Do you know a dog lover who would love a Border Collie themed Birthday card? I have created a beautiful watercolor painting of our Border Collie and turned it into a print and cut design for your crafting pleasure. It is so darn cute it needed a cute pun to go with it, so I created a furry friend pun for a themed Birthday sentiment “Have a Paw-esome Birthday“.
Click here to download the card base FREEBIE! You will need to unzip the file before use. It is a simple but super useful file to have on hand to have a head start on your square card bases. It is also super easy to resize to suit your needs.
I have had three family members recently participate in varying roles in the Musical Production of the Sound of Music at a local High School. Two nieces had major roles and my sister in law who teaches at the school was the director. To say we were blown away by the stellar efforts of all three was an understatement. So of course I wanted to create some cards for them to tell them so and congratulate them on their hard work and achievements with the production.
I just love the vibrant colours coupled with the grungy goodness and gorgeous watercolor bouquets on these cards. I’d like to think they would brighten the day of any recipient who received them.
For the backgrounds I have been using a technique in Silhouette Studio of using SVG files as a clipping mask. I have a quick tutorial here on how to do it. Elly Mae of Silhouette Secrets has a more in depth tutorial, and has done a live YouTube video on the technique which you can watch on replay. I use a card base template, for which I have created a freebie to make creating these cards easy! Check out this article for the FREEBIE!
Aren’t sunflowers such a warm and friendly flower? I love them and I chose a gorgeous Sunflower Watercolour Bouquet Print and Cut design as the feature for this card. I adhered the sentiment banner and bouquet with adhesive foam squares and added some adhesive rhinestones and dew drop beads to finish off the card.
For the recipient of this card I knew her favourite colour was purple, and that she also likes pink so I thought it would be a lovely background which would also coordinate well with the bouquet feature.
I used the Spring Mothers Day Watercolor Flower Bouquet Print and Cut for this card, and as you can see it works for much more than just Mothers Day. I just happened to paint this bouquet around Mothers Day and thought it would work beautifully for Mothers Day Cards!
Once I printed and cut the card base I adhered the sentiment banner and bouquet with adhesive foam squares and added some rhinestone bling and dew drop beads to finish it off!
I just love the combination of the Red and Pink Roses with the Violet and Pink grungy background on this card. I find the combination beautifully striking and vibrant.
Once I adhered the sentiment banner and bouquet with adhesive foam squares and added some adhesive rhinestones and dew drop beads to finish this beautiful card.
If you haven’t already done so don’t forget the grab the card base template freebie from this article! It isn’t a complex design but it is ready to go!
Anyone who has been following my blog, Instagram and Facebook posts knows I have been having a lot of fun creating cards with my print and cut watercolor designs lately along with my printable backgrounds, svg clipping masks and now birthday banners.
Some of the sentiment banners in the photos are my initial simpler iteration before creating designs for the Silhouette Store but I couldn’t resist including them because the cards are so darn pretty. I can’t tell you how much fun I have cutting these gorgeous floral designs to have on hand in a stash I can go through to make quick cards.
I just love the vibrant colour these designs can achieve with a lovely gloss photo paper. Keep reading to find out more about the products used in these designs and don’t forget to look for the card base template FREEBIE I use to make these square cards with!
For the backgrounds I have been using a technique in Silhouette Studio of using SVG files as a clipping mask. I have a quick tutorial here on how to do it. Elly Mae of Silhouette Secrets has a more in depth tutorial, and has done a live youtube video on the technique which you can watch on replay. It is a super fun technique which really creates some gorgeous grungy textured shapes on the card bases. I like to make mine just fit the edges of the card and sometimes have it continue over the fold depending on the shape of the clipping mask.
I have created a selection of SVG Clipping Masks which are available in the Silhouette Design store. Or you can use the PNG versions of the clipping masks which I have on Etsy, Design Bundles and Creative Market in other software like Adobe Photoshop. I will be continuing to add more SVG clipping masks to the Silhouette Design Store so make sure you keep checking for new ones! If you do a search for clipping masks they should all come up quick and easy to find.
I have a print and cut file ready for my card shape ready to go then add the filled clipping mask and print and cut the card base using the clipping technique in the tutorial. You may find it easier to do the filled clipping mask first, size to approximately the right size and then add the card base over the top as the clipping mask files can be slow files to use in Silhouette Studio due to all that grungy goodness. Then you won’t need to do as much resizing to tweak.
Unfortunately some photo papers have logo’s on the back and I am currently searching for a good quality gloss photo paper brand that doesn’t. If you know of some nice thick gloss photo paper brands available in Australia that don’t have a logo, please do let me know! The last set I bought has logos so I have been creating some simple card inserts so you can’t see them. When I find a brand I like I will keep buying it and use up the logo paper on the watercolor print and cut designs I adhere to the front with foam squares to give the 3D effect.
