From a Tutorial

These little cuties came to me via my Pinterest feed.

Charcoal and Crayons’ post even featured a downloadable template (yay! I love templates!) that was easily traced into a Silhouette cutting file.

And I have had these super cute black and white paperclips for quite some time.

They were a little tricky to assemble as directed – trying to fit the two “legs” between the two bird halves was very fiddly, even with hot glue.

If you cut a third body piece, and then sandwich that between the other two body parts, you then have a more stable center for the legs to be glued.

When I first thought about purchasing a Silhouette Cameo, I worried about the cumulative cost of the craft. I could see what the machine’s price was, and I had a rough idea what paper would run me, but I wasn’t sure about the actual cutting files.

I was reasonably sure I could create my own, and initially I thought I’d need to upgrade to the Designer Edition of Silhouette Studio. But then I ran across the tip somewhere that the basic, free edition would accept DXF files, and I knew Adobe Illustrator (which I already own) could export those files, so that was good.

So I bought my bundle, which even came with a generous download credit at the Silhouette Design store.

Turns out I never should have worried though, because there is a wealth of free cutting files out there. Some are from generous craft bloggers, but even more are from sites that sell cut files. Obviously, they are hoping you’ll love their files and you’ll come back when you want to purchase something specific.

Case in point – this super cute Gerbera Daisy Tea Light. The 3DSVG site has tons of files for purchase, and a very nice stash of free files to try them out. And what I really liked was the super easy to follow video. (Disclaimer time – I was not compensated for this post. I googled “free cut files” and stumbled upon them. In exchange for my email info when I signed up for an account, they gave me free files. You can do the same!)

I made two of these – one actually following the video directions and using the appropriate color card stock. But as anyone who knows me, I don’t really like to be told what to do, so for the second one I made some changes.

I still used tacky glue to adhere the points from the round top piece to the first row of inner petals, but then I switched to double stick tape to adhere the other colored petals. I found that was easier to get a tight wrap around the tea light, although the trade off was you don’t get a second chance with the tape – when you glue, you can squish something into better alignment if needed.

I also cut the second version out of yellow and brown stock to make a Brown Eyed Susan instead of a Daisy. In case the reason for the flower version switch isn’t obvious to you, why yes, I DO have brown eyes 😉 .

Three dimensional paper projects are high on my list of fun things to make. Often I don’t even have an intended use for them, I just want to see how they go together.

Pinterest is on to me, and early last week a pin for these paper swallows landed in my feed. Originally, I ignored it because they looked a little scary. But I liked how quick they appeared to come together, and I figured if I cut them from colorful paper, they’d be much happier looking.

And I was right on all counts.

Continue reading…