American Crafts card using these settings on my Silhouette Cameo.

Results:
The results were great. It worked on the first setting I tried (reduced speed and force from the default sketch setting for textured cardstock) so it doesn't seem to be too particular. The result was shiny all over, even in application, with no skipping. I was impressed!

TODO Foil

The TODO foil looks very similar to the WRMK foil, possibly the gold is factionally more yellow. The WRMK is the narrower roll in the centre. The backing is almost identical in colour, but the rolls are narrower at 4 3/4" (12 cm x 5m). Mine came in a mixed pack of four coloured foils, gold, satin gold, satin silver and silver which costs about £12.99. The rolls are designed to be used with the TODO Hot Foil Press/Multi-Functional Crafting Machine.

I used the exact same settings, and the result was just about identical on card. So similar I couldn't tell the difference in a photo, so haven't included photos of the results.

Crafter's Companion Foil

The Crafter's Companion foil is the same width as the that comes with the WRMK kit at 6-inches, but is a slightly paler gold (the WRMK is on the right in this picture). The rolls cost about £3.99 for a 2 metre length roll. The backing on the gold is a red/pink colour. At the same settings the resulting foiling was almost the same, again with no skipping. I was so pleased about this as I have a whole heap of gorgeous colours to try. They seem to be readily available and come in some lovely colours.


Craft Dragon

These rolls are much narrower at 9 cm and the gold is a little paler - the WRMK foil is shown on the right for comparison. The backing is an opaque creamy-white. They come in a pack with two gold, two silver, one red and one green and are designed to be used with the Impress Hot Foil Machine.

Again the results were great, with even coverage, and no skipping. I'm not sure that these are available to buy any more, but worth using if you have some already in your stash.


KanBan

These were the narrowest rolls at 10 cm, but a really, really long roll. The foil has a flimsier feel and has a gold backing. The colour is just slightly lighter than the WRMK foil. This foil came in a kit with a set of adhesive peel-offs and I didn't expect that this would work at all. However, I was pleasantly surprised. The results were OK, not as even as the other foils, but great for practice!

As I acquire other foils I'll post my results, so do follow this blog if you'd like to read more. I'll be posting the finished card made with these pretty foiled butterflies along with some foil pen storage ideas.

Just my cup of tea - a wiper card

Hiya, over on the Silhouette UK Blog today I have  a new style of card from the Silhouette Design Store. Lori Whitlock, one of my favourite designers, has a new range of fun Valentine's wiper cards which have a central swipe up part which appears once the card is opened. There are quite a few of these interactive cards to choose from, but I wanted to make one with a tea theme, and so used a couple of other files by Lori including the Tea Time Dingbats font to make teacup and teapot toppers.

DESIGNS USED:

Wiper Card Valentine Balloon Card by Lori Whitlock (#285948)

You Are My Cup of Tea phrase by Lori Whitlock (#267429)

Tea Time Dingbats Font by Lori Whitlock (#279453)



MATERIALS USED:

Textured Cardstock - 12" x 12" in white, mint and navy

Patterned Scrapbooking Papers - 6" x  6"

Scrap of Clear Acetate

Silhouette Adhesive-Backed Cardstock in mint, sea mist, grey and strawberry

Silhouette Sketch Pens in red and pink

Silhouette Cameo 3



The designer has a full video tutorial on how to put these cards together, so my post just shows the small changes that I made. I used the Valentine Balloon Card as it has a pop up sentiment in a rounded rectangle shape (some of the pop ups are animals or other more specific shapes).

My post on the Silhouette UK Blog includes instructions on the following:

(1) Changing the Print & Cut message to a cut out phrase - one of the words uses a 'marquetry' technique.

(2) How to separate the pieces in one element of the dingbat font, and which ones to remove to make a cuttable file.

(3)  How to make a floating piece with adhesive-backed cardstock on acetate.

(4) Tip for placement, sizing and orientation of the new toppers.


I'm so pleased with how the card turned out and urge you to experiment with dingbat fonts. They open up so many possibilities.

A Beginner's Guide to Cutting Cardstock and Making 3D Designs

Hiya, Over on the Silhouette UK Blog I have a pretty and practical Valentine's papercraft project using the Heart Bowl (#39182) file by Snapdragon Snippets. The mini size is perfect for sharing some chocolates or a special gift on Valentine's Day. I've also shared some useful tips for preparing and assembling cardstock projects.

