Fierce Feline Scrapbook Layout

Posted on February 20, 2015 by Angelika

Fierce Feline

This photo of Tiger giving cattitude was inspiring me this week. I also had in mind a particular cat head cut image for the background that I could not find at the Design store, so I decided to make one from the sketch I made for this page.

I traced my pencil sketch with permanent marker and took a photo. I then uploaded the image to picmonkey.com to edit it.

I bumped up brightness, highlights and contrast until the image was as black and white as it was going to get.

Now you can import this directly into Studio and go from there, or you can add this extra step if you have Adobe Illustrator: import the image, click on the image to select it, click on Live Trace, and then Expand.

It makes it MUCH smoother. If you have Studio DE, you can directly import it from Illustrator or you can export it as a .png and drag and drop into Studio, and do a trace.

If you skip the Illustrator step, you can still get a pretty good cut file, you just might have to clean it up a bit with the point editor.

It saves a lot of work though to start with a smooth image:

I cut this out of white cardstock that was misted and spackled peach and gold, and an offset of blue backing, then added journaling. When I was planning the page, all I knew for sure that I wanted was the photo and the cattitude! vellum, so I wanted to make it a focus of the page.

I sketched and cut the MEOW, and used scraps of paper and washi tape to layer under it.

I cut the hello (it kinda looks like hella though in that font, which I liked. Hella cattitude!) from gold paper. I put ripped parchment paper “vellum” in the corner underneath the FIERCE, which is just Verdana with an offset cut from black cardstock.

I added a glossy dot as an “eye” to make it into a little cat face, with the h from hella being the muzzle…..

Lastly, I used my sewing machine to hold down the letters as well as adding texture to the cattitude! vellum.

I hope this inspires you to make your own shapes from your drawings and sketches!

Designs Used:
–Cat Head (FREE)
–Banners

Fonts Used:
–Always Here
–Clean Up Your Mess
–ck carolyn

xoxo
-A 

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Valentine’s Day Card

Posted on February 14, 2015 by Angelika

Happy Valentine’s Day!

I love you, my sweet Silhouette…. I mean Sweetie!! This year I wanted to express a more personal statement, so I directly addressed Dylan by the nickname that I call him the most. He is Sweetie. I am Sweetie. Qi is Tiny Sweetie. It gets confusing sometimes. But it’s our thing.


For the Sweetie, I used the font Some Weatz cut out of gold paper and I used gold rhinestones for the i tittle and the colon.

I decided to make it the most personal too by making the heart border instead of using a Design Store one.

I drew two hearts, and made one smaller than the other. Normally I would use the Offset tool to get the smaller one but it just wasn’t working with the heart. So I off-centered the inside heart a bit to give it a more.. loopy look. I then copied both and made them bigger.

Then duplicated a whole line of them.

I selected the outside hearts and welded them, and made the entire thing into a compound shape.

I sized it to my card and cut it out:

I used my Versamark marker to individually emboss each heart with either red or black embossing powder to give it that wet shiny look.

For the card sentiment inside, I wrote it and then copied it into Studio to use a Sketch Pen to write it out. So that it would actually be legible and pretty.

Lastly, this all needed to go into an envelope. Since I was only making one, I decided to decorate it with Sketchy things. I wrote Dylan’s name in and then duplicated it and shifted it over a little bit to make the writing not have any gaps.

I used the free shape of the week for the sketchy hearts, I just removed the ones that would overlap with the name. Unfortunately, something went wrong with the Silhouette where it would stop in the middle of sketching to drag the pen to “home” and then back to continue drawing. After three attempts I decided to just keep it and incorporate it into the design.

I used the XOXO from the free design as well for the envelope flap.

I added the X’s on the line by hand to make it look like I meant to do that.

Designs Used:
–heart xoxo
–heart border (free)

Fonts Used:
–League Script (envelope)
–Some Weatz (Sweetie)
–Signerica (signature)
–Quilline (Happy Valentine’s Day)
–Clean Up Your Mess (sentiment)

Hope you have a wonderful, creative Valentine’s Day!
xoxo
-A

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Cat Rules Scrapbook Layout

Posted on February 11, 2015 by Angelika

Cat Rules

Stating the obvious: cats love boxes. I love these adorable photos of Tiger in a box. The photos were pretty light and monochrome so I thought I’d make the layout very colorful to contrast them.

That is the #1 Cat Rule. # Angelika rule: use Silhouette Sketch pens instead of handwriting because my handwriting is awful. In Studio, make the text a different color than the shape and use the advanced cut function to draw, then pause to switch to the blade and then resume cutting to get this done in one quick and easy step.

Happy cat, happy life. I saved the hearts cut out of the background to make into embellishments. I used my favorite go-to font Simply Glamorous (with a tiny 0.015 offset) for the cut out Rules. 
I used a lot of washi tape in this layout.

TIP- store your washi tape in a cling wrap or aluminum foil container. It’s one of those “life hacks” that actually works. I haven’t made mine pretty yet so I won’t show it, but here’s an example:
http://naturesmyfriend.me/2011/10/03/my-washi-wonders/

Designs Used:
–Arrows
–Paw
–Hearts

xoxo
-A

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Silly Kitty Scrapbook Layout

Posted on February 8, 2015 by Angelika

Silly Kitty

I thought to lighten the mood with my memorial scrapbooking, I would do a silly kitty page.


My inspiration for the background was this:

I thought this could be easily done with the silhouette. This scrapbook is 8×8 so I was able to cut 8.5×11 sheet with minimal waste. I also cut all of the patterns in all of the waves so that I can assemble 4 other scrapbook backgrounds with a similar background. They can be done at the top or bottom, as well as the other side for added variety.

I liked the thick doodles, but I also wanted a thinner one for the top layer. I traced a picture to make the skinny doodles, and then finetuned it with the point editor.

The (Silly) was cut using the Simply Glamorous font. I was worried about losing the dot to the (i) but I used a jewel sticker instead.

I found these cute bubble and kitty stickers at the dollar store. 

I didn’t have any vellum, so I improvised with parchment paper. I thought the NAP would be cute upside down as thats how most cat naps go. I used a basic arial font and then cut an offset out of fraft paper colored cardstock for the backing. The orange middle circle- I drew a circle and used the point edit tool to make it slightly lopsided. 
For the banners, I used a pen in my sketch pen holder to write the words, then left my mat in the Portrait, switched to the blade and cut it out.

TIP- use the PicScan mat to upload your photos to Studio, then you can make custom sized mats for the photos.
Designs Used:
xoxo
-A
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The Fancy Ampersand Stamp

Posted on February 4, 2015 by Angelika

Ampersand Stamp

Last weekend I was at Michaels and I bought a new stamp. It was a kind of fancy ampersand, and I got all excited because it was in the clearance bin. I’m a bit of a sucker for clearance bin stamps, you can always find a treasure or two in there. I also got a flower and a butterfly. 

But then when I got home, I was looking at it, and I thought to myself, well this really looks like more of a fancy E. And I was disappointed because I don’t know anyone with the initial E that I would scrapbook about.

Today, I got an email from dictionary.com with my word of the day, and in the email, they had a link to an article about punctuation, and lo and behold the image they used was for the ampersand! It was a fancy E similar to the one on my stamp, not the one we are used to seeing on our keyboards (&).

So there we go, I learned something new- that there are two right ways to write an ampersand and I didn’t waste my money on a stamp I wouldn’t use.

TIP- for a free ampersand & cut file, just use the font function to write & and then scroll through the fonts until you find one you like.

xoxo
-A

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No Photo Layout

Posted on January 23, 2015 by Angelika

No Photo Cat Memory

This is page 2 of my Commemorative Tiger Scrapbook. He had the most beautiful peach colored fluff. I put a little bit of glue on black cardstock, placed the fluff/whisker/claw, and then put clear packing tape over-top. I made custom frames for each bit, using frames from the KG font, and cut arrows from brown patterned paper.

xoxo
-A

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Tiger

Posted on January 10, 2015 by Angelika

Tiger

I got some sad news over the Christmas holidays this year. My beautiful little fur brother passed away. I went to visit my parents over the holidays and there was no one to greet me with a purr and a hug. He gave the best hugs.
We spend the weekend that I visited gathering photos for me to make a commemorative scrapbook for him.

He had such big personality. A bright fun scrapbook is the best way to remember him and how much fun we had growing up.

I miss him so much already…

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FREE Skinny Silhouette Sketch Pen Fonts

Posted on January 9, 2015 by Angelika

Skinny Sketch Pen Fonts

When I first started using sketch pens to write stuff with my silhouette, I was really unhappy with the face that it would just trace the fonts. I wanted the writing to look like, well, writing. I found some tutorials on how to fill in fonts, but that still wasn’t exactly the look I was going for. Then I found this blog post from One day at a Time about various “skinny” fonts:

It was a great place to start, but I thought I could find more fonts, so I went on a spree.

There is a treasure trove of free fonts out there. I found ones that are so skinny you can’t even tell it’s an outline with the letters almost an inch tall (i.e. Veron, EuropeUnderground, Znikomit, Rawengulk, Baby Lexi Skinny) ! And there are tons that are skinny enough for writing smaller letters (i.e. KG Only Human, Yellow Peas Demo, Tartler’s End, Dolce Vita Light).

Here is the list of all the fonts, click through to download them:

–Baby Lexi Skinny
–Clean Up Your Mess
–Collected
–Disco
–Dolce Vita Light
–Ecuyer Dax
–Europe Underground
–Flex Display
–Geo Sans Light
–Isabelle Layne
–KG Only Human
–Landsdowne
–Neou
–Optical Fiber
–Party at Gatsby’s
–Rawengulk
–Resselle
–Sketch Block
–Smiley
–Tartler’s End
–Today People
–Veron
–Yellow Peas Demo
–Znikomit

More fonts that I have found since making that page:

http://bloggingexperiment.com/30-thin-and-light-fonts-that-should-not-be-free

Remember to check licences/author notes when downloading a font! Most of these are freeware, good for personal AND commercial use, but some are personal use only (such as Yellow Peas Demo, Today People, Party at Gatsby’s, etc.).

TIP; make a studio/library file with all of your favorite fonts so that you don’t have to scroll through all the fonts to find ones you like.

xoxo
-A

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Christmas Cards

Posted on December 19, 2014 by Angelika

Happy Holidays

So I have a bad habit of giving away/sending out all of my Holiday cards before I take pictures, just because I make so many of them, and I usually like them all to be at least a little bit unique….This year I managed to keep one for the blog.


When I saw the ornaments cut file, I just had to have it. They are so versatile! I ended up making a whole bunch of those with different patterns and colors. I even had a bunch of leftover ornaments that I decorated on both sides and used a bit of gold string to put them in my windows/on my tree.

TIP- always read over what you’re about to glue to your craft, otherwise THIS might happen.

Design Used:
–Christmas Ornaments

xoxo
-A

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4×4 Scrapbook Layout- LOVE

Posted on December 5, 2014 by Angelika

4×4 LOVE

This is my first time experimenting with the squares layout. I was inspired by the Project Life style of layout where every photo, embellishment and memento gets it’s own little square.


I used a 12×12 background paper and cut 3×3 squares out of contrasting patterned paper. I laid out all of my photos and embellishments.

I’ve had the happy arrow stamp design on my to use list and thought the square shape would fit perfectly here. I cut the LOVE out of the same cardstock and put glitter glue on it to make it pop. I tilted the O to make it a sassy O when glueing. I also had some extra corners from a previous project that I decided to use to frame a post-it note that Dylan left for me.

This one was also on my to use list, a sweet sentiment that went with the feel of the page. I used a black sketch pen to outline the letters and colored them in with red fine line sharpie. If I were to do this again, I would only fill in the word love, it would have saved me a lot of work and would have made it stand out more.

Cut files used:

–Happy
–All Because….
–Corners

xoxo
-A

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