Happy Halloween!! Free Trick or Treat Lantern Silhouette cut file

Hi everyone!

It's been a long time since I posted and since I have been so distant with this blog, I decided to make a cut file and share it with everyone. It is Halloween today and if you are in a rush to decorate for tonight's party I have a quick and easy cut file for you!

It is a Halloween lantern and I used clip art it and a built base for you put it all together.

You would need the following:

1. Silhouette Cameo software
2. Paper
3. Vellum (Orange for the best affect)
4. Tea lights
5. Glue

For you to make a complete cube, you would also have to cut out a 4x4 square which is not part of the cut file. ENJOY!

Download HERE

My five quick tips for Silhouette Cameo users - Ordered by importance!

I have had my Silhouette Cameo for about 10 months now and it is easiest the best investment I made in terms of my crafting hobby. Since buying one, I think I might have convinced about three people to purchase one of their own! (I'll wait for my check Silhouette America =P )

Anyways, here are FIVE quick tips for those who are just getting started with the Silhouette Cameo. They are ordered by importance! (#1 is the most important obviously):


1. Sign up for a free account with the Silhouette Online Store and download the weekly FREE designs! Why wouldn't you want to do this? You get free designs to use and some of them are really cute. You never know if you you will end up using one of designs later on.

2. Buy extra mats - Having extra mats will help if you have a lot of projects to cut. With a second or third mat, you can create an assembly line by preparing the mats with papers while you peel your design off of your first one! I currently have four mats and I bought all of them from Amazon (Silhouette Cameo Replacement Cutting Mat). It is cheaper to buy from there than straight from Silhouette America AND you can get it in two days if you have PRIME!

3. Do not throw away mats after they become "unsticky" - For a long time I was trying to figure out how to make my mats become sticky again and a lot of people suggested using spray on adhesive. Here is my opinion on it, DO NOT DO THAT!!! Over time it will create gunk all over your mat and it will become unusable. I had it ruin two mats and thankfully I just used Goo-gone to clean it. 

I now use Re-nu sheets from "That's Scrap, Inc" (website here). It is a layer of sticky stuff that is temporary and holds paper just as good as a new mat. It's not as tacky as the original Silhouette mat but it is strong enough to hold onto cardstock and thick glitter cardstock from Michaels.

4. Learn how to use the Trace tool in the Silhouette software - The tracing tool is amazing and honestly, you can trace almost anything! For best results I would find an email that is black and white with clear cut lines. You can even take screenshots of silhouetted images to trace in the software! I'll write a blog post on just tracing another time,

5. PIN PIN PIN!! Since using my silhouette cameo, I have been pinning a lot on Pinterest. I find a lot of ideas that way and I try not to copy others but sometimes you find things that are just amazing! I have two boards on there now, one on only handmade cards, and the other is silhouette tips and tricks. Find me there and follow or just pin things I already pinned if you fancy them!

Hot air balloon themed card

If you haven't guessed yet, this card was given to the owner of the baby mobile I posted about last week. Here is the link in case you missed it!

The baby shower itself was hot air balloon themed so it was appropriate for me to make a card like this. The original idea came from Pinterest, and I was able to recreate it using the silhouette cameo. The hot air balloon clip art was found online and I had printed it out using the "Print then Cut" feature on the cameo. I'll probably do a blog post later on down the line on how I do that, so stay tuned!

The new Silhouette Cameo! WITH GIVEAWAY!!!

Everyone knows I love my Silhouette Cameo and a new version has come out with a new design and LCD touch screen!

There are limited quantities and guess what? Silhouette America is giving one away before it even becomes available to purchase! To enter visit their blog post here!!!

The pricing info is below and if you preorder you can actually get 10% off right now. It is also available for preorder on Amazon!

A new video they posted showing off their new machine :

Introducing the new Silhouette CAMEO® from Silhouette America on Vimeo.

Woven hot air balloon baby mobile

For a friend's baby shower I was looking for a different kind of baby mobile idea on Pinterest and came across a woven 3D baby mobile that caught my eye. I honestly didn't know what I was getting myself into!

I didn't take many photos in the process since it took me a LONG time to make each balloon and I am so thankful I only had to make five of them haha. For these balloons, you do not need a die cutter like I have, so you can still cut it out by hand if you want. It would just take a longer time. The pattern can be found here.

The PapterMatrix website is great and actually provides tutorial videos, they aren't perfect but it helped me out a lot when trying to figure out how to put the balloons together.

The materials you need are:

1. Glue
2. Paper
3. Tons of paper clips! (You NEED these!)
4. Beads
5. Dowels
6. Fishing line or another type of thin string
7. PATIENCE!

The first balloon actually took me TWO hours to make, YES TWO!!! I was pretty frustrated at it and I started to think about whether or not I should actually make them. I decided to push through and the rest of the balloons took me about 45 minutes each to make.

It was pretty hard to get the baskets on the balloons too, as you can see some of them are crooked in the photo =(. I probably wouldn't make another one of these since it took a long time. However, if you have the patience and this would be a beautiful one to make for yourself or for a friend!

Happy birthday with layered balloon stamp

I created this card for a friend who has a birthday coming up and hopefully this person is going to like it when it arrives in the mail! I normally don't post cards before the recipient receives them but the timing of posts didn't work out!

For this card, I first used my silhouette cameo and stamping kit to cut out a balloon shape. Originally I was planning on buying a balloon stamp, but it was hard to find the perfect shape that I wanted to use. Stamps are also super expensive and the Cameo allows me to create any shape I want, whenever I want! 

The inspiration for this card was from Pinterest and the original card had three different colors but I decided to stick with two to make it easier for me to stamp.

Also! It is so convenient to have envelopes that I pre-made with different colors! Beats having to find an envelope every time I make a card!! For the post on how I made more cards, click here!