Adventures in Hybrid & Cut-files No.3: Size & Paper Matters

Like Mocamom mentioned in her last Hybrid card post, I find more masculine cards can be challenging too and I’m still very new to using the Silhouette software and the Cameo 4 machine, but there’s nothing like an impending birthday to motivate me to learn and try something new so it’s time for another instalment in my Adventures in Hybrid & Cut-files series, which is me documenting a mix of ideas, my trial and error (usually a fair amount of error), and all important (and less important) life lessons.

This week I tried using one of Paislee Press’ Happy Birthday Journal Cards to create a ‘happy’ text cut-out that I could back with some masculine colours or patterns and add the word ‘birthday’ to on a wordstrip for a flower-free card. And the beauty of this idea is it can be more feminine or gender neutral with different colours or patterns backing the same cut-out -gotta love a generic card design. Anyway this is the pack I’m using.

(If you’re wondering the reason I used this journal card rather than the coordinating wordart Stamp Pack that also includes the ‘happy’ wordart with the letter P rotated is so I didn’t have to think about the size of the rectangle I’d have to draw or make in the Silhouette software, I knew I could drag this in and call it good, or so I thought… Here’s where some of my learning started).

I dragged the journal card into the Silhouette software but the red lines only appeared around the 3×4 inch perimeter of the journal card. For some reason, it did not instantly read my mind that I also wanted the black letters to be cut out as well, so no red line on them.

(I should point out that this is not the software’s fault – the red lines are the cut lines and show up by default on the screen outlining the border of a jpeg file or where a PNG would have transparent squares. If you were to send this journal card to the printer first, you would get black letters printed but what the cutting blade sees is effectively just the rectangle border it outlined in red so it did what it should do.)

So to get it to do what I had in mind, and knowing Photoshop better, I opened the same journal card in Photoshop and used the Magic Wand tool to select the black letter portions and deleted them to make this a PNG with cut-out letters. I also switched the colour of the background so I could see it better as I wasn’t printing it, the colour didn’t matter, it would be the colour of whatever paper I loaded on the cutting mat, but I wanted to be able to see it against the white default paper background in the Silhouette software.

(I did learn after making this card you can switch the colour from white for just this reason and it would have saved me this step but this is my live and learn process and I’ll talk about that in another post). The high contrast between the letter and card colour and the Magic Wand made this step easy anyway and I resaved this card as a PNG then opened that in the Silhouette software.

And now, lo and behold, I had red cut lines where I wanted them, so I went to the Send panel, and added my black water colour paper onto my fairly sticky mat and let the cutting begin with it’s trademark ratcheting and screeching noise!

Now if you are a seasoned Digital Cutting Machine user, you may be saying ‘oh no!’ at this point. In theory, I thought this would work and it looked quite promising when it had finished cutting. In retrospect, the paper was too thin, the mat was too sticky and the long skinny parts on the letters were too narrow to make this a successful, easy, clean and quick cut, for someone that is still new to all this anyway. Here’s what I got trying to scrape it off the mat.

I then tried with some different settings using the same paper but it was just tearing and not holding it’s shape and looked really sad. So not having any thicker black cardstock, I grabbed some tried and tested white cardstock and used that instead. I also went back in to Photoshop and made the top border a bit thicker by adding a marquee rectangle over the top edge and resaving it as a flattened PNG to make the edge a bit more solid. And I also selected and shrunk that middle half circle in the centre of the letter P’s and that triangle in the A by just a little bit so that would be easier to work with. Font size and chunkiness matters!

In a Goldilocks kind of way, the two previous attempts were the too hot and cold bowls of porridge but this one was just right – or good enough anyway. The recipient shouldn’t feel they have to keep this forever so I’m conscious of making cards that are basic enough that should feel they can just be thrown away (I used to keep so many cards for sentimental reasons and having decluttered so many of them a few years back, this has had an influence on my card-making thought process). So I spatula’d it off the mat then used the tweezers to glue the inner parts of the letters back in place, recreating the journal card with a cut-out and adhered it to one of the many paint swatch cards I’ve collected over years of renovating that gave it an instantly elevated striped look in a masculine colour scheme, cropped that and added it to a card base.

To finish it off, having learnt during my last Adventure in Hybrid card making that stamping is not a quick and clean way to add a sentiment with my current stash, I made a quick wordstrip in Photoshop. I made a black background textbox, added some text in white and sent it to my printer to nestle in between the A & Y on the journal card, (and then I proceeded to cut it a bit wonky because I don’t think my paper trimmer wheel is all that straight anymore and I had not learnt to use the Print and Cut method on the Cameo yet, but it’s been a week of learning with a few more Adventures to come!) I always like to add some dimension as well so I added some blue-ish pearls triangulating around the sentiment, and then I had a self-doubt moment and thought that maybe they make the card a bit more feminine so I coloured one in black with a Sharpie…. and of course, when I was finished and cleaning up, I managed to get a random crease on the top side of the card. I had the ‘What a waste of time! It’s ruined!’ reaction and then I talked myself down and realised this was going in my son’s bag anyway so he could go to a sleepover. So I put this in the envelope with the giftcard and creased the envelope in the same spot so that it just looked a bit worse for wear, like it had just gotten a bit crumpled in transit. When life gives you lemons, crease the envelope.

A Recap and Life Lessons from today’s adventures :

‘Normal’ digital journal cards can become cut-out cards with a few extra clicks to prep them for digital cutting. Larger, chunkier sections make for easier unsticking from the mat and gives more area for the background to show through.
Your choice of colours and patterns can make a generic sentiment like Happy Birthday more masculine, feminine or neutral. Stripes can work for everyone, just change up the colours.
The combination of inputs (the thickness of paper/cardstock; the detail (or lack of) in the design you are attempting to cut; mat stickiness and the blade settings) all factor in to the output and project results. If something isn’t working, try changing one of these at a time.
Don’t underestimate the value of using packaging or ephemera like paint chips to supplement your hybrid supplies and a Sharpie for real world recolouring and saving the day (Harold may prefer purple crayons, but I’m a Sharpie girl).
Having decluttered years of ‘I have to keep this’ cards, I’m fine with the result being an ‘ok standard’ to slightly elevated basic card, and not something that is a multi-layered work of art that the recipient feels guilt over throwing away (this takes the pressure off starting from scratch after mistakes or making something I feel is less than perfect. A few pearls or a bit of glitter or some metallic flair is enough to make me feel like I made something equivalent to a basic store bought card and really it’s the thought that counts. They shouldn’t feel like they have to keep it forever and it just become part of a collection that’s potentially a fire-hazard).
As I’ve noted before, plans don’t always turn out and that’s okay; the ability to pivot and come up with a Plan B is a good life skill to have. (When life gives you lemons, crease the envelope).