Celebrate with a Bouquet

Hi
The project for today is a card I call celebrate with bouquet. The image is a bouquet from dover greetings and the sentiment is celebrate. The whole card was cut with silhouette machine. This is such a lovely die cut machine especially for print and cut. It cuts only 8 1/2 x 11 papers though. Just wish they would come up with a 12 x 12 one. I use this machine rather than my knk machine for print and cut as this has an optical sensor which makes it so easy to print and cut as when you send the design to the printer with registration marks (it has 3 registration marks) it cuts so well  even if it cuts only size upto 8 1/2 x 11 but this will do most of the times as anyway most printers unless it is large format only prints this size max. (KNK machine and black cat machines have laser sensor which also works great but takes just a little more time as you have to to align the marks yourself using the laser)

I have used silhouette as it is easier but you can use your printer to print the dover image or any other image you like and any die cut machine and adapt for this card. For e.g you can just use any cardstock instead of printing one and use scallop design from one of cricut cartridge and use your DS or gypsy or craftroom for adjusting width and height and also maybe a different font. I just used the silhouette and for the image the lovely one form dover greetings book. I just love this book for card making. If you want to layer the butterfly and the bee as I have done then you have to print 2 and use your scissors if you don't have silhouette but I did lots of node editing and cropping to get the machine to cut.

Here is a screenshot of the silhouette studio file . I opened up 3 versions of the file so that I can fit and move images in the active cut area. Else you have to print and then cut it immediately and then send another to print and so on. If you open multiple windows then you print each in one shot and then make sure you open the right window for each and send to silhouette to detect and cut ( very important else you will have wrong cuts).

I cut all except for envelope base using the white cardstock (the walmart ones are so great for this) . Then I assembled the card using pop dart and glue(ATG gun)and glue dots. I used 2 flower eyelets which I luckily had in same blue color as the background paper for inside of the card on the sentiment . Once can always enhance the lighter colors with copic or embossing but in this case I didn't have to do that.

Here is the card and envelope

I have added stickles - fruit punch and diamond as I love glitter. I stacked the bee with one layer of pop dots while the butterfly has 2 layers to raise it up further.

I added some doodling with black markers too on the card and envelope.
The inside of the card with the 2 flower eyelets on the label . I further added bling to the eyelets.

So here's the card and envelope once again

Hope you enjoyed the project. You will see more as I keep playing with dover book and silhouette machine. They sing such a great Duet together!



Sock Monkey

I felt like playing more and this is dedicated to a special friend of mine.
Sock Monkeys. Monkeys remind me of the old Indian statue I had in my home - the 3 monkey - the see no evil, hear no evil and speak no evil.  So I came up with this

I still have to work a little bit on this so no file as yet. I will post the file as soon as I make the card for which I created this file for

HourGlass

Telling Time. How many wonderful apparatus we have for doing that over the ages! One of my favorite pieces is the good old hourglass. Of course I do not tell time by that but love it in papercrafting.
So here is one svg file I played with.
The image

The files are of course available under the respective tabs from the menubar.

Wrought Iron border

I decided to play with some shapes and borders. I love  iron decor and love even more when I integrate them as borders on papers. So here is one

The files - svg, knk and studio are available under the respective tabs from the menubar

Basketfull of Thanks

I enjoy playing with the silhouette so much
This is especially so great for cards with print and cut.
Match it with dover and oh so fun.
Here is a card using dover greetings for central image and silhouette pattern for card base (printed on white cardstock - 8 1/2 x 11 - the ones you get from walmart). Some border patterns from silhouette store.

Don't you love it?  The flower on the envelope was a punch but rest all silhouette and dover.
Here are flowers on basket have been layered with foam dots and stickled.

Here are some more views of the card

And the inside of the card

Here is a screen shot of the file in silhouette

and the cut lines view

Now just a brief steps on how I got the dover image from AI to silhouette and layered it. There maybe
easier ways to do this but well this is how I did it and like to do it.. I am sure as I use the software more I'll find easier methods. Nothing like hands on experience.
I might make a video later but for now some pictures and a summary

Here is the image in AI. The image is just the basket of flowers. Since wanted additional layers I got the rest of the flowers by clipping with outline.

I used the pencil tool to outline shapes I wanted instead of tracing as sometimes it is easier and less nodes and less messy. You can always keep adjusting so easily in AI.
I filled the outline with black fill and no stroke.

Then I copied (duplicate and then set the opacity of only the path around 0) the outline on to a new layer and placed on top of a copy of image ( note the image has full opacity and only copy of the path has opacity 0 so that you can see the image) and aligned the outline perfectly on top of image and clipped. Repeated for each outline.

Then I saved the file and also exported a png copy so that I can open it in silhouette.

Now to silhouette where almost the same thing is done using the silhouette studio

Then I traced each black outline as this is a simpler trace from AI's solid black outline to silhouette or else you should do some node editing. I like the trace feature in AI better and use that for intricate edged images and pencil tool for simpler images like this.

So ope trace window the butterfly like tool at the top right (5th group). Select area and then trace edge

Move the outline out of the way and repeat for each image in case you need layers like I did. They add dimension to your project. Now here are screenshots with my description in the image itself

Now to get the images  so that we can get cutline and crop and set it all ready to import to library you have to crop the image on png and use the outline as cut line . So bring all the red traced outline to the front of the base image.

Use modify

Yeah! Lovely cropped images of flower

set the cut lines from the cut window

Well that's it.
end result a - beautiful image which I can use over and over and print and cut (with registration mark turned on)

Here is the cut line view

I then saved the file and imported to library and yes made a lovely card playing with software more

That was for sure a long post. Do leave comments if you find it useful :)

Some more svg files - Gears and shapes

Played with AI some more. I wanted some gear shapes so made a svg file. I have not tried test cutting it yet though I am sure at low speed and proper size (ie not too small and at around 2 to 3 inches each image/gear) both silhouette and knk will cut it out ok. I also played with some shapes and made some paper clips, quilling rose, key etc. SVG files for both are available

Gears

Shapes

Dover and silhouette

This combination is so lovely. Print and cut from dover especially the greeting cards book and then create outline for cut in silhouette studio  and voila - quick greeting card images.
I had to trace all though as offset does not work so well as you always get a box. But select trace and play with high pass and threshold and then delete some nodes and they are good to go. I have found that high pass around 700 - 750 and then threshold from 45- 55 and choosing trace edges gives a pretty good result and some tweaking of course.
I still have to play with embossing and punching in knk. Got to call Sandy for that. So used to Sandy helping me out that I am afraid to go solo on knk