New Toy

Happy Thanksgiving to all my US readers, and Happy Thursday to everyone else! Today is day 1 of a 4-day weekend for me! :) I used to always work the Friday after Thanksgiving since it's the BEST day of the year to work. No traffic, practically no one at the office, no ringing phones, and all sorts of time to catch up, or clean your desk, or organize your work-a-day life, or whatever. But the past few years I've been taking the Friday off as a vacation day, since the first weekend of December is my biggest craft show of the year, and I'm never mentally prepared for it. I NEED this 4-day weekend for that last gasp of preparation.

So where have I been all week? PLAYING! I got a new toy: a Silhouette Cameo. I DID! I'm still in the neophyte phase, like learning to line up the paper (!) but I've watched several videos over and over and I finally tried a few things. I thought I'd show you what survived the card stock massacre.

First, I watched this video that includes instructions on how to cut out words as negative space in a card front. I have so many ideas for this, but let me tell you - it ain't easy. Well, maybe it is, but not for me.

Anyway, here's my first card:

I cut out the cute and butt n with the Silhouette, and I got 4 out of one piece of 8.5x11. A lot of these videos are all about technique, but they cut the card front out of the middle of the card stock, which I SO do not do.

I hacked some of my vast rub-on collection for the as a instead of cutting smaller letters like in the video. Maybe next time I'll cut them out of white.

I put a piece of Baja Breeze DSP behind the cut-out words, and also used a piece at the top. The ribbon I've had forEVER, and the button is from my box of SU Neutrals.

Please note that I took the extra step of cutting a chunk out of the b and the e so the cutter leaves the center of the letters in place. It took a while to do, but I think I've got it down now.

For my next trick, I cut out letters to use for this card:

I got distracted last night and downloaded a bazillion fonts, including this one, and I just cut the j and y out of both Ridinghood Red and Wild Wasabi. One nice thing about SU is all the matchy-matchy. That piece of DSP is from Holly Berry Bouquet, and Ridinghood Real Red and WWasabi are two of the coordinating colors. Also, the button is from the Holly Berry Bouquet button pack. TOO EASY!

I knew the green would disappear into the background, so that's why I did the red, too, to act as a shadow. It still blended into the background too much, so I added a piece of Crumb Cake seam binding behind the letters, and that worked out great!

The letters and button are held on with mini glue dots.

I have more ideas for this gizmo, so I'm off to play some more. :)

Thanks for stopping by!