Showing posts with label Silhouette. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Silhouette. Show all posts

Wednesday, September 11, 2013

How to Use Silhouette Print and Cut But Print From Staples (or other outside source)!

I was tired of using my ok printer and constantly using all my ink.  Those ink cartridges are expensive!  I have an ink jet printer but love the quality of the laser printer.  Then it clicked one day.  Download cutepdf (a free program), save your file as a pdf, take it to your printing shop for printing, and bring it home to use the print and cute feature.  Love it!

This is what the site looks like for you to download cutepdf.  After you install the program then...
 
 
Create your file how ever you normally would, then click print, make sure you select CutePDF writer as your printer.  This is how it allows you to save it in PDF format.
 
You then will see this window pop up and this allows you to then save it as PDF.  Bingo.  This is what we need to be able to send it out to be printed and then bring it back for print and cut.  Just make sure you save your file as a silhouette file and as a pdf so you will have identical files to open for the print and cut.  Also be sure and have it marked for registration marks to print as well.
 
I hope this has helped. It has allowed me to use the print and cut feature with professional results.  I also like to use a printer's bleed too just so I make sure I get a clean cut without any white showing, which happens occasionally.
 

Thursday, July 18, 2013

"Diary of a Wimpy Kid" Birthday Party

Diary of a wimpy kid cake


Diary of a wimpy kid homemade cake
I went to Walmart and had them make an 8 inch round plain cake.  I didn't want to stress over "making" the cake.  Now, I wish I had just made the cake. They didn't do any better of a job frosting it than I would have.  I think the baker was new.  But for $6.50 what more can you ask for? Well I could have asked for aleast the right flavor of cake it was supposed to be chocolate inside but instead was white. 

But anywho. I thought working with fondant was going to be easy.  Turns out not so much.  Well let me rephrase it is easy to work with if you know the right consistency/texture it is supposed to be.  The black fondant just wasn't working with me so on to plan b.  I had originally bought some sugar sheets I saw at Michael's but returned them because I thought it would be easier/cheaper to make my own fondant.  Not so much.  I went and rebought the sugar sheets.  I am a perfectionist so I didn't want to cut the sugar sheets with scissors.  I started looking at it and thought I could cut this with my Silhouette.  I started looking online and sure enough you can.  I had kept my old blade because I saw some where that you could resharpen it by cutting tin foil with it.  It worked and it made it sharp again.  I used this blade (my now food cutting blade) to cut the sugar sheet.  I used the setting for regular cardstock and it worked like a charm.  Just be sure and not to do a double cut.  It never seems to make the exact same cut.  I made my own design using my Silhouette with an image of "Greg Heffley" I found online and used one of the pre-installed scallop border for the border.  This lovely lady tried to help me with the graphics she used but at the time I didn't know how to convert an svg file and make my Silhouette recognize it. 

So for a cost break down of the cake:

$6.50 for the cake
$4.00 for the fondant (makes way more than you will need)! Letters around the cake
$2.50 for the Greg cut out on top
$2.50 for the scalloped border
Total: $15.50

I could have used the sugar sheets for letters that went on top of the cake but I wanted something that had some dimension and stood up.  The sugar sheets are really flat which worked really well for the border and the Greg figure.

Cheese touch cupcakes
Here are store bought cupcakes (Walmart to be exact) $6.00 for a dozen.  I made marshmallow fondant and made cheese toppers.  They turned out great!

Diary of a wily kid cake display
I wish I had gotten a better picture but here it is all set up at the party with the cupcakes surrounding it.

Diary of a wimpy kid banner
Zoo Wee Mama pennant banner made with Silhouette.  I feel like this is a sponsor for Silhouette with as many times I am going to be mentioning it but it isn't I just really use it a ton for parties.

Diary of a wimpy favors
Here is what was in their goodie bags.  A full size "diary".  These were on sale at Walmart for 50¢ each.  I then used this premade label personalized it, resized it to fit my notebook, and printed it out on full sized label paper.  Dollar Tree had pop rocks 3/$1 so one of those went into each bag. I absolutely loved the Rodrick Rule snickers bag that I simply printed out on cardstock.  I bought the snickers for the Rodick Rule at Dollar Tree 6 fun size/$1 but I looked at Walmart after I bought these and they had them cheaper. Keeping with the same Dollar Tree theme I bought a box of pencils.  You can't see it some how I forgot to untuck it from under the Snickers is an "Oh no! You now have the cheese touch I made out of cardstock on the Silhouette.  Michael's had their scrapbook sale so the paper was 20¢ a sheet.  I used for 4 sheets since that was how many I could fit on mine but if you have a cameo you could fit more. The popcorn bags held all the small suff and were 10/$1 at Dollar Tree.