Tips include

• Fitting more pattern pieces to a sheet
• Changing perforated lines to score lines
• Using 'Cut by Line' to use different cut settings on the same pattern piece
• Advantages of using liquid adhesive
• How to clean up excess adhesive
• Reducing the size of the finished item
• Choosing different weights of paper and cardstock

A Beginner's Guide to Print & Cut with the Silhouette - focus on stickers

Over on the Silhouette UK Blog I have a Print & Cut project for the Silhouette using a sticker design from the Silhouette Design Store. It includes step-by-step instructions for manipulating the store bought design to get maximum value from these purchased studio sticker files. The instructions include: how to set up a Print & Cut sticker page, adding a trim line around sticker sets, re-sizing sets, and cutting sticker planner pages.

I have a second post with further ideas for getting more from sticker files from the Silhouette Design Store. These include mirroring the images, splitting the set of images, isolating individual images, and making co-ordinating functional stickers.

Here I have reproduced the general Print & Cut section as I'm sure you'll find it useful if you are new to Print & Cut, or if you haven't used the Silhouette Sticker Paper before.

This is the design I used. I think these birds are so pretty. The stickers can be used on SO many crafting projects.

Little Bird Stickers by Carina Gardner (#284076) 

Here are my Print & Cut Instructions - just four easy steps.

(a) Page Setup for Print & Cut

In the Page Setup panel, change the Page Size to match the sticker paper (Silhouette Printable Sticker Paper is U.S. Letter sized).  Also tick the Show Print Border and Show Cut Border boxes.

From the Registration Marks tab, select Type 1 in the Style dropdown box, I like to also increase the Thickness to .60 to make the marks easier for the sensor to detect. If you were to look at the virtual mat, you'd see that the registration marks are joined by the cut (red) line. Any item outside of this red box will not cut.

(b) Print Page Setup

In the Main Menu (top of the page), change the Print Page Setup to match the Page Setup (i.e. Letter size). If there is a borderless option for Letter size DO NOT select it. Leave the scale at one hundred percent.

The print (grey) line will now be visible within the page borders and outside the cut line. Any part of an item outside the grey box will not print. Where possible avoid overlapping the hashed area (dark printing in this area can cause the sensor to mis-read the design).

(c) Print the Design

Once your have placed your sticker design in the correct position, print the design on your printer (from the Main/Top menu chose File > Print). For most printers select 'Best' or 'Photo Quality' for the best result. You may notice that any line with the thickness set to zero will not be printed.

(d) Cut the Design

Press the printed sheet onto the cutting mat, aligning it with the top left-hand corner of the sticky area. Load it into your Silhouette and open up the Send tab. Select the cut setting for "Sticker Paper, White". Adjust the force to achieve a "kiss cut" (cutting through the sticker layer, but not the paper backing). I usually reduce the force to '12' and recommend you use a Test Cut to find your ideal setting. Highlight the Cut option and check that the correct lines on the design will be cut. If they are correct, Send the design to cut. The Silhouette will attempt to read the registration marks and then cut the design.

I hope you find this useful.

FREE cutting file - Accessory Trays

Hiya, over on the Silhouette UK Blog this weekend I have a project to help organise all those invaluable Silhouette bits and pieces that accumulate when you use your machine. I used the Two Compartment Candy Box by Lori Whitlock, added some custom-designed accessory trays, and decorated the outside with panels cut from Silhouette Wood Effect Vinyl. I included a FREE accessory tray file too to keep blades, penholders and sketch pens all in one place.

You can also download the FREE Accessory Trays cut file here. The file is in .GSD format which can be opened with any edition of the Silhouette Studio software. From the Silhouette program select File > Open, then navigate to the downloaded file and click OK.

There are two versions in the file, one is taller than the other. The taller one is for sketch pens, to bring the coloured tops closer to the top. It also has more holes which are a fraction larger. The shorter one accommodates all the blades and is sized to allow the AutoBlade enough headroom, as it is taller than the others.

You can mix and match the holes, just Ungroup each version (select one, right mouse click, select Ungroup) and duplicate or swap the sets of holes.

You can also adjust the size and spacing of the holes.

