Posted on October 3, 2017 by kabram — 2 Comments

Bin Labels HTV DIY – Organize your life!

Move Complete!

Have you moved lately? Well, we just moved from Michigan to Colorado! It is lots and lots of work. And requires a lot of good organization. All of which is made better by these adorable bin labels!

If you missed me, that is where I have been. Packing. Unpacking. Packing. Unpacking. Repeat.

Having grown up in Colorado, I am happy to be back and near family again.

Unfortunately, since Colorado is so awesome and everyone else wants to be here too, housing prices are much steeper here. Not just a little steeper. I’m talking 7 or 8 times steeper! For example, coming from our lovely 6 bedroom house on 4 acres in Michigan, we will have trouble finding a condo for the same price!

Getting Organized with Bin Labels

Downsizing was actually some amount of fun, until we got to our apartment and realized that getting rid of half our stuff wasn’t enough! So, that is what I have been doing the past month or so. Organizing. Getting rid of stuff. Organizing is the fun part though.

Knowing this, you can see where this project came from. It was born of necessity and the desire to have my children put their toys away so that I can preserve my sanity in our new 2 bedroom living space! Thus, the idea for our new bin labels was born. Well, it was actually in my head for quite a while. It was going to be one of my finishing touches on the playroom I was working on in Michigan. Take a look at how awesome it was!

Playroom in Michigan

Alas, it was time to move on. Hopefully someone else will move in and enjoy the fun colors and the animal alphabet that I left on the wall!

Do you also have seemingly hundreds of toys underfoot? Are you constantly frustrated with different types and sets of toys getting jumbled into one big mess? Do your kids need help knowing where everything ought to go? Then you need some of these bins and these adorable bin labels!

Take Stock of Your Items

First, you need to take stock of what you are trying to organize. For me, this meant categorizing the toys in my girls’ room and putting them in different bins. Undoubtedly, they have too many toys. However, once in bins and labeled with these cute bin labels, it looks much more manageable. Also, remember to try to match the number of categories to the number of bins you have available.

Here are the bin label categories I came up with for the toys we have:

DOCTOR
DRESS UP
CALICO CRITTERS
PLAYMOBIL
BOOKS ON TAPE
LEGO
MUSIC
CARS
DOLLS
BLOCKS
LITTLE PEOPLE
DISHES
FOOD
TOOLS

In addition, I added each of my daughter’s names so that they could have a bin of their own. Next, I looked for a simple, cute design for each category. The idea was to have a cohesive looking set of images that helped my not yet literate daughters identify each bin on their own.

Most of the images I found doing a quick google image search. Some I had to work more on to get what I wanted. The font I used is called “Mail Ray Stuff”. I really like how the images turned out. I am especially fond of the cute baby on the “LITTLE PEOPLE” bin.

Create your Bin Labels

Feel free to use my labels and images for your own personal use. However, I do not recommend using them for commercial uses as I am not positive on the copyrights of each one.

REMEMBER TO CUT THESE OUT IN REVERSE ON YOUR HTV!

Quality Materials

Since this was my very first Heat Transfer Vinyl project, I wanted to use the good stuff. And, from what I hear, Siser Easy Weed is where it is at. I found a roll at my local Michaels and it was on a great sale to boot! All in all, I was very impressed by the stuff. Also, it is actually much easier to weed than Oracle vinyl that I am used to working with.

So, back to the project.

Decide how large you want things and cut it out! This is on you. Then cut out each label and weed out the extra. Your image is reversed, right?

Finally, the fun part – ironing the bin labels on and seeing the results. I followed the directions on the packaging of my HTV and used a grill mat to place over the images while ironing.

Results – Bin material matters too!

If you look at my results, you can see that some of my bins turned out spectacular. Unfortunately, some have nice imprints of the iron. This was largely due to the bins themselves. My nice large fabric IKEA ones look great. No iron imprints, just clean and crisp.

My cheap polyester bins which came from who knows where, did not hold up well. Since I didn’t want to buy new bins, I just went with it. They still work. Some are just much prettier than others!

~~Now, sit back and admire your work.~~ Wait, scratch that. Go get to organizing!

