Wedding season is quickly approaching and I am so excited to show you this really fun and simple Wedding gift idea I created!  This would be really easy to create for any newlywed couple and can so easily be customized for each couple’s tastes and preferences.  It is also fairly inexpensive (if you can snag your frame on sale) which means you can easily make enough for all the weddings you plan to attend this summer!

And if you aren’t attending any weddings this year, this would also make a beautiful gift for a couple’s anniversary or a pretty piece of home decor to add to your home!

You Will Need:

• Picture Frame (I found mine at Hobby Lobby and purchased it on sale)
• Vinyl (any color, but I used Signal Yellow)
• Transfer Tape
• Scrapbook paper

The first thing I did was to layout my design in my Silhouette Studio Software program.  But don’t worry, this project can also be created using a Circut too!

When I am designing within a particular size restraint, I always like to draw a shape that is the corresponding size and shape as my object that the vinyl will be being placed on.  In this case, I drew a 5×7 rectangle and designed my lettering within the rectangle so that I was sure my design would fit my final project requirements.

Also don’t be afraid to mix and match fonts and sizes.  You probably can’t tell, but my “&” is actually a different font then the rest.  And the “CLARKE” is bold.  I also played with my character spacing a little bit.  Feel free to have fun tweaking your fonts to look exactly how you want them to!

After I designed my text, I cut out the vinyl using my Silhouette Cameo and then I weeded it.  Next I used transfer tape to place the vinyl onto the glass.

After that was done, I simply inserted my glass back into my frame and added a piece of scrapbook paper behind it!

So simple to create and really cute!

I can’t decide which scrapbook paper back I prefer though, the top one (which is a piece of scrapbook paper that looks like slightly used chalkboard) or the bottom gray chevron paper!

Which do you like better?

Ashley Phipps is an Interior Designer and Blogger living in the Indianapolis area. She is also the author of the blog Simply Designing.

if you know ANYTHING about me..you know this: i don’t throw anything away…

and since it’s not hoarding if you use it–then you had better use it. cause i don’t want to be famous by being on A&E

(my round one of scrap busting projects  is here)

okay–first thing first. i have a place for my scraps. if you don’t–they are just going to be a mess.

(you can go here to read about how i store my vinyl)

but i have a 12×12 tupperware that gets to hold all my small leftover scraps!

and to save as much vinyl as possible. i cut out a design with my cameo….then after i peel off my vinyl from the mat (before i weed out the vinyl from the words or picture) i cut around it and save as much as the unused vinyl as  possible.

take this project i’m working on:

after i cut out the frame and the s…

i would snip off where the yellow is….that saves me a bunch of vinyl!!!!

and once you get in the mindset of using scraps–you will find LOADS of uses for it! i love vinyl. it cuts and sticks so easy and now there is soooo many colors!

first up: jewelry.

i was going to paint…then maybe cut some scrapbook paper and maybe mod podge…but then i reached for my vinyl. trace around on the back of the vinyl. cut , peel, stick. easy peasy

..a boring old bracelet…

made pretty–

and when i’m sick of it..or want a different color..i’ll peel it off!

i think this one of the only few projects i used with my cutter (the zigzag…) so anyone can do this!

and remember my vinyl necklaces i made here?

(refresher course is here)

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next up:

my daughter keeps stealing my iphone plugin.  (her’s works only half the time so she likes to “trade”) so i CLEARLY marked mine.

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sunglasses…

boring old ones from the dollar store..

so cute. took minutes! (and less then two dollars when all is said and done!

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easy clear see-through pens…

wrap the ink with vinyl…

fun new pens (i have a color assigned to each thing i use it for. the pink is for blogging stuff!)

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ONE of my FAVORITE projects:

(if you follow me on instagram (kimbowest) you got a sneak peak:

but i had this light gray boring case (i didn’t take a before picture! what kind of blogger am i!?) BUT i spray painted blue and i grabbed strips of vinyl and just decorated it! it was so fun..no rhyme or reason but i love how it turned out

the other side i had cut out glasses which i kinda love just as much!

and p.s…have you checked out their new herringbone vinyl (it’s true love!) go HERE

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my son wanted to get his teacher a flower…but those cute decorated pots are expensive…this took just a strip!

but think how cute to cut out polka dots and make one all dotted!

my daughter got her teacher a candle–just think how easy it would be to dress it up with a little vinyl…you could cut it out with scalloped edges! so cute!

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we are OBSESSED with natural ice…#bestchapstickever

and my husband leaves his in his pockets and i wash them and ruin them.

then he steals mine. (i have one in the kitchen, and purse, and by my bed)

so i added some cute polka dot vinyl and now he won’t touch them!

(these would make fun unique party favors for a birthday! they have rainbows of colors!)

