I’ve been wanting to try my hand at cutting wall decals, and I thought it would be fun to use them to decorate the wall above my mantel with them for spring. We’ve had a wooden narwhal installed over the fireplace since January. (the Mister’s xmas present) Â I wanted to give him some company because he looked lonely, so I downloaded some narwhals I found at the Silhouette store and cut some out with some 12″ x 12″ Cricut wall vinyl I picked up at JoAnn’s.
Now the wooden narwhal is the king of the narwhals… Next month’s challenge is flowers! I can’t wait! I have a few ideas, so let’s see what I can come up with! I ordered 10 yards of white vinyl to play with… giant dandelions might be in the works!
Want to Check Out More Silhouette Projects?
My Silhouette Challenge buddies and I are all sharing projects on our blogs today, so peruse the projects below for a wealth of Silhouette inspiration!
This past Christmas, my Mister gifted me a Silhouette Cameo. To learn how to use it, I joined the Silhouette Challenge that Lauren Lanker of the Thinking Closet started. Every month you either blog or take a picture of the project you made with the machine that fits the challenge. Here are all my 2014 challenge posts so far:
This month’s Silhouette Challenge is FABRIC! I ordered some heat transfer vinyl in a bunch of colors I’m planning to use from US Cutter and it came super quick! (2 days, wow!) My first project was to customize my director’s chair (bought on amazon) for my beauty company feto soap! The fabric on it was black canvas so I decided to add white to offset the black.
I typed out “feto soap” in the Silhouette Studio software, selected the word and created an offset (the white part is the offset). I reversed everything horizontally, cut out the white section first. Then using a household iron on the cotton/linen setting (no steam) I pre-ironed the fabric for two to three seconds. You pre-iron to prepare the fabric so it can take the transfer and to get any wrinkles out. I ironed the white/offset section for about 4 seconds after eyeballing it in the center. Then I lined up the black heat transfer vinyl centered over the white, and gave each section a firm 15 second press with my body weight. Viola! Now I have a custom director’s chair to bring to shows, like having a mini banner behind my table!
The next time I heat transfer vinyl black material with white, I can just crop out a void in the software where the black is in the white so I don’t have to waste black vinyl and worry about getting it lined up just right!
My next  project for my cosmetics company will be a table runner to use at shows. This is the blank I bought online (still waiting on it) but I have the black vinyl cut out and waiting to be ironed on!  I’ve always wanted one, but custom table runners cost somewhere in the $60 – 80 range (shipped) the last time I checked, so I passed. The blank white table runner cost me around $17 including shipping. I used about $9 of black heat transfer vinyl for the table skirt because I made a few newbie mistakes.  I was using 15″ width vinyl, so I plugged that into the software, and it cut off center since the Cameo can only cut within 12″. Whoops! and then when I went to cut it again, I forgot to flip it horizontally. So I made about $5 in material cutting mistakes, which is not too bad for early projects with a new material/medium. and hey. I’m not going to make those mistakes again!
I found a local supplier for Heat Transfer Vinyl, River City Graphic Supply in Austin, TX, but it’s not for hobbyists. You’ll have to provide your Sales Tax & Use Number when you buy from them. You can also order from them online! It’s wonderful and terrible that they are so nearby! I’m eyeing their Copper from their Siser Electric line for a project, but I feel the need to work with some of the htv I have on hand first. That being said, I did pick up some hot pink flocked heat transfer vinyl from Hobby Lobby today ($2.99 for a little piece 5.5 x 9″) Â just in case I wanted to add hearts to things. You can iron on flocked heat transfer to wood & cork, too! Not just fabric.
My Silhouette Challenge buddies and I are all sharing projects on our blogs today, so peruse the projects below for a wealth of Silhouette inspiration!
Hello friends! Every second Monday of the month I will be posting about my Silhouette Challenge Project! January’s theme is organizing, which I have already started on, so I jumped in.
TL;DR version: I now have a Silhouette Cameo & can cut out beautiful vinyl labels to organize my home.
When I first got the itch to label my things around 1997, I started out with a Brother Labeler because it prints laminated labels which is great for things that get touched a lot or things that might get wet. At the time I didn’t own a printer or working home computer, so I wasn’t able to do any home desktop publishing like when I rocked a dot matrix printer back in the day with my Print Shop Plus or whatever it was called.
Eventually I bought a computer and inkjet printer and let’s say in 2003 or so I discovered inkjet label paper in both white and clear. The clear was awesome, because it made it look like your label was printed right on the object you were labeling! I used it on my bulk food canisters with a cool bar code font. Unfortunately the label paper wasn’t water-resistant, so the labels did not hold up over time and streaked when they got wet. Â I printed tons of labels to organize my soap business items on my white label paper. I would cut up half-page shipping labels down to whatever label size I needed or use the whole label depending on the container.
The Ikea bookcase had drawers with the cut to size labels and the buckets with the half page labels.
I accidentally bought many, many boxes of UPS half-sheet label paper from someone on ebay years ago, so I would have to cut off the edge of the paper that said “for UPS use only*”! I should have read twice before I clicked once! I’m still going through that stash with probably less than a dozen pages left. I used it to practice making a “kiss cut” for stickers on my Silhouette. If you have some laying around and are interested in making stickers with here, the settings I use for UPS label paper are: Speed: 8, Thickness: 7, Blade: 1
These were the result of my many cut tests (not the kiss cut!) though I finally got it down to where you peel the stickers right off of the paper instead of these separate ones! *disclaimer: I’m not saying to order UPS label paper from UPS to make stickers… I made a mistake in my ordering, so it’s material that I have on hand that I didn’t mind experimenting with.
Fast forward to 2006 – I bought my first color laser printer and somewhere along the way, I discovered the existence of die-cut label paper that comes in more than Avery brand full or half sheets! Here’s my collection:
My label stock is mostly to label the beauty products I make. The 1.8″ label paper has a wide top & bottom border, so I started using it to label my plastic bins (mostly shoebox size, but some 16 qt and larger) that I use to organize just about everything. I make a lot of different items, so I need to be able to find things relatively quickly. I use a lot of this size for a couple of different items, so I have a bunch of this “waste” label paper around that I keep to label my bins. I like that they stick on really well, but let me remove them (they have regular adhesive on the back of them, not removable.
Because of the projects I want to complete with the help of my Silhouette, I needed to pull out my acrylic paints and sewing kit, so I decided to label those too.  This tackle box holds all my acrylics & brushes. It was originally full of paint, clay, sewing notions & a bunch of other craft treasures Kai gifted to me when he moved to China.
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I tackled the sorting out of my sewing box (a big metal toolbox) the next day and combined the Mister’s, Kai’s and my sewing notions all into my toolbox after sorting everything into baggies. Thread, needles, lace, patches, etc. I was originally just going to label it with the words “sewing kit” but I thought it would be cute to have the keep calm poster on the side. I downloaded the free Keep Calm font and traced an image of a spool of thread in Silhouette Studio instead of a crown at the top.
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I’m also putting the Silhouette to use around the kitchen, of course! Here are a few of the things I have labeled so far:
I made sure to save the file so I can use consistent fonts and sizes for each area of my house or if I need to cut them out again.
Want to Check Out More Silhouette Projects?
My Silhouette Challenge buddies and I are all sharing projects on our blogs today, so peruse the projects below for a wealth of Silhouette inspiration!
 
 
 