The Doodled Happy Birthday Banner Sentiment Print and Cuts are featured on several of these cards. This set comes as fully configured print and cut sheet so that all you have to do is print and cut the design on your cutting machine which gives you a very handy selection of Happy Birthday Sentiments to use for your Cards and Scrapbook Layouts. I have been LOVING having these on hand to make quick cards together with a selection of embellishments ready for creating gorgeous cards for friends and family. If you would like the banners without the sentiments so you can create bespoke titles or sentiments for cardmaking, scrapbooking or other paper crafting you might like the Blank Doodled Banner Sentiment Print and Cut designs.
If you’d like to try these beautiful card designs keep reading to find out which designs I have used on each card and don’t miss the FREEBIE at the end of the article!
I love the bright and cheerful colours in this card and I am loving using these single flowers as a focus on cards so the cards in this article will have a single flower with a seperate leaves sprig. I will be doing another article soon with a slightly different look so stay tuned.
I then copied over the card base freebie included at the end of this article and print and cut the combined images as a print and cut design cut and scored by line as per the card base line colours.
Once these items were cut I attached them to the card base with adhesive foam squares and some pretty rhinestone adhesive bling as well!
This card isn’t in the first image but I thought it was worth including since it is the same style.
I used the exact same process as listed above to create this card and the following cards just with different supplies as follows.
I created a quick bespoke Happy Birthday Banner for this one to keep it nice and simple. I did a few extras to use for other cards with varying fonts as well.
Once again I assembled by adhering the flower leaves and sentiment with adhesive foam squares and added some coordinating rhinestone bling.
With this card I used one of the Blank Doodled Banners Print and Cut designs and added the Happy 50th Birthday sentiment to it before cutting as this card was for a family member who was turning 50! I love that I can use these banners to create bespoke sentiments on the gorgeous doodled banner.
And we are now getting down to my favourite cards. There is something about the colours in this one and the next one that absolutely love. They are just so striking. I intend to experiment more with vibrant colour combinations to provide striking results!
Now we come to my favourite. I just LOVE the vibrant colours in this one. They are bound to please anyone who receives this card because they are so darn pretty.
Each element was once again attached to the card base with adhesive foam squares to give the 3D effect and then I added some gorgeous coordinating rhinestone bling!
Now don’t miss the card base freebie. I have set it to fit on a 8.5×11″ print and cut page but if you are wish to work bigger it resizes easily to a 5×5″ card (or larger!) by making the dimensions 5×10″. I have set the score line to purple so it is easy to select it to cut and score by line. The cut line is in red. I have left it as transparent fill so that it doesn’t matter if your clipping mask is in front of or behind the cut lines. This SVG will work in any software although as it was created in Silhouette Studio you may need to adjust color fills and cut/stroke paths to suit your own software needs. Click here to download the FREEBIE! You will need to unzip the file before use.
Creating cards and scrapbooking just got easier with our ready-to-go Happy Birthday Sentiments! These beautiful sentiments feature a charming doodled grunge border, perfect for adding a touch of personality to your projects. Whether you’re crafting a birthday card or designing a scrapbook page, these sentiments will save you time and effort. For those who prefer to customize their designs, we also offer blank labels, allowing you to choose your own font and create personalized sentiments. This flexibility ensures that your creations are unique and tailored to your style. Our Sentiment Print and Cut labels come in various shapes, including oval, providing even more options for your crafting needs. Explore our collection and find the perfect sentiments to enhance your projects. Links to each design are provided below, and you can easily browse other products by viewing the collection underneath each linked product. Elevate your card making and scrapbooking with these versatile and stylish sentiment labels today! Scroll on to see the cards I created with the Braketed Happy Birthday Sentiments below!
Designs used in the Cards I created with the Doodled Grunge Bracketed Happy Birthday Sentiment Print and Cut Labels are as follows. I used this tutorial to create the SVG Framed effect on the printed card base.
Print And Cut Designs are one of my favourite things to design and also one of my favourite things to craft with. Most of the time I can reliably get a beautiful cut which is extremely even with my Silhouette Cameo 4. Recently however my cuts have been a little off. So last night I decided as a refresher to watch this video by Silhouette Secrets to remind myself of things to check for. I checked all the things she mentioned but the thing that jumped out at me was when she mentioned how some newer printers can print a bit incorrectly.
