Friday, July 17, 2015

another reason I love printable full page labels

When you have done a print and cut and pulled off your flowers or whatever, save the corners showing the registration marks.  I needed them for the gold colored cardstock which wouldn't register for cutting until I added the registration marks from the print and cut label sheet
(with adhesive and perfect corner alignment).  I cut and applied those corners to this gold textured cardstock which would not register until I stuck the registration marks onto the gold cardstock

Wednesday, July 15, 2015

What I learned today

I have continued my "Play" with Lori Whitlock's pop up flower card which I had bought from the silhouette design store.  Only made one complete card, however, to date here"
 

 This was all about printing on deli paper but now I wanted to try to take the flowers to another whole level using the pattern pieces in different sizes "and" playing with the patterns.
Here is a screenshot of some of the ideas I worked on, had loads of fun with these as I layered patterns onto patterns, just using the basic flower shape and the wonderful tools in Silhouette Studio.  This is a nice way for me to refresh some skills using the tools available and lots of the patterns I have added to my pattern library.  No need for a huge stash of patterned papers.  I have been thinking of doing a video showing the steps I followed to create these but I am sure most of you can figure out how I got these,  tip is to make sure all cut lines "except" the outermost edge are no cut.


I knew I wanted to print the desired flowers onto my large format full page labels that I got here:
100 full page labels at $.36 apiece can go a long way, of course there is the printer ink and I don't know how to cost factor that in, but still an inexpensive way to go.  

My thought was to create stickers for the printed designs and add them to either plain copy paper or cardstock cut using the basic flower pattern.
I could have done a regular print and cut, but only 4 or 5 will fit on page since I do not have wide copy paper, and once I put the registration area onto 8.5 x 11 paper, it limits how many I can print and cut.   I do have white 12"cardstock but not with a smooth finish and I wasn't sure the cardstock would be too heavy.   Plus, I have the 12" x 18" printable labels which seemed ideal.  I wanted a card with a blue chinoiserie look, so here is a pic of the sheet of labels fresh out of the printer:
You can see I have a lot more space on the page to play with so threw in another flower pattern and some labels and still had room for more, so off to print.  NOW this is what I learned today, I must be careful putting the side to be printed correctly in my printer and this picture shows the printing that took place on the backing sheet that has no adhesive!! I didn't realize it until the whole sheet was fed through Cameo and cut.   Waaa, but making lemonade out of lemons and not minding a reprint, I just put another sheet of labels into the printer (I do have 100 of them) then fed through Cameo and this time got the right side printed.  Then I decided to put both pieces together for the flower card design which will show both sides printed.  Here are a couple of pictures showing two of them.  I think they would make cute little parasols too.  The back sides are the printed backing sheet adhered to the sticky label print.  The printing on the backing sheet is not quite and vivid as the "right" printable side of the label, but obviously both can be printed, now to see how they assemble into the pop up card.  



Next step gluing together to create pop up insert
and here is a little video of finished card:



Monday, July 13, 2015

Printing on deli paper, cutting and designing with Cameo and "almost" finished project

Since I have my new 12 wide format Epson printer, I wanted to revisit printing on deli paper, I am mad for the stuff, love the translucency and have painted on it in the past, plus printed on top of painted deli papers.  Before I had the 12" format printer, I posted this method of printing on the deli papers --Well, I wanted to try something different.  I love the pop up card by Lori Whitlock
see video here.  And I "love" using the pattern function of the Cameo Software.  See some past experiments and tutorials here http://paulinesstuff.blogspot.com/2015/04/changing-pattern-colors-in-silhouette.html  and here, and washi tape here

There is a really soft pattern that I have found, don't know where, but I am drawn to it and wanted to use it in a card.  So, I decided to do a print and cut on the flowers using this favorite pattern.  Here is a photo of my screen--card takes 7 of these flowers so I would have to print two pages and end up with a spare. this shot shows cut lines, I had done an external offset for print bleed purposes, by creating a light blue area extending beyond the cut lines.


here is a picture of the screen without the cut lines showing, you can see the pattern better:
Here is what I learned:
First I tried full page label paper as backing sheet to run through printer, -------way too sticky, deli paper tore --so I put the printed deli paper without the backing sheet onto mat for cutting.  Do not use new mat, too sticky, however, due to translucency of paper, registration marks could not be detected, so I had to slip some white paper with the marks directly beneath the deli paper on the corners, this worked once, finally, got flowers to cut using Cameo



Second, I ironed around edges only on freezer paper and used back feeder of my printer making a user defined sheet of paper to match full size of deli paper which is 12x10.5" 

To summarize, I recommend:

Use Silhouette Cameo Software, it is great, esp for sizing things and adding patterns
Use Freezer paper as backer for deli paper in printer (use wrap method if you don't have a 12" wide format printer), iron edges of full size deli paper onto sized to fit freezer paper seems to work best for me
Use a not so sticky mat if you insist on cutting, keep freezer paper on and maybe the Cameo will detect registration marks, BUT, for this project, I could have cut out the flowers by hand and avoided all this.
Here are some more photos of flowers and project (almost finished--I need a front page with printed sentiment and it will be done).  As you can see, I did print out pattern onto deli paper 8.5" square to make an envelope too.  






Foil on Fabric test, Silhouette Brand and "Stick It" brand double sided adhesives

After watching this video I was anxious to try cutting out some of the double sided adhesive (I happened to have both brands on hand), after finally locating my Silhouette Brand, took me a couple of days, but I found it, I quickly made a test.  Found design, used all settings recommended on the Silhouette Cameo brand double sided adhesive material selection:
I frankly found it cut the "Stick It" brand perfectly, but weeding the Silhouette Brand from the mat got a bit fiddly.  I think if I do it again, I will extend blade more.  The Stick It brand is considerably thiner than the Silhouette Brand.  At this point, I was pretty sure the Stick It brand was going to be the winner  NOT!

I then proceeded.  A note about the foil, it was something I had had for years and years and used with the electric hot pen, see info in photos, so not sure the age of the foil had anything to do with the test since, as you will see, the Silhouette Brand had no difficulty.  
Yellow backing paper is Silhouette Brand, White is "Stick It" brand, very clean cut on the Stick It, but it didn't work as well as you can see,