Easter Card Tutorial by Christine

Happy April Fool's Day!  Christine joining you today with a 
post full of tips and ideas and that is no joke! 

From the first time I saw Samantha's Bubbles of Love Valentine Card #54121, I loved it. One of my favorite things about these cuts is that often times you can modify them to make them work for other seasons. Today I am going to show you how I modified it slightly to turn it into an Easter card!

The original card has circles but I thought those circles could easily be stretched to look like Easter eggs!  So I did just that!

I have some tall 8 inch envelopes so I stretched mine to be really tall.  It would work just as well shorter!

After cutting I used pieces from the Cool Summer line from Carta Bella to back certain eggs.  I used mostly solid or monochromatic patterns to do the eggs and then cut apart pieces from the chevorn patterned paper to decorate the big eggs.

I filled in most of the rest of eggs with glitter.  This helped me to remember why I don't love glitter ;).

I decided to cover up the heart and put my title in that spot.  Initially I cut my title just in yellow using Samantha's "Happy Easter Phrase Title" #39476.  But with just the yellow it didn't stand out enough.  So I decided to create a shadow to use on it.

To do that I clicked on the title and then clicked on the Offset button.  I then chose "offset" and lowered the offset button to a distance I was happy with.  

I then ungrouped them and cut the shadow in white.  Once I glued those together I popped the title up with foam adhesive and it was perfect!

Hope you have a great day and don't get fooled by too many people!

Hand Sewing with Nicole

Hello!  Nicole here today to share a technique with you.

Recently my grandma gave me a box filled with lots and lots of embroidery floss.  It's made me want to do some hand stitching and when I saw this bubble card of Samantha's, from the Silhouette Online store, I though it would be fun.  A little crazy, yes, but fun ;)

I'm going to show you how I made this card with my Silhouette machine using Samantha's cut file and Silhouette Sketch Pens to make a template for my hand stitching.  I should add that this technique can certainly be simplified and put on a larger scale so the stitching isn't so intricate.

I started with the bubble card of Samantha's -

I opened the Bubble Card in Silhouette Studio.

I then went to Object > Ungroup (or right click and hit ungroup).

You are now left with the 1) main card and the 2) small heart.

  To separate the main card from the front design I then went a step further and selected the main card and went to  "release compound path" by going to Object > Release Compound Path (or right clicking).  

Each of the score lines and small pieces on the front of the card are now separate pieces.  To group the front shapes back together.  Click and highlight in the dash lines all of the front design.  It will look like this when all selected:

Go to Objects > Group (or right click and select group) and all these images will be one piece.  I did the same thing with the center score lines.    

To make it easier to load and draw/cut I went up to the Cut Style Menu (can see in the photo below).  I selected the front circle design and hit "cut" and then selected the other three areas (card outline, score lines, and heart) and hit "no cut" on each.  To note:  It's easy to tell what layers you are selecting since they become the bright bold red.  

Load the mat with your cardstock into your Silhouette.  Replace the blade with a Sketch Pen and hit cut.

Now WITHOUT unloading your mat replace your Sketch Pen with the blade.  Go back to the Cut Style Menu and change the front design to "No Cut".  Select each of the other three areas of the card and select "Cut" on each of them.  

Select the Cut Menu and set for cardstock and hit cut.  

I now had my card with a design drawn on the front that I used as my template to hand sew.  I used my push pad and paper piercer and pierced holes along the lines. As I got started I decided to mark off with a pencil and change my embroidery floss.

I was able to sew this one afternoon while catching up on shows that were on the DVR.      

Once I completed the whole card I decided to go back in with some colored pencils and make the design stand out a little more.  

I heat embossed the small heart with some red embossing powder, stamped the word love, and attached it with some foam adhesive.  As a few final touches I added a sentiment and some small sequins.  

I realize this is the extreme in hand sewing, but it can easily be simplified and you can do this with so many other shapes on a card or layout.  I hope you give it a try and share when you do!  

Thanks for stopping by the blog today!

Nicole