Silhouette UK: watercolour

Showing posts with label watercolour. Show all posts

Monday, 25 February 2019

Faux leather paper dimensional die cuts

Hello, it's Verity here from Pretty Little Button. I hope you've had a busy weekend with your machine and finding plenty of inspiration over here on the blog to help you on your way. I have a trio of cards today where I used the Faux Leather paper from Silhouette to create dimensional and striking die cuts. The paper comes in three beautiful colours - brown, white and black. Now I am using it in a more non-traditional way I was wanted to create dimensional intricate die cuts for some cards. I didn't wet the paper to create that leather look. Instead, I was focused on make thing the most out of the strength of the paper.

As the paper is strong I thought it would be perfect of cutting thick and intricate die cuts without worry it could rip when peeling off the paper, or having to cut it with many passes or fraying like it can do with thick cardstock. Whatsmore, this paper is thick, it has some weight to it and I used blade 6 to cut it. That means if I want dimensional die cuts I've got it with this. No die cutting the dame shape 3-4 times, the layering over one another and adhering with liquid glue. Which to be honest is very fiddly! So remember to have a look through your different media and think what non-traditional ways I can use this? How can I get more out of my supplies?

Faux leather paper dimensional die cuts process:

To start, I want to show a little tip for those that may not be aware of it. When you look up a design in the store, you are greeted with the window below. As I wanted the designs to pair well, I needed to see if I could find any other designs that are similar to this. The best and easiest way to do that is to check out the designer of that design and it is so simple to do!

In the window pop-up, click the link below the title of the design - This is the designer and will be coloured with the Silhouette blue showing it is a link. You will then be redirected to the designers 'page' in silhouette where you can view all the other designs/cut files by that designer. It is a great 'filter' where trying to find similar designs.

Once I had located all my designs and download them, I added them all to my design space. Now I just kept adding each one, and they were just landing on top of one another - although it looks a hot mess, it makes the next step so much quicker than if I had done this each time I had added one to my design space.

I drew my cursor around all the designs to highlight them all in one go. Then to make it easier to 'plan' my cards out in the design space, I turned the fill and line colour to black. As I waited until I had added all of the design into my design space and selected them all together, this sped to the process up ten times!

But, once you have changed the colours all together, don't let go of that group just yet, you can also quickly resize them in one go to. Make sure you hold 'ctrl' down whilst your resize them using the cursor and grabbing one of the four corners. Doing this with 'ctrl' held down resizes the shapes evenly without distorting the shape.

To help plan my cards, I drew two rectangles to represent my card bases and used the width and height boxes to adjusts the rectangles to my desired sizes.

Lastly, I could position the designs roughly how I would want them on the cards to see if I needed to resize any of the designs so they were in proportion to the card base.

When I was happy with the designs, I adhere a small cut of the paper onto my mat, making sure this corresponded to where I had placed the design on the studio mat to cut out. My cut settings for the faux leather paper were blade 6, speed 5, depth 33 and 2 passes. But remember, do a test cut first, every machine and blade will differ when it comes to the cut settings!

TITLE photos:

To put the cards together, I created 3 watercolour backgrounds using some hot press smooth watercolour cardstock. I used the36 pan set by Altenew and add a wash of water to each watercolour card panel.

With the wash in place, I started to add in small hints of colour allow the colour to blend out and soften. For this card, I used Persian blue, Industrial Diamond and desert night. The panel was dried before I added paint splatters of Jet black to added interest.

To adhere to the die cuts I used Gina K Connect glue and added a heat embossed white and black sentiment from Altenew Sketchy Floral stamp set.

For this next card, I added strips of green colour across the card from Evergreen to Forest Glades, Frayed Leaf, Bamboo and lastly Citrus Burst. Instead of using black splatters, I used to paint splatters of Evergreen.

I finished the card with a simple stamped 'hello' from Altenew Ink Flora stamp set.

For this last card, I used soft yellows and oranges: Fresh Lemon, Warm Sunshine, Orange Cream and Autumn Blaze. For the paint splatters, I used Autumn Blaze. the soft colours of the background pair well the with white faux leather paper.

Again, this was finished with an embossed white and black sentiment from the Sketchy Floral stamp set from Altenew.

If this has inspired you to try this out, please post below. I would love to see it! And let me know what you think of the Faux leather paper, have you used it? What did you create with it?

Until next time,

Verity

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DESIGNS USED:

Leaves by Wild Pilot, Deisgn ID#282488
Magnolia flowers by Tanya Batrak, Deisgn ID#197470
Floral flourish by Skyla Design, Deisgn ID#275947
Floral flourish by Skyla Design, Design ID#275531
Branch leaves by Skyla Design, Design ID#275948
Branch leaves by Skyla Design, Design ID# 275949
Flower bud flourish by Skyla Design, Design ID# 275950
leaves by Skyla Design, Design ID#275951
Leaves by Wild Pilot, Design ID#282487

PRODUCTS USED:

Monday, 5 March 2018

Watercolor wreath greeting cards using the pen holder and pixscan mat

Hi everyone. It's Verity here from Pretty Little Button bringing you another project. Today I've got another great little post using the pen holder from Silhouette! I was experimenting around with what I could use in the holder. I had hope to use my versamark embossing pen so I could heat emboss a design. Unfortunately, the girth of the pen is too big for the large style thread. However, part of me was unsure where heat embossing would work as the ink could dry up before the machine has even finished drawing the design. So instead, I decided to use the pen holder to watercolour a design from the store.

A couple of tips when watercolouring. Make sure you aren't using a water soluble pen, you don't want your drawn lines to bleed when you start painting. Also choose a simple design to start off with, one that either draws solid shapes or outlines of shapes that are easy to distinguish. In addition to painting these designs, I also have use the Pixscan mat to cut out two of the wreaths from my watercolour card.

Watercolour wreath greeting card details:

Start of by choosing you design from the store. I loved this autumn wreath and thought it would look beautiful watercolor-ed in. When you're ready to draw this design add your watercolour paper to the mat and load into the machine. You need to make sure you select 'sketch' in the action drop down list and then select 'pen holder' from the tool list. For my watercolour paper, I used the settings for textured cardstock and these worked quite well.

Make sure you load your pen into the holder using the most appropriate thread size for the pen. I used a silver gel pen to draw my design and the medium thread worked well. Once the design is drawn out, you are ready to colour this in. By all means, you can use other medias to colour your design in if watercolours are not your cup of tea.

If once your painting is dry you wish to cut the design out, then the Pix scan mat is just what you need. If you've not used the pixscan mat before your will need to calibrate it first. This is very easy to do. Click on the 'Pix' icon on the right hand toolbar and in the window, select the show calibration test card. This will bring up a page of dots as shown below.

You need to print this out and then take a picture of this on your phone. Make sure the dot's fill your camera screen completely and you have it as straight on as you can get it. Transfer this photo to your computer and click the 'plus' button in the lower right hand corner of the pixscan window. Find your photo and load this up. You will find your phone/camera will now be listed in the window and you can proceed to use the pixscan mat.

Take a picture of the pixscan mat with your watercolour-ed design on it. Load this up into the programme by selecting the 'Import pixscan image from file'. Once loaded, your design mat will change to show the pixscan mat with your design on it. The best way to cut your file is trace and then do an offset and proceed to cut this out.

I used this wreath design to create 3 greeting cards, all slightly different. For this first card, I just cut around the edge of the design and foam mounted onto a square card.