St. Patrick’s Day has become one of those holidays that everyone celebrates, kind of like Cinco de Mayo. It’s a big deal here in Kansas City, with a huge parade, lots and lots of bar hopping, bands and singing.
At SuzerSpace, we tend to do things pretty low key. When Mr. SuzerSpace worked downtown and we had free and safe parking, we’d go to the parade, but for the last several years we’ve just watched it on TV and made Reuben sandwiches.
Of course, there’s a little crafting to round out the day.
For this year, I made a funny little St. Patrick’s Day pin to wear. I’ve made it from a cut file I have in my Etsy shop, but the technique works with pretty much any artwork you’d like to turn into a pin. The magic trick is to add an offset to the artwork to create a shaped background to hold the letters and provide a place for the pin back to rest. I made a pin for my mom for Mother’s Day using a slight different technique, but the concept is similar.
You can do this magic in any popular drawing program – I’m showing Adobe Illustrator here because I’ve been using it for about 30 years which means I’m really comfortable with it.
In Illustrator I’ve opened my art file and arranged it how I want the front of the pin to look. I’ve used the measurement tools to make sure the artwork isn’t going to be too small to cut and also not so large as to not fit on my sweater.
I then selected the artwork and chose Offset from the Path Menu which is under the Object Menu. A dialog box pops up and I’ve added a .125 offset to my artwork.
When I click Enter, a new shape is drawn for me. I’ve added in a few more shapes to make the background a little easier to cut – it doesn’t have to be a perfect match to the shape and it’s actually more important that the base be large enough for my pin backer to have a place to be glued near the center.
Once I’ve merged all the shapes together and edited any weird little pieces, I’m ready to move on to the cutting part of the project.
Because I have the basic version of Silhouette Studio and it won’t open an Illustrator or SVG file, I first export my file as a DXF. In Silhouette Studio I first set up to cut the main letters. Because they are thin and small, it will be really hard to glue these to the background if I cut them from paper. So I used adhesive vinyl instead. I added small boxes around the words which makes them easier to weed.
Once I had the vinyl weeded, I used transfer tape to lift it off the adhesive back sheet. This can be a frustrating task, but I’ve switched to flipping the two sheets over and rubbing the vinyl onto the transfer tape and then pulling the vinyl sheet off and that seems to work better for me. Also, working in the winter when it’s chilly in the part of the kitchen where I craft can also make things trickier, so I use that as an excuse to turn the thermostat up in the house 🙂
The background I cut from a scrap of bright green paper. The transfer tape has a grid on it which helps get the letters on straight. The tape is just sticky enough to hold the vinyl, but not so sticky to damage the paper background.
After everything is all stuck together correctly, I glued a pin backer near the center to finish my St. Patrick’s’ Day pin.
Pin this project so you’ll have it for when you are ready to make your own St. Patrick’s Day pin.
This project will be linked up at some of these great link parties.
