In the Craft Room

July was a very hot month this year in KC, and August rolled in with some beautiful weather. Well, actually, we had two flash floods within days of each that did a number on our basement, but fortunately, I have a short memory for things like that 🙂

The improved temperatures mean we are outside again, working in the yard, bike riding and sitting on the screened porch, watching for the space station to pass over head at night.

For an end-of-summer tribute decoration for my door, I went with a big daisy. Going big is hard for me – I have a love of miniature things. But I’ve noticed my door decor always looks great on my work table, and then kind of disappears on the door itself, especially when viewed from the street.

So I tried hard to stay big with this one. Taking my cues from this project, I used the petal template and cut 10 big petals out of white paper using my Silhouette Cameo. The paper I used is 90# index, which is what we use at work to make index tabs from.  I added a scalloped edge to her template for the center, and cut that out of the yellow paper.

I have a new tip for saving paper when you cut small items – pre-cut the paper to a size that is just a little larger than the artwork and save the rest for scrap. If you go the other way, and cut the small art and then peel the whole sheet off of the Cameo cutting mat, it may curl or tear, and then you can’t use it later for other small projects.

The directions called for folding the petals, which I did, and I was really amazed at the how that stiffened the paper, as well as the depth it gives the flower.

Because I was going to mount this on my door, I wanted it to be more sturdy the the backdrop in the original post, so I scrounged around in the glassware cabinet and found a couple of lids that I tried on for size to use as a pattern to cut a cereal box circle for backing.

Once that was cut, I began assembling – I tested a few arrangements for the petals and then began gluing them down to the cereal box circle, using quick drying tacky glue. I used an unopened can of beans to weigh down the center until it dried.

When I went to glue down the scalloped centerpiece, I realized that it was too small for the look I was going for. I liked the look of that lid better, so I measured that lid and resized the scalloped circle to a little smaller, and recut it from the same yellow paper. Since I already had the first smaller one, I curled up the edges and then glued both of them onto the center of the flower. I used my trusty bean can again as a weight to help it dry flat.

While that was drying, I drew up a little (not too little, though) ladybug for an added decoration. I had already figured out how to draw a simple ladybug when I Sharpie painted my flower pot, so I just redid that in Adobe Illustrator. I colored the bug so I could figure out what needed to be cut from the black paper and what part came from the red.

Finally I used the Expand, Divide and Combine filters to work it down to just two pieces.

I exported that file as a DXF because the basic version of Silhouette Studio can’t work with AI or EPS files, but it can use the DXF format.

Once those were cut and weeded, I used a glue stick to put the red part on top of the black, and then a blob of quick drying tacky glue to put the bug on the flower. I ended with a bumpy center from all the overlapped petals and probably using too much glue, but I’ve decided that was intentional (adding more depth to my 3-D project, right?).

I made a hanger from the fold tab from the cereal box, and then finally took down my July 4 wreath and spruced up my door for what’s left of August.

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This idea came about when I was working on my Black Capped Chickadee garland. Because of their name, I just kept envisioning those birds wearing a backwards black baseball cap, but I couldn’t quite figure out how I wanted to turn that into a paper craft. Everyone has heard of paper dolls, right? I wanted to make paper birds.

Several weeks later, on our usual morning walk, a neighborhood Robin kept running in front of us, looking back as if we were stalking him.

Side note: Why do birds do that? If I could fly, I would definitely do that instead of running. Although truth be told, I’d rather do just about anything than run 🙂

Mr. SuzerSpace made some comment about us being in the bird’s “hood” (if I remember correctly he flashed some fake gang sign to make me laugh) and now I had two funny (at least to me) bird ideas rolling around in my head, so it was time to act.

In Adobe Illustrator

I like to work in Adobe Illustrator because I’ve used it for years, but this could be done in any drawing program you are comfortable in.

First I browsed around on the internet for a good basic bird shape. I wanted something with very large details, because I was going to set these up kind of like layered paper dolls where the details created the different bird types.

Once I found a couple, I morphed it into something to use as my guide. I can’t really draw anything from scratch, but if I can see the shapes that are used to create something, I can draw them and put them together in Illustrator.

After I drew the basic bird shape, I drew in and colored the pieces that would be needed to turn one into a Red Robin and the other into a Black Capped Chickadee. For that one, I also added a backwards black cap.