To adjust the size, duplicate a set of holes, move it to one side and adjust all the circles simultaneously (hold down Shift, Alt, Cmd on a Mac and move one of the corner sizing handles either in or out). If you increase the size, check that they still fit within the square part of the tray. If not, you can adjust the spacing, as shown below.

To adjust the spacing, duplicate as above and ungroup the set of holes (select, right click, Ungroup, then Ungroup again). Using the Drawing Tools, draw a square over the existing dotted lines and then move it over the duplicate set of ungrouped dots.

If you need to make the holes larger than the above method allows (if they overlap the edges) then select one of the holes, open the Transform panel, and adjust the with and height as required (I chose 1" to accommodate a Stickles bottle).

Delete the remaining holes and using the Replicate panel, select the remaining hole and make a row of three.

Then space them evenly within the square by clicking on the Horizontal Spacing in the Transform panel.

Then group and then duplicate the row using column of three in the Replicate panel.

Then space the holes evenly using the vertical option in the Transform panel.

When you are happy with the spacing delete the square, group holes, and move them back to the tray, deleting or moving the original set.

For the ideal storage of Stickles and similar sized bottles, the legs will need to be shorter (even shorter than the short-legged version). You can adjust the height either up or down by using point editing of the points on the end of each leg. I'll save that explanation for another post. If you are in need of it meantime, let me know and I'll expedite it!

I hope you'll find this useful.


Happy New Year!




Designs used:

Zig Zag Village Card - Line Segment Overcut

Hello, today I'm over on the Silhouette UK Blog with a post about using the overcut feature in the Silhouette Studio software. It features this beautiful folding Zig Zag Village Card by Marji Roy. The card design is fabulous, but I didn't cut it very well first time around. On the second time around I used the Line Segment Overcut feature and the improvement was amazing!

If you look closely, you'll see that the squares and rectangles are not really square - all the corners are rounded.

First attempt with Overcut turned off

When I used Overcut (with all other settings the same) the cuts were crisper and more square.

Second attempt with Overcut on

The post over on the Silhouette UK Blog describe the feature and explain how, and where to use it.

The overcut feature also assisted in cutting out the teeny tiny wreaths successfully.

These were enhanced using my favourite embossing powder - more effective than cutting them out from metallic card.

I'll be making a few of these for the special folks on my Christmas card list.

Tiny Tea Light Houses

Hello, this week I've been making some new Christmas Tree decorations using Silhouette's Faux Leather Paper. The natural shade is perfect to use for gingerbread-look projects and I really enjoyed using it to make these miniature Tealight Houses. The design used is the Tiny Gingerbread House by Amanda McGee from the Silhouette Design Store. This year I'll be giving these as to friends - as "from our house to your's" gifts.

What I Used
Silhouette Faux Leather Paper in White and Natural
Oracal 651 Premium vinyl in White and Red
Clear Application Tape
Beacon Fabri Tac Adhesive
6mm Silver Organza Ribbon
Silhouette CAMEO® 3
Silhouette Black Ratchet Blade
Silhouette 12" x 12" Cutting Mat

The post over on the Silhouette UK Blog includes instructions on how to cut the faux leather paper on a Silhouette together with a load of hints and tips. Once assembled a regular tea light fits inside and can be accessed through a flap in the rear of the gingerbread house.

A Contemporary Mass-Produced Christmas Card

Hi, I can't believe that November is almost over - where did the month go? Every year I make one or two card designs in multiples, and this year I've picked a contemporary card design by Kristen Magee; the Fa La La Christmas Card (#234355). Over on the Silhouette UK Blog I have a tutorial showing how I simplified this seven-layer card to two-layers with a few additional accents using silver Silhouette Sticker Foil.

In the post I take you through the process of how this card evolved to the point at which I felt I'd made it as easy enough to make in quantity. I reduced the number of layers by bringing in the Print & Cut technique as well as introducing some extra shine with foil sticker paper.

I made a heap of these little accent tags too. I love how teeny tiny I can make them with my Silhouette Cameo.

Materials Used

Silhouette Silver Printable Sticker Foil

Medium-weight White Textured Cardstock

Square Card Blanks

Beacon 3-in1 Advanced Craft Adhesive

Silver Cord

Silhouette CAMEO® 3

Silhouette 12" x 12" Cutting Mat

A3+ Printer (if printing on 12"x12", otherwise an A4 Printer)

DIGITAL DESIGNS USED: