Transparency Card part II: Encouraging our New Service Men

I went a little crazy with the spray adhesive on this one so now I'm typing with sticky fingers. I made a huge Silhouette Studio discovering with this project - Auto Trace! Yep, the new version provides auto trace with imported JPG images. KILLER! See the silhouette of a police badge? Yep - an imported JPG image that's been traced.

I made a blunder though - my blade lost it's oomph cutting the transparency papers. I'm not sure if the paper did it or it was just worn down already but I'm pretty disappointed that it's only been 3 months and the blade has already crapped out on me. OH well, blade #1, It's been a good run.

Card: Happy New Years in a Transparent Kind of Way

I think it's absolutely genius that the company that markets the Silhouette Machine ALSO has a blog of fabulous ideas! I fell in love when I saw this post about creating a card using transparency paper. It took me two months to convince myself to buy the transparency paper but $32 & 100 Write-Only transparency sheets later, my creation was made.

Cards made out of transparency paper has it's downfalls though.

1. It's probably not the greenest of products.
2. Fingerprints get EVERYWHERE!
3. The Silhouette has to be on the highest force setting possible to cut the dang transparency paper.
4. Damn that paper, especially if you want the inkjet printing compatible version, is SUPER expensive.
5. Whatever you choose to affix on it has to be glued on discretely or very neatly.

On the plus side, It doesn't warp when peeling it off the Silhouette cutting mat like paper does and it doesn't leave residue (that I can see at least) to further de-stickify the cutting mat. And ultimately, it's unique and pretty stunning in my opinion!

Tools used for this project:

1. Silhouette SD (both in cut only mode and print & cut using Registration Marks)

2. Double sided tape to tape the ribbon

3. 3M spray adhesive

A Dino-mite Birthday Card?

Inspired by some Member Gallery photos on Two Peas In a Bucket, this dinosaur birthday card was 4 evenings in the making.

It's not my best work, not even good work. To be honest, I don't like it at all. Maybe it was the choice of colors but it looks like a kindergarten project. But, it did take me a while and is probably the most involved card I've made to date.

The paper used for the trees were printed with an argyle pattern. Then each dinosaur and tree was cut using the Silhouette SD then colored using Distress Ink - Antique Linen. A little bit of gold pigment ink was added to the dinosaurs and then finally I used a happy birthday stamp to randomly stamp the dinosaurs using distress ink again. The banner was made using Illustrator based on instructions found on the web and were touched up with distress ink as well. I got the depth perception I was looking for but SOMETHING is missing. What is it???

On the bright side, I got to finally use my stamp from China. Looks neats!