Using the Pathfinder tools in Illustrator, I was able to create the cutting files I’d need to make the two birds. I exported this file as a DXF because the basic version of Silhouette Studio can’t use an Adobe Illustrator file, but it has no problem with a DXF format.

In Silhouette Studio

In Silhouette Studio, I set up my Design Page as 12 x 12, cutting with a 12 x 12 Cameo mat.

In reality, I’m going to cut these pieces from 6 x 6 card stock, but this is a neat trick I learned where if you place your artwork on the Design Page grid carefully, and line up the paper to match on the mat, you can cut more than one color at a time.

As you can see from my photo, if you are even more careful with your placement, you can use up scrap paper.

Final Assembly

After I cut all the pieces and weeded them, I layered them and glued them up with a glue stick. I glued each one of those down to a piece of white cover stock that was cut to fit the opening of two frames I already had.

Pro tip: Make artwork the size of standard frames so you don’t have to pretend like you are going to get custom frames made. I say “pretend” because I think most people are like me and while I have good intentions of getting things framed, the truth is if I can’t just grab a frame off the shelf at the craft store or Ikea, it is never going to make it onto the wall.

I’m not a big fan of my own handwriting, so I cut the words for each in black vinyl and adhered that below the bird image.

Once they were assembled I had my own custom bird artwork, perfect for hanging. I have them on my entryway hall, near a big mirror that has my paperclip feet birds perched on it.

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Paper cacti and other succulents have been all the rage this season, and for good reason. They are cute, unkillable and really easy to make.

CLICK HERE TO SEE HOW TO MAKE A HAPPY PLANTER!

I’ve pinned a bunch of these tutorials and then combined them all into two plants that fit my needs best.

Here’s how I made them:

In Adobe Illustrator

Adobe Illustrator is my drawing program of choice because I’ve used it for years.

Before I could begin drawing, there was a little math. But don’t panic on that- the issue is I wanted these plants to fit two pots I already had, and it’s really not that tricky to get that to happen.

I measured across the top of the pot I wanted to use – the fancy math term for that is “diameter.” To make the plant sit snug in the mouth of the pot, I need the finished piece to be right at that measurement. If I made them smaller, then it would slip down into the pot and wouldn’t look real.

The cacti are made up of multiple folded and glued wedges, so I need to divide that diameter in half to get the measurement of the wide spot of each wedge.

Once I had those measurements, I drew half of a cactus piece. 

This I then copied and mirrored so that my two halves were exactly even. This is important when you fold and glue them. I welded them together to get rid of that middle line because I didn’t want it cut in half, I want to fold them in half to create a ball-like shape.

I repeated this process for my second pot (getting the measurement and drawing a different shaped cactus wedge). And then a drew up a little flower circle, using a similar process from this project.

Once I had all my parts, I saved the file, and then exported it as a DXF file, because the basic version of Silhouette Studio software can’t read an Adobe Illustrator file, but it can work with the DXF format.

In Silhouette Studio

Silhouette Studio is the software that Silhouette America provides for using with the Silhouette Cameo cutting machine. I set my Design Settings for an 8.5 x 11 sheet, cutting with a 12 x 12 mat, and then brought in my artwork.

I’ll need 6 wedges for each cacti, plus one flower. I cut the wedges out of two shades of green paper for variation, and the flower out of hot pink for one plant, and a scrap of yellow for the other.

Final Assembly

Once I had all the parts weeded, it was time to assemble. Fold all the wedges in half, and then glue one half of one piece to the half piece of the next. Continue doing this until you have a ball shaped cactus using all 6 pieces. The last one is the trickiest to fit in – my tip here is to make sure the remaining section is really pretty dry before trying to work that one in. I use paper clips as mini clamps as I go, and I use either glue stick or fast drying tacky glue for this project. This is really similar to how the tulips were assembled in the Watering Can and Tulip Mobile.

I curled up the edges of the flower and used a dollop of tacky glue to adhere it to the top of the cactus. This adds a little pop of color, and also hides any of the corners at the top that might not have been glued together perfectly even.

For my “dirt” I used scalloped scissors on a paper bag, and then accordion folded and then cut those strips up smaller to fill the bottom of my pot.

After these were finished, I saw a super cute, super punny flowerpot in my Pinterest feed, so I cut a similar saying out of black vinyl and adhered that to one of the pots for a finishing touch.

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