My printer isn’t new, but recently a paper feed roller did go missing and as a result it started making squeaking noises when the paper feeds. Hoping to just stop the noise since it still seemed to be feeding I just put a piece of tape over the holders for the roller which were scraping on the paper as it fed while printing. It worked, so I then promptly forgot about the issue. Then last night while trying to print my Dreaming Elements Print and Cut for a card I was going to make I got a misaligned cut that I have not had the entire time I have had my Cameo 4. Actually that is a lie, I had got slightly misaligned cuts last week but they weren’t bad enough that I was concerned. I just figured it was user error. But last nights cut was seriously misaligned and not usable.
As you can see most of these elements have no offset on the left side, some of the ones not shown were better which is what clued me into the fact it might be the printer that was the issue. The two border elements on the left were almost properly aligned, but the further right and towards the bottom the worse it got.
So then it occured to me it might be the printer roller that was the issue. I googled printer rollers for my printer in case replacements were available but I couldn’t find any that I thought were for the right spot. They all looked to be for different areas of the printer, and it was hard to tell either way. Not to mention the fact I was impatient to get my card done and didn’t want to wait for a spare part to arrive. So I thought…hmm, maybe I can make something that will fit.
So I found a safety pin to cut the end from to use as a spindle of sorts. The pin part of the safety pin fit in the holders for the roller. Then I needed something to act as the roller. I decided a hot glue gun stick would be something I could stick
the pin through and would have enough “grab” to roll with the paper as it went through the printer. So I put the pin through the middle of the glue stick. At first I tried loosely taping the pin in place but while it seemed like it moved ok I was still getting the occasional printer jam error which I think must be because it was grabbing the tape now and again. So I thought I need something to protect the pin from the tape. I still had some watercolor brush protectors that I thought were small enough to work, so I found one and cut it in half to put one on each side of the roller. It meant the pin could spin freely in the paint brush protector but would not fall out of the holder once taped down. So I fit the roller in place, taped down the paint brush protectors so they couldn’t move and it looked like it would work. Next thing to do was test it!
What do you know it worked!
1 safety Pin
1 Hot Glue Gun Stick
1 Watercolor Brush Protector
2 Pieces of Painters Tape
Thats all it took. And it works. Now it feeds, time to test the print! Did it print nice and straight so that the print and cut would work correctly?
Yup it worked perfectly! Now remember, this is clearly not the only possible reason a print and cut may not cut correctly, and I recommend you watch the video by Silhouette Secrets if you are having trouble because using her advice I get consistent results when I do print and cut on my Silhouette Cameo 4. But in my case, the proof is in the pudding. I got a perfect cut second time round!
Of course I have done myself a diservice because I was hoping to upgrade my printer to a White Canon A3 Printer as I would love to be able to print bigger and White would match my desk setup better. And now I can’t justify the expense. Silly, silly me! I should have said to my hubby that the printer is broken and now I need a new one! Ha! I did have fun pretending to be McGyver though!
I was making the card for another blog post, but clearly I need to share it here now! Below is the card I made using the elements from the Dreaming Elements Print and Cut File.
Gelli Printing has been a craft I enjoy, and when I embarked on my journey with Gelli Printing, I eagerly explored using stencils to create captivating monoprint backgrounds. Many of the versatile designs I created are readily available in the Silhouette Design Store. These printable backgrounds serve a multitude of purposes, from card making and scrapbooking to art journaling and beyond. The best part? You can easily create your own backgrounds using the stencils I offer in the Silhouette Design Store.
As a designer, I need to ensure my designs don’t breach copyright so I can’t use purchased stencils. However, this obstacle presented an exciting opportunity. I decided to delve into the world of cutting acetate on my Silhouette Cameo. Acetate can be tough on blades, but I purchased a premium blade for longevity and began designing and cutting stencils so I could not only provide them for my customers, but the printable backgrounds as well. And here’s the bonus—these stencil designs also double as fantastic card bases and background elements for your creative projects.
As you can see, my stencils are very well loved! Read on to see the stencils and card bases/backgrounds that I have available. And they aren’t just restricted to cardmaking, you can use them for scrapbooking and mixed media as well!
Following are the stencils and card bases/backgrounds I have available in the Silhouette Design Store. Click on the images to go direct to the design in store. All the stencils are resizable to suit your needs. We’ll start with the square format designs.
And the rectangular shaped designs…click on the previews to go to the design in the Silhouette Design Store!
I just love how versatile these designs are. You can use them to stencil a pattern while Gelli Printing or doing Mixed Media and use that as a card base or scrapbook background and then cut one of these designs from cardstock to use as an accent on the card base or scrapbook background. I haven’t tried that yet but I definitely need to give it a go as I think it would look fabulous! I would love to see what you create with these designs. Tag me on instagram if you share your creations!
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