Today I would love to introduce the talented Kelly Sill, who’s on Becky Higgins creative team with me, to you as my new Weekend Guest.
Kelly Sill has been a scrapbooker and paper artist for over 20 years. She has taught traditional and digital classes at local scrapbook stores in Virginia and is a digital instructor at Scrapaneers.com. Kelly has embraced the Project Life way of documenting her photos/memories and her scrapbooking hobby led her to pursue a BFA in Graphic Design In 2007, after going to school year round for three years, she got her degree! Currently she lives in Apollo Beach, Florida with her husband, Chris and their dogs, Baron & Zoe. She recently was hired as a part-time sales associate with the Paper Source and loves every minute of it!
Kelly just opened a new online shop called Coastal Canvas & Prints where she turns your address into a GPS coordinate print or canvas gallery wrap. There are several designs in the shop! Feel free to check them out at coastalcanvasandprints.ecwid.com. You can also find Kelly at:
Blog: www.septemberblue.net
Instagram: kmsill
Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/kellysill/
Facebook Fan Page 1: https://www.facebook.com/SeptemberBlueDigitalDesigns
Facebook Fan Page 2: https://www.facebook.com/coastalcanvasandprints
Where do you find inspiration? | As a designer, I feel my strengths are in typography and color. So I draw a lot of my inspiration from typographical posters, ads and magazine layouts. Right now a lot of my color inspiration has been coming from nature. We live on the water so I’ve been drawn to beachy and nautical colors.
Where do you create? | We have an extra bedroom in our house that I use as my studio. Whenever I am not working at my part-time job, I am creating in my studio!
Do you scrapbook on vacation? | No, I do not. I take tons of photos (and may do some photo-editing) and collect memorabilia while on vacation to scrapbook later, but I do not physically scrapbook.
Christmas in July
I know it is a little early to be thinking about Christmas when it is hot and sunny outside, but I wanted to share a project with you that I’ve been working on for a better part of this year: Christmas Card Ornament Balls.
For the past 26 years of marriage, I have had a hard time throwing away Christmas cards. Someone took the time to pick out the card, sign it, maybe include a letter and photo, addressed it, placed a stamp on it and popped it into the mailbox. I just didn’t have the heart to throw them away, hoping one day I would find some sort of crafty project to use them in. Years ago I found a DIY project in a Martha Stewart Living Magazine to make ornaments from old Christmas cards. While the original instructions she provided had you cutting circles by hand, I found that if I made a cut file for my Silhouette, the process of making these goes so much quicker! So below is a tutorial of how to make these and I’m including the FREE cut file, too! Now you don’t have to use Christmas cards to make these! Use extra Project Life cards you may have or postcards from your summer vacation to create these 3 dimensional balls and place them in glass jars or string them on fishing line to make a garland!
Items you will need:
Christmas Cards (or other papers)
Silhouette machine
Quick-dry adhesive (I like Scotch brand)
Paintbrush
Paper trimmer
Various colors of 12×12 cardstock
Step one:
Choose your cards or paper you want to use. Each ball need 20 circles to complete. When I use holiday cards, I use the outside as well as the inside of the card. I like that some of the circles will have the person’s handwriting on it.
Place the cards on your silhouette mat:
Notice I trimmed parts of the inside of the card to get rid of some of the white space.
Step two:
Import the free cut file into your Silhouette program and open it. It will look like this:
Step three:
Refer to the cards on your mat and draw guidelines to match where your cards begin and end like this:
Just for reference, I placed colored blocks on my layout below so you can see how the guidelines mark the position of my cards:
For this demo, we are going to use the circle/triangle in the upper right-hand corner. You can move the others off the workspace or delete them.
Step four:
Copy and paste the circle/triangle as many times as you need to so they fill each card on your mat like this:
When you are satisfied, send the file to cut. In the cut setting choose “coverstock” and unclick the “double cut” option. Make sure your blade is at the correct number, then click “send to silhouette.” Let it do its thing! It may be a little loud because of the dotted score line it’s cutting, but turn on some loud music to muffle the sound!
When it is done you get this:
Step Five:
More than likely, you will not get all 20 circles from just one card. So you need some filler circles. I made 12×12 file in Silhouette and just kept copying and pasting the circle/triangle I was using until the whole sheet was covered. Then I cut the circles from a solid piece of cardstock. I did this several times so I can have many different colors to choose from.
Step Six:
Now it is time to make the “top” and “bottom” of our ball. Choose five circles, fold along the perforations and arrange them like the photo you see below. Repeat with another five circles
Start to glue them together by applying glue to one flap and repeat with the other circles until you create a little “dome.”
Repeat the process with the other set of five circles. You should end up with two “domes” like this: (the photo on the right show what the “dome” should look like when it is flipped over).
Step Seven:
Let’s make the middle section. Fold the remaining 10 circles along the perforated edges and arrange them in a line like this:
When you are doing this, make sure you every other circle/triangle is going in the opposite direction like in the photo below:
Apply glue on the flaps and adhere them together. Yours should look like this:
Then glue the two ends together following the directions in the photo above.
You will end up with this:
Step Eight:
Now it’s time to put the ball together. Make sure the flaps on one side of your middle section and one of the “domes” are nice and flat.
Apply glue to all of the flaps on one side of the middle section and line up up a “dome” on top of them. The glue should be wet enough so you can slide the flaps around on each other to get them even. Here is a picture of what the inside of the ornament will look like:
Repeat with the other side of the middle section and remaining “dome.” Your ball should look like this:
And you are done! I know your first one may have taken you awhile, but honestly, once you get the hang of it, they go pretty quickly! Once the pieces are cut, I know I can complete one in about 10 minutes!
To hang them, simply glue some ribbon in a loop to the top of the ornaments. Or thread thin twine through a needle and poke it through where points of the triangles meet through the opposite end and tie a knot to secure.
What will you make your ornaments out of?
Thank you very much, Kelly, for you inspiring project and cut file!! Can’t wait to try these myself. Be sure to stop by Kelly’s blog for much more inspiration, and leave her some love while you’re there. Have a great weekend!!
Els.
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