Send Hugs and Kisses to your Valentine

My inspiration from this card came from a project I saw in “Creative Cut Cards” by Lark Crafts (not an affiliate link or paid endorsement).

The cut out technique is similar to that from the Cheerful Flower Cut Out Card, but I struggled during the final assembly on that one. You only get one shot to stick that colored panel on centered to the inside front. And if you mess that up, you’ve ruined your whole card. For this version, I added an extra flap to the card body so that there is a bigger field to work with (and a nice and tidy back to look at/hide most of the errors).

Start in Adobe Illustrator

To start, in Adobe Illustrator draw a rectangle the size of the card. This is going to be an A2 sized card, so my rectangle is 5.5 inches wide by 8.5 inches tall. Add a line for the score, and center that top to bottom, left to right on the rectangle. Select the line and color the stroke red.

Changing the stroke color to red for the scorelines  (choose the same exact red for all of them) will make them appear as a group when you import them into Silhouette Studio. This is handy for the cut settings we are going to use later in this tutorial.

Add a flap to the right of what is going to be the front panel. This panel needs to be slightly shorter and slightly narrower than the front panel so that when it folds over it doesn’t touch the center score or stick out over far edge. Something like a 1/16 to 1/8 of an inch smaller all around works best. It’s important to change the line between the front panel of the card and the extra flap from a cut to a score – we don’t want that to be cut off. To do that, use the knife tool to cut the top and bottom where that line should change from cut to score and then select that new line segment and change the stroke color to red.

For the card design, make an inset frame for the front panel that is 1/2″ smaller all around than the panel. This is a good visual distance, and more importantly, it’s matches the width of my double stick tape.

Set the type in a bold typeface. I used Marker Felt Wide. The type needs to be large enough to fill the space across the inset frame. To get the type into one continuous piece, choose Type > Convert to outlines. It is easier to see what you are doing by changing the letters so they are filled with white and stroked with black. Position each letter so they slightly overlap. Then move the enter word shape at a slight angle and stretch it so that it overlaps the inset frame at both sides. Select all the overlapping windows and in the Pathfinder Palette (Window > Pathfinder) choose Combine to weld it all into one piece.

Make sure that piece is in the front (Object > Arrange > Bring to Front) and then select it and hold down the shift key and select the inset frame. In the Pathfinder Palette choose Minus Front which then welds that text art to the frame.

Save the file and then exported it as a DXF file. The basic version of Silhouette Studio® doesn’t support SVG files, but it does work with DXF files.

Set up the cutting in Silhouette Studio

Once in Silhouette Studio, change the paper setting to be 12 x 11 (this design won’t fit on an 8.5 x 11 sheet of paper). Setting that paper setting early in the project lessens the chance you’ll forget before sending it on to cut.

Because I want to cut this on heavy card stock, I’m going to need to cut this in two passes – one set up to cut cleanly through the heavy stock, and a second one set up lighter to score my score lines.

To do this, I switch to the Cut Settings Menu and then select the score lines and click on No Cut. I click on “Coverstock – Heavy 105lb to 122lb” from the Material Type menu. This preselects my settings for a blade depth of 6, speed of 1, thickness of 33. Double cut also gets checked with this setting. Because this design has a lot of corners, I turn Line Segment Overcut to On with a .01 start and stop. Eff at Whatchaworkin.com has a great post about Line Segment Overcut. (She also uses my favorite peel the mat off the paper trick in the same post)

Send the file to cut. When it is finished, DO NOT UNLOAD the mat. You need to keep it exactly where it is while setting up for the score lines.

In Silhouette Studio when the cutting is complete from the first part click on the Adjust Cut Settings Box. In the Cut Settings Menu select everything on the mat and choose No Cut. Switch to the Line Settings Menu, and then select only the score lines. Choose a dash pattern for the scores. Then back in the Cut Settings Menu, choose Cut for those selected scores. The same stock is where we’ll start to make the changes for the cut settings but change the blade to 4, leave the speed and thickness the same but uncheck Double Cut and turn off Line Segment Overcut. Send this to cut.

Final Assembly

This time, when cutting is finished, you can unload the mat. You’ll need to weed the excess material off the card. The outside frame comes off pretty easy (unless your mat is brand new). I like to peel the mat off of the card instead of the other way around. Go slow and use a spatula if it gets tricky.

Cut a colored panel slightly smaller than the extra white panel, and use double stick tape to apply. This is MUCH easier than sticking the colored panel directly to the inside front cover. Add double stick tape to the back of the frame on the inside front cover, and then close up the flap.

(If you have really good eyes you might notice in the above photos that I have a small extra  glue flap on that card. I thought it would be helpful, but it turned out to be just an extra fussy step, so I’ve eliminated it. Pretend you don’t see it, OK?)