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and last (but certainly not least)

i love using all my little scraps to slap labels …..

on…everything. labels make me happy.

i just feel better knowing that my son’s bike is the one with the batman signal. and my cup is the one that says, MOMS!

and which scissors are for paper, which ones are for fabric..and which ones can be used for duct tape and sticky stuff

and the difference between the sugar and salt shaker…

apparently my husband didn’t appreciate using the sugar shaker for salt..so now he can tell the difference…

moral of this blog post: once again…DON’T THROW AWAY THOSE SCRAPS

Today, I want to share a project that I helped with for a dear friend of mine. This project was for a baby shower as well as decoration. I was asked to cut decals out to be placed on onesies. Each onesie had a number with the word month below. Example: 1 Month, 2 Months, 3 Months, etc. This was for a mommy and daddy to take monthly pictures of their baby for the first year. I started creating this by using my Cricut Craft Room on my computer. I choose various shapes from various cartridges. I then made the image to desired size. I found a font that I loved and typed the number and letters.  I centered the number and letters on my image, then used the welding feature in the Craft Room to combine my images. This ensures it will cut correctly. This next step is most important when using iron-on vinyl!!!! I flipped my image. I flip the image so I will cut backwards. When decal is applied, it will read correctly. But it must be cut backwards in order for this t work. I then placed my glitter iron-on vinyl onto my cutting mat, shiny side down. I put machine settings on lowest possible setting on my Cricut Expression. I then cut.

For this project, I just cut the decal. My friend ironed on all of the decals onto the onesie before the baby shower. She used her regular iron with setting on cotton blends. She placed her decal onto the onesie then placed a sheet of multi-use paper on top of that. This will help prevent the vinyl from melting.  She carefully pressed her iron onto the sheet paper. Slowly moving the iron back and forth all over the decal and onesie. Be careful not to leave your iron in one spot too long. This will melt your vinyl. Once the decal was stuck to the shirt, she moved onto the next. These onesies turned out so cute and I’m so glad I was a part of this. I hope you enjoy!

I am officially obsessed with arrows. I am not ashamed to admit it. That is why when Expressions Vinyl came out with their arrow printed vinyl, I knew I had to come up with a way to use it ASAP. Now to make things even better, I get to look at it pretty much all day long. Here’s what you need to make your own…

Outdoor Printed Vinyl

Premium Laminate

Xacto knife

Scissors

Outdoor vinyl to cut personalized saying

Vinyl cutter to cut out personalized saying

A phone with a phone cover

First, you want to put your laminate over the patterned vinyl. This will help protect the pattern to keep it from rubbing off.

Lay your phone on the vinyl to measure how big of an area to cut out. Cut the vinyl around your phone with scissors.

Take the phone out of the case and stick the phone onto the vinyl. Carefully use the knife to cut around the edges of the phone. Don’t forget to cut out the camera hole too.

Flip your cover around and see how it looks. Mine had a little spot where the phone cover comes apart that I cut with the Xacto knife so that I can take the cover off. You can leave the phone just as is, but I wanted to add a little something more to it too…

I had made this vinyl to go along with my business cards and I wanted to sport it on my phone. You can design your own quote or design with your vinyl cutting software and personalize your phone too! Using vinyl on your phone cover is a great way to update it as trends change and is much less expensive than buying a new phone case!

Recently I made a fabric ABC piece of art I’m going to use in my daughters room I wanted to tie in the fabric I was using as inspiration for the whole room so Iron on Vinyl seemed to be the way to go. With all the choices I wanted a block font so ended up pretty basic but this way I could choose the size I needed for my frame, perfect, now If only I could paint the frame….

This was my first time working with flocked vinyl however and I learned a few tricks I would like to share with you, these are the recommended settings and such straight from Expressions Vinyl with my additions italicized.

• Application: Preheat 3 seconds, Apply medium pressure at 305 °F for 10-15 seconds If you need to play around with the positioning first don’t worry about the preheating. Its a great thing to do but if you can’t that is fine. After holding down the iron for 10 -15 seconds flip over your fabric and do about 5 seconds on the back. If your concerned about thin fabric use the multi use paper as a barer. 
  
• Peel: Hot or Cold I suggest cold if you have any thin lines (the outline on mine above or if your i’s or y’s are skinny. 
• Layering: Possible
• Adheres to: Cotton, Uncoated Polyester, Cotton/Poly Blend

Those two little extra suggestion saved my project, so I just wanted to share

I don’t have my own blog but thoroughly enjoy reading the blog entries about how others use their Silhouette Cameo and get ideas from those. I came up with a new use for it today, though, that I just had to pass along.

In our household, we have several used cars. My house-husband is pretty handy with fixing any issues and they are just cheaper for us to get, fix up and maintain. I am lucky that we have any that are dated in this current century as he really likes to restore much older vehicles. I currently drive a 1995 Toyota Previa minivan and it does pretty well – generally. Last night as I was headed back from some errands it started to overheat so today my husband spent the day fixing it.

While he was fixing the main issue he ended up needing an additional part called a “Water Outlet Gasket”. Being that it is an older vehicle when I called around to find out where I could get this part, it turns out that no one in town had one and that we would have to order it. Now the gasket itself is only $1.09 but to even get it here by Wednesday would be another $20+ for expedited shipping and I would be without my van for two more days. I then took a look at what it was that we were trying to get and it turned out that the gasket is just a flat shape cut out of special gasket type paper. As I was laughing at how simple an item it was that was causing us so much trouble and so much wasted time, I mentioned to my husband that it was too bad we couldn’t get any of that special paper because I was sure that my Cameo could cut it out. He did a double-take and then said, “Well, they sell the paper at the auto parts store. Do you think you could make one?”