Diary of a wimpy kid party inspiration
Here is my beverage bin all vinyled up. 
I think this is my most used party item.  I bought this at Target years ago and then went back and bought the stand that went with it. So glad I did.  It is so simple to personalize.  Since I'm no longer afraid of vinyl (no idea why I was to begin with, it is so simple to use) I cut out whatever the theme is and attach it right to the bin.  When the party is over :( I just simply peel it off.

Personalized wimpy kid water
Of course you have to have personalized water bottles to go with the personalized water bin. I made this using my Silhouette. Use regular copy paper if you are going to laminate them, by laminating them I mean encasing them in packaging tape. If you won't be putting them in a bin of water then you can use cardstock which holds up better if they aren't laminated.  If they are laminated the cardstock is just to stiff and your label will want to untape itself after you apply them to the bottles.

Pin the Booger on Game
Here is the "Pin the Booger on" game.  All it is a poster I bought on Ebay for $7.99 and for the boogers we used some cut up frogs that were sticky that we used for a previous party favor (you can get them at Target in the favor section).

Game ideas
All the boogers "pinned" on.  We just wrote on the poster the child's name or initals to keep track of who's boogers were who's.

photo props
Here are some of the kids posing with their character masks.

Diary of a wimpy kid photo props
I didn't know if the kids would know which character drawing was which so I put in vinyl the names on the back of the popsicle sticks.

birthday gift wrap
Personalized gift bag for the Birthday Boy.

diary of a wimpy kid party favor cup
Used my handy dandy Silhouette machine to cut out an image of Greg for a personalized cup for the birthday boy. It turned out really cute! 
party games
It was so hot so outside they went out for some water fun.

party activities
All kids love cotton candy! The birthday boy has this cotton candy maker on speed dial.....seriously!


diary of a wimpy kid cake
Birthday boy with his cake.



Party inspiration and links:




Thursday, May 16, 2013

Girl Scout Water Bottle or Drink Container

Girl Scout Water bottle


I volunteered to help with my daughter's end of the year Girl Scout party.

This is what I came up with.  I used this same idea also for the Batman party I helped plan.   I topped the water bottles off with a brown and white polka dotted ribbon just to make it cuter for presentation and because they will now be officially be Brownies and no longer Daisy's. My little girl is getting so BIG!

Update: I sell something similar to this now in my Etsy Shop.

Apparently, you can't sell anything remotely related to Girl Scouts. Even the flippin words Girl Scouts are trademarked and removed them from my Etsy shop.  

Update: 2019 Fully stocked for this season!

5/15/18 less than 20 water bottles left.

5/18/17 UPDATE I ONLY HAVE 40 WATER BOTTLES LEFT!!!

Contact me about placing your order! mspaytonjones@yahoo.com

2/5/17 UPDATE: Reordering stock today. Order soon! I sold completely out last year before the end of Girl Scout season! Looks like the bottles will be back to the longer one's (like the first picture above)


Girl Scout Water bottle


Tuesday, February 5, 2013

100th Day of School Shirt



tally mark 100th day of school shirt
I can't believe it is our second year celebrating the 100th day of school.  My baby is getting so BIG! She thinks she is a teenager at the age of 6.....just look at her posing.  I think this is her model pose??? 

Last year I did this for her Kindergarten's100th day. But this year we did freezer paper stenciling. I got the idea from here. It is really easy if you have a cutting machine (Silhouette is what I have). It makes it easy and quick. If not you can do it the old fashioned way with an exacto knife.
diy silhouette tally mark shirt

Cut stencil using Silhouette machine or with exacto knife. 
  
silhouette made tally mark shirt

Iron paper on the inside of the shirt. This is to keep any paint from bleeding through. 

freezer paper stencil 100th day shirt

Iron on stencil to the right side (shiny side down).

colorful tally mark diy shirt

 Paint all the tally marks.  I did two coats because they were dark colors.  The paint bleed through a tiny bit on the red and one of the other colors but it was only really noticeable to me.  I explain the whole freezer paper stenciling a little better on this post.

colorful tally mark shirt

Voila! Custom 100th day shirt!

Wednesday, February 15, 2012

"Owl" always be your friend - Valentine's

Pencil owl valentines
I used this template from Smitten Blog Designs and tweaked it a little bit.  I download it to my computer, then opened it up in Gimp (a free editing program, like Photoshop) enhanced the colors a little bit and erased the wording and redid it so it would look all after I typed in the names.
I also had my Silhouette do the cutting for me.  I tried to do the slits where the pencil goes with my exacto knife but I like for it to look perfect and I just wasn't achieving that so, through the machine they went. 
Then we finished it off with a pencil.  It would have looked cuter with a Valentine's Day decorated pencil but me being the procrastinator I am we had to settle for the regular'O yellow #2 pencils.

These turned out better than I expected and my daughter loved them as well as her friends...or so she said.  What kid would rather a pencil over candy?  But I thought this was a good alternative to the massive amount of candy that the kids would be be getting.
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