Using my Silhouette Cameo

I’ve always been the go-to person wherever I work for personal projects. It always seems like someone needs a birthday invitation, a holiday card, and the occasional baby shower decoration. 

But lately, I’ve been making baby shower items for the children of the people I work with. Which means that somehow they have gone from being the cute little kids who sometimes appeared in the office to adults about to have kids of their own. Which is weird, since I haven’t become one bit older!

In July I showed how to make a cake topper using my Silhouette Cameo. In theory, you could use the same process for baby shower cupcake toppers, but there are two challenges – 1) cupcakes are smaller, so you’ll be working with smaller pieces to align and glue together, and 2) while you normally have just one cake, cupcakes are usually served in dozens, which means more toppers to create.

It’s been a little while since I stenciled a t-shirt. I took a side route and tried out heat transfer vinyl, and while it was fun, and I do have a lot of ideas swirling around in my mind on how to take advantage of that method, it does have a drawback to my beloved freezer paper stencil trick.

The issue is color. If you want to have multiple colors of HTV for your projects, you have to commit to a roll of each, and they are more expensive than a tube of fabric paint.

This project is actually one of my first Fall crafting projects. August starts pre-season football, which means the real start of the season isn’t far off. In Kansas City, the Friday before the first home game is a big deal. They call it Red Friday, and there are pep rallies, charity events and a big celebratory feel about the season that day. Most fans continue to wear red on Fridays throughout the season.

If you’ve been down the planner/planner accessory rabbit hole on Pinterest lately, you are probably aware that planner stickers are a big thing.

It’s super easy to make your own if you have a cutting machine, and once you know the process for making a shaped sticker, you can make one from just about any piece of artwork you can create, find or buy.

In this tutorial, I’m using the free version of Silhouette Studio software.

I’m sure Cricut users can do the same thing – you’ll just need to look around in the software to find the matching menus.

I have a confession to make. I hate ironing.

I’ve been known to rewash a load of laundry just because it’s wrinkly from the dryer. And I have solemnly sworn to never buy linen clothes again.

So it’s not really surprising that I don’t do a lot of heat transfer vinyl projects. I bought my Silhouette Cameo mostly for working with paper. It came with a nice sample pack of adhesive vinyl, and I have had a great time decorating all the things in the house with that, and I’ve purchased more to keep those projects going.

But it didn’t come with any iron-on vinyl, and I resisted trying it out.

I did create some really fun stenciled T-shirts – one with scrap vinyl, and then a couple more using freezer paper stencils.

Of course, that’s not really ironing. And as it turns out, HTV vinyl isn’t really ironing either.