DIY Friendship Etched Pendants with the Silhouette Curio

This post is sponsored by Silhouette America but all opinions and ideas are my own. :)

One of my close friends from a few years back asked me if I could stamp some puzzle pendant pieces for her to give to her class friends before they all go off to college. The accommodating person that I am, I said yes, but then she wanted additional things on it - on the back of the pendants, she wanted a word on each pendant that would form a sentence when all the pendants are linked together. I loved the idea, but with the stamped letter in front, there was no way I would be able to make a clean stamp on the back as well - we brainstormed on what we could do about it, and then I remembered - I can etch with my Silhouette Curio! 

Supplies:

• Silhouette Curio
• Silhouette Stippling & Etching Tool
• Silhouette Ratchet Blade
• Metal charms
• Contact paper

Set your mat stack to 6 and adhere contact paper, sticky side up with the backing intact. I did this to add some more stickiness to my mat to give the charm extra hold. You want to keep the backing so you can see where the charm area would be placed when cut.

Cut out your charm (for my contact paper, I used blade 3, speed 4 and thickness 5) using the ratchet blade. Since my charm was irregularly shaped, I first scanned it full-size and then traced it on Adobe Illustrator before transferring it to the Silhouette Program. Remove the backing and then attach your charm to the sticky contact paper. 

Type out your word onto the program and fill. I cheated and used embossing fill for the insides of my words since I wasn't very familiar with the sketch fills yet. I set the embossing fill to 0.04. Set the charm outline to no cut! Use the etching tool and send it to the machine to etch. 

Once I was confident with the settings, I cut multiples of them. If you are nervous, you can use tape to provide additional hold onto the edges of the charm. Add your hardware and you are done!

In my case, I'll be sending these to my friend to finish since she has the matching chain and jump rings. I love the phrase that she thought of - and I'm pretty sure her friends will adore them too! You can make a set for your friends for Valentines or for any occasion, really. I am thinking of making some from my friends from college, too!

Do you like etched jewelry? Hope you enjoyed this short tutorial! Happy crafting, friends!

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DIY: Faux Bois Tags using the Silhouette Curio

This post is sponsored by Silhouette America, but all ideas and opinions are DEFINITELY my own. :)

There's something about natural patterns and colors that remind me so much of fall - and since it's after Labor Day, it's pretty much fall already, isn't it? With this in mind, I wanted to create some woodland themed tags - and the challenge in that is creating a faux bois tag background. For years I've struggled with finding the perfect faux bois effect paper without breaking the bank, even going to great lengths to purchase a die-cutting/embossing machine that only did an okay job at it (I couldn't find a wood-grain folder that I liked). But Silhouette America graciously sent me my own Silhouette Curio to play with, and I was able to make my own faux bois background from my own sketch. See how I did it!

First, sketch your design. I used a Wacom tablet to sketch it on my computer. Another way to create your own pattern is to sketch it on paper, scan and open it in your Silhouette program.

For the first few times, I used the design, traced it and embossed it like so. It was okay, but it wasn't what I was looking for - I needed thinner woodgrain. 

For the next tries, I used internal offset on my image to create thinner woodgrain. I also reduced the size and tiled my design as the sketch I created was too big (the woodgrain looked like it was zoomed in). Now that's more like it!

To create a good debossed image on cardstock, I did two passes and upped the thickness setting. The backside of the tag will have a slight embossed effect - which is alright with me. I think for embossing it's best to use thinner material such as vellum. 

Cut your tags out - you can definitely cut on your embossing mat (you just have to be precise with the settings you use for the blade in relation to the media), but I didn't want to risk it and ruin it pretty quickly so I transferred it onto the cutting mat and cut my tags out - no sweat! 

It was definitely a trial and error process, and I haven't gotten fully used to my new machine, but I got there! I like the fact that I can design my own embossed/debossed images and run them through my machine. I will definitely make a finer woodgrain pattern to use for larger purposes (I'm thinking party invitation belts).

I have yet to try the other crazy awesome things this machine can do - but for debossing your own designs, I am pretty satisfied! I can't wait to get the deeper cutting blade to test out its capability for cutting thicker material though!

Want the woodgrain pattern? No worries, I'm sharing my (somewhat messy) design here so you can make your own woodgrain tags! I think they'll be perfect for Thanksgiving! What pattern do you dream of debossing with your machine? Happy crafting, guys! 

DOWNLOAD HERE

Woodgrain Pattern (.studio file)

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