Silhouette Sunday-High Chair Banner

A few months ago, my brother asked if I could make a high chair banner for his daughter's first birthday...of course, I said yes!!

He had sent me some photos as inspiration and they gave me a bunch of ribbon to make it.  The color scheme was turquoise and pink with white, grey, and black as accent colors.  The theme was cameras (A year in a Flash).

I wasn't sure how I was going to attached the ribbon--I even searching the internet, but I didn't find many tutorials!  So I got some elastic and tied the ribbon on.  (If they want, they can take it off the tray, pull the elastic tighter and have a ribbon tutu--haha.)

Then I used double sided tape to secure the pink satin ribbon to the entire tray.  I also used the double sided tape to attached the ribbon (which is held together by the elastic) to the tray.  This seemed to work fine.  It was completed a couple of weeks prior to the event and it held up throughout the party :)

This is where my silhouette came in, I found a scalloped circle that I already had (I just erased the lines I didn't need) and cut 3 out (I used black as the background because blue or pink would have just gotten lost against the ribbon--I actually had cut blue scallops at first, but didn't like them).  Then I cut pink circles.  I have a ton of fonts and I went through a lot...I finally settled on plain ol' Lucida Handwriting since I like the way the welding of the letters flowed together.

Once I was done with that...I was off to find a cute camera.  I found this one on Miss Kate Cuttables...she has the cutest cuts for so cheap!  (She also has a freebie every day, but you have to download it to the computer where you use your Silhouette because you cannot go and download it again after the day is over and you can't send the file either.)

I was happy with the way it came out.  My daughter was a big help letting me know what didn't look right.  I would also email the mom of the baby to make sure she liked certain colors and ask which type of banner...I could have done squares or triangles...there are a lot of different types.

If you ever think of doing something like this, I will warn you it isn't cheap.  I used a lot of ribbon.  I was given 8 spools of ribbon and it got me 1/2 way around the tray (each cut was about 20 inches so that it would be about 8 inches long).  I am sure I could have just used that and spaced it out a bit more, but I wanted it to be fuller.  So 16 spools of ribbon isn't very cheap--even with a coupon (or two).  Then there is the elastic, the double sided tape, the paper, and cuts (if you don't already have them).

But it was pretty fun to make.

Thank you for reading. :)

Silhouette Sunday--San Francisco Giants Poncho

Last Halloween, my husband and daughter went to the San Francisco Giants World Series Parade (because they won the 2014 World Series!!!!  Woohoo!!!!).  They knew it was going to be rainy so they went and bought some cheapy ponchos from Sports Authority the night before...luckily they were orange!

But what is going to a parade to celebrate your team if you can't show off your Giants gear?

They came home and my daughter asked if I could make her a stencil with my awesome machine (the Silhouette Cameo) so they could spray paint the SF logo on her poncho.  I told her I could to better and cut and stick the logo on it!

At that time, I still had not purchased any vinyl...I only had some black Con-Tact paper.  I searched for the SF logo and did some button pushing (seriously, it is still a trial and error for me) and voila...

It lasted the day...but it did start to peel off in some spots--not sure if that is due to it being Con-Tact paper and not vinyl or if it had to do with the cheap poncho.

Maybe I should have made the MVP-Madison Bumgarner a cooler poncho! :)

Thank you for looking!

Silhouette Sunday #1--Littlest Pet Shop

*With the new year, I want to try out a new weekly (hopefully) blog post.  On Thanksgiving in 2013, I won a Silhouette Cameo--I still cannot believe it!!!  I try to use the machine, but normally my desk is a mess.  Also, I don't want to spend a ton on cuts since I bought a whole bunch of Cricut cartridges that I never use :/  But with the Cameo, it is so easy (not really easy) to find cuts or logos online and make them into cuts.  I say not really easy because it usually takes me a while to remember how to get it to cut what I want :)  Well...without any further ado...my first Silhouette Sunday.

My 6 year-old niece just started to collect Littlest Pet Shop figurines, but she also has a 6 month-old sister that is going to be crawling soon.  So for Christmas, I wanted to get her a box to keep her "pets" in, but I wanted it to be personalized...I thought what perfect way than to use the Cameo to make "Ava's Littlest Pet Shop".

Now, I am not sure if this is actually legal to do, but here is what I did...shh!  I found the logo to "Littlest Pet Shop" in PNG form and saved it to my computer.  Then in Photoshop Elements, I deleted the 'shadow' and colored the 'Littlest', 'Pet', and 'Shop' black (I don't know if you have to, but it makes it easier for me in the Silhouette Studio).  I am not really sure if you can do this in the regular Studio program--I have the Designer version just for things like this.  So I pressed a bunch of button in Designer Studio and finally it was a cut!

Because I am kinda cheap (haha!), I ended up just getting black Cricut vinyl at Michaels...I don't need a bunch of colors and I think I will use the black more than if I got pink or another color.  This was my first time using real vinyl...I have used Contact paper before, but this seems a lot sturdier...I hope it lasts for her.

After I resized and cut "Littlest Pet Shop" to fit on the top of the box, I realized I forgot to add 'Ava's' :(  That is why 'Ava' is on the side of the box instead.

Thank you for looking!  I hope to inspire people to use their Cameos as well in this new year! 

My new Toy--Silhouette Cameo

This past Thanksgiving, I won a Silhouette Cameo from Paper Crafts Magazine.  I mean what are the odds!!!  I was so excited.

Then I waited and waited and waited.  I had thought (and hoped) that my husband and kids had intercepted the package and were going to wrap it for Christmas--no such luck.  Then I thought it was a joke or worse, it was delivered to the wrong house! 

Then finally on December 30, I heard UPS drop something at the door (not even with a knock) and I opened the door and the clouds parted and the angels sung...ha ha ha...ok, that was just in my crazy head.

It was finally here!!

For Christmas, I had asked for a Gift Certificate to Silhouette America (not Silhouette Online not sure why they have to have two separate entities that aren't interchangable, but that is the way it is) so I could buy the Designer Edition of the software when it went on sale (it was 40% off on Black Friday, but I wanted the machine in my hands before I got the software)--I am cheap and need to use a coupon!  Anyway, this past weekend, because of CHA, there were a few 30% off coupon out there...I went back and forth whether I should buy it...or wait to see if maybe I could get it for 40% off...yeah I know!!!  I finally got it along with a teal cover and some canvas paper.  Less my certificate, I only paid 60 cents :D

And last weekend, Joann's had a 32 cent shipping sale and the fabric blade was 40% off...so I scored that for cheap too!

Have I used it yet?...YES!!!  I've cut 3 items. 

I had gotten a clear iPhone case in October and I still hadn't put any decorative paper inside, so I found this free cut from Get Silvered Craft and made pretty cover for my phone.

Then I cut this coffee cup (I bought the cut right after Black Friday when the files were 50 cents a piece!).  I've made crocheted coffee cozies in the past and want an easy way to cut a "coffee cup" to put the cozy on. 

(sorry the green stripes clash with the blue cozy)

Then I found this SVG New Year's file from SVGcuts.com and made a card for my crafty aunt.

Ok, seriously, I have a cheapness problem ha ha ha.  I am all about the free cuts.  The machine came with a $10 download card and I've only spent $2 on clearance cuts.  Did you know every Tuesday, not only do they have a free cut to download, but they have different cuts on clearance...EVERY WEEK!!!!  But if you have time and search the web there are a lot of similar cuts that are free. 

I really hope to use the machine often.

My only negative right now is that the mat is super sticky!  I had read to rub a cotton shirt on it to make it less sticky, but I didn't listen and the gold paper I used was kinda thin and really hard to take off.