I’m super excited to have partnered with Silhouette to bring you this fun kids art gift tags project, as well as a giveaway for a Silhouette Portrait machine!
I confess – I’m not the best when it comes to typical mom blog crafts. I can rock it with building materials (like the PVC pipe I used to make Levi a playhouse) or fabric (I recently made Dany some new chew toys by upcycling old tshirts), but paper crafts have never been my strong suit.
It’s not that I lack the desire. When I see my friends like Trisha from MomDot making cute paper crafts like this adorable fortune cookie printable, I’m totally jealous.
If you do a Google search for Silhouette crafts, you’re bound to stumble across Lauren’s blog The Thinking Closet. I used her DIY Washi Tape Christmas Tag tutorial as a guide for this beginner project. Instead of using Washi Tape, though, I thought it would be fun to use some of Levi’s artwork to make my Christmas Tags even more personalized.
You can use any paper you have (he colored on regular ol’ printer paper for this craft), but I recommend using cardstock or construction paper if possible. It gives the tags more weight and results in a better final product.
To make the gift tags, you’re going to use your Silhouette to cut two different papers – your child’s artwork and some plain or textured cardstock. Try to get the kids artwork to cover the whole entire page – that’ll make it easier to not worry too much about your design layout.
In Lauren’s tutorial, she shares a free studio file you can download so you can work from a template. She includes several different tag shapes, but I wanted to stick with one design for my first Silhouette project. I used the Silhouette Studio software included with my machine to copy the Christmas Tree Gift Tag layout and repeat it so I could have the machine cut several at once.
The software was fairly easy to use. Just make sure you select the correct size for your page AND your cutting mat – the template I downloaded was set for 12″ x 12″ (the standard size for the Silhouette Cameo). I have the Silhouette Portrait machine, which uses 8.5″ x 11″ as the standard paper size, so I had to go back in and make a few adjustments so the design would fit the dimensions.
When your design is complete, you’ll want to select which section(s) you want the machine to cut. In this case, my design is for a two-layer project. I need the hole cut in both layers, but the bottom layer (Levi’s artwork) only needs the very outer part cut. The software makes it easy to tell what will be cut and what will not by using a thicker red outline on the portion to be cut.
When I had everything all set, it was easy to plug the Silhouette into my laptop and send the file to cut. I laid Levi’s artwork face down on the cutting mat and let the machine do all the work.
Using the spatula tool, I was able to easily peel the tags from the cutting mat without ripping the thin paper.
Next I selected the inner area of my design to print, and this time fed some black cardstock with adhesive backing into the machine to create the rest of my custom gift tags. Depending on what type of paper you’re using, you’ll want to adjust the blade settings according to the manufacturer’s recommendations.
The machine was a little noisier than I expected, but it worked quickly and cut out my design exactly as I had laid it out with the software.
Leaving the tree in place, I removed the adhesive backing from the rest of the tag and laid the black cardstock carefully on top of the slightly bigger tag I had made using Levi’s artwork.
Voila! The finished product is a personal creation that I know he’ll be very proud of when giving gifts this year.
WIN IT
One lucky reader will win their own Silhouette Portrait machine, valued at $179.99!
Giveaway ends Friday, November 28th at 11:59pm EST. Open to US only.
The post Kids Art Gift Tags + Silhouette Giveaway appeared first on Life With Levi.