I headed down to the auto parts store and got the paper in a roll. The whole roll was $5.99 which was more than the one gasket but it was far less than the shipping and it would pay for itself in time saved plus it gave me plenty of extra in case I needed to play around and cut it more than once.

On the Advanced Auto Parts webpage, they had a picture of the part I needed. I used Snipping Tool in Windows to capture the image and I pasted it into the Silhouette software. I cleaned it up and then used the Trace in Silhouette to get the shape. The issue was that I needed to resize it to make it match what I actually needed.

I did a few tests to see if I needed to go up or down and after only a few tries got it to match up.

My husband popped it into place, and it worked!

I am passing this information along because not only do I think it is pretty cool that I helped fix one of our old cars but because I consider it my duty to provide it as a public service to all those crafty people that have been wanting to get a Silhouette Cameo but cannot come up with the winning argument for their significant other. Now they have, “But, honey, it will help us fix our car!”

This is awesome, right?
Ingenuity Level: Grand Master
Thanks so much, Lisa, for sharing this with us!

Jason

p.s. What less common uses have you used your vinyl and/or cutter for?

I painted the medallion with black acrylic craft paint, then dry brushed over it with a pearlescent cream. Since it was going to be a new “old” piece I wanted it to look the part so wasn’t super careful about paintstrokes. Besides, the star was going to be the vinyl. I chose a beige vinyl and cut out the Roman numerals on my Silhouette Cameo. I just did them as two rows of numbers. Once I had the vinyl  cut and applied the transfer tape, I cut them into twelve separate pieces to make it easy to apply to the prepared surface.

I laid my numbers down on the surface to check for spacing etc. before I finished the actual vinyl application. I placed the 12,3,6, and 9 first and then filled in the numbers for each quarter of the clock.

To finish, I’d also picked up a brushed nickel piece that’s supposed to cover the wires from the light fixture the ceiling medallion is really intended for , and put that in the center.

And reminder  - – Teacher Appreciation Week is coming up!  Personalized gifts are always a hit (I found that insulated cup on the right at the Dollar Store, yep, just $1).

So here we go – - design your image:

Then cut the pieces separately:

And so you’re here, ready to apply – - I have the name that will sit on top of the gold that will sit on top of the orange, so the orange will look like a border:

I think it’s instinct to stick the bottom layer to the cup and build up, but the trick I want to show you is the opposite – starts with the top layer.  Really – I’ll show you…

Put your transfer paper on the top layer and then remove that layer’s backing:

Then take that and put it on the second layer:

As shown:

Then remove the second layer’s backing:

And put that onto the third layer:

And then everything is stacked on top of each other – - just peel the final backing off:

And attach the stack of cut vinyl to your item – - that’s it!

This trick saves you from using a bunch of pieces of transfer paper – or from trying to use and reuse the transfer paper.  Smart, right?!

Voila – - ready to roll:

Expressions Vinyl had an awesome booth because they prepped it all – and you can kind of see in this picture the fun selection of vinyl that they have.  I’m super into their patterned vinyl right now, so be sure to check that out!

Now it is not a traditional Mother’s Day gift.  In fact, these signs could be made any time of year for many occasions!  But they are something my mom has been wanting, and since I have an amazing Silhouette machine and a random stash of wood in my garage, these were actually really quick to put together!

There is a 95% chance that my mom will see this post (thanks mom for following my blog!) but since she lives far away from me, I had to call her to get the correct dimensions so she will not be getting a surprise this year.  Thankfully, I think she is ok with that

The “bon appetit” sign will be going in my mom’s kitchen to hide an unused phone jack cover.  I simply cut, sanded and painted a board dark brown.  Then using my Silhouette software, I designed the lettering.

One of the things I love about the Silhouette Software program is my ability to customize even my lettering!  When I first typed this up, the two lines were WAY too far apart. So I simply adjusted my “Line Spacing” to a smaller number until it looked just right!  I cut this sign out of Light Brown vinyl from Expressions Vinyl.  Weeded it, and then used transfer tape to adhere it to the sign!

The “no soliciting” sign was made in much the same fashion.  I took a piece of wood, sanded and stained it.  When designing this in the Silhouette software program, I needed to adjust my Line Spacing again, but I also decided to make my last line of font a bit smaller then the rest.  Again, all of these things are really simple in the Silhouette Studio Software Program!

I cut this sign out of Beige vinyl from Expressions Vinyl, weeded it and then used transfer tape to adhere it to the wooded sign.

One thing to be cautious about is that vinyl sticks more easily to paint then it does to stain.  So just be careful when you are removing the transfer tape from the board that the letters all stay stuck to the wooden board!

Also, because the “no soliciting” sign will be outside, I am going to add a layer of polyurethane over it to help protect it from the elements.

Are you making something for your mom (or mother in law) for Mother’s Day?

Ashley Phipps is an Interior Designer and Blogger living in the Indianapolis area. She is also the author of the blog Simply Designing.