Posted on June 28, 2017 by kabram — 1 Comment

Fourth of July – free name card SVG

Can you believe that June is almost gone? It has gone by very quickly for our family!

Fourth of July

Well, here I am always thinking about the next holiday and what SVG files I should create. Feeling patriotic? Great! I have just the thing for you. These little name cards would be great for labeling food at your great big 4th of July party!

Do you have any family recipes that only come out on the 4th of July? Our family has one that we like to call the “Fourth of July Dip”. Really, it is just a delicious 7-layer dip that covers a huge serving platter. I’m sure that the recipe is no secret. However, the dip is delicious and is rarely seen in our family except on the 4th of July.

4th of July Name Cards

So, what do you think of these cute little cards? I am partial to them. Since I like my projects to be as simple as possible, these cards only have 3 pieces – one for each color.

Free 4th of July SVG file download

And now, of course, the download. Please enjoy! As always, this is for your personal use only and I love to see pictures if you end up using it!

Note that the download will give you an SVG file which you can import into your software and ungroup to get each color separately.

Also, be sure to check out my fun STARS SVG file. Let me know how this one cuts if you try it out!

Thanks for stopping by and have a wonderful Fourth of July!

Posted on April 26, 2017 by kabram — Leave a comment

Mommy Duck and Ducklings Card

Ducklings!

A mommy duck and ducklings just screams Spring! I am so glad that Spring has arrived and the flowers and birds have come to stay a while.

We had a little yellow duckling once. Sadly, it was a part of our failed run with guinea hens and a duck. Apparently, we have a hungry m
ink nearby good enough to weasel in almost anywhere.

Find the FREE SVG File in THIS POST

Happily, this little SVG cutting file is much more cheerful in nature. The bow, the ducklings, the flowers, it is hard to pass up.

Pretty Little Cards

Well, I have finally gotten around to actually cutting out this little file from a while back. Take a look at the original post for this cut file if you would like the free svg file download.

You can see the cute little results. You can also see my first experiment with watercolor for a background. While it looks nice enough, I think I have significant room for improvement!

Sentiment?

As of today, they are ready to go on cards but haven’t been assembled yet.

What sentiment would you attach to these? Is there something nice and springy? Or perhaps a simple “hello”? I may try to incorporate it into a Mother’s Day card.

Thanks for stopping by. Have a wonderful Spring!

~Kristin

Posted on April 22, 2017April 22, 2017 by kabram — Leave a comment

Earth Day – Download your free earth day SVG file now!

Earth Day!

Does anyone here do anything for earth day? Sadly, I really don’t. However, it was a great way to come up with new ideas for SVG files. This is just a quick trace of a nice looking silhouette of the globe. It would look great on a travel scrapbook page or perhaps on an Earth Day t-shirt!

In case you are interested, this is the original clip art file! I didn’t change it much. First, I did a quick trace in Adobe Illustrator. Second, I simplified it and smoothed the corners just a tad. Lastly, I widened the top line a bit to make the finished product a bit more sturdy!

What have you made recently? Show me your projects, I love to see them!!

Posted on March 19, 2017 by kabram — 2 Comments

How to Make Custom Silhouette Cut Outs

Do you love a custom silhouette as much as I do? I recently made some artwork for my girls’ playroom and received a lot of questions on how I did it. This article won’t go into too much depth as the process varies remarkably depending on the photo that you start with.

DIY Custom Silhouette from Photo

A crisp, clean silhouetted photo with nothing in the background will be much easier to create a custom silhouette cutting file from than one that has a lot going on.

First, take a look at the two photographs that I started with. In the first one, I caught an adorable moment of my husband and daughters holding hands. In the other, I have a mostly silhouetted view of my girls running through a tunnel at a playground.

custom silhouette image of father and daughters

Can you guess which one was easier to convert into a custom silhouette svg cutting file? Yep, the one on the right. While the second image is already well on its way to being a silhouette in its own right, the image of the three holding hands has a lot going on in the background. When there is a lot in the background, you aren’t going to be able to trace the image to get a nice crisp outline. So, this is the first thing you need to resolve if you want to get a nice svg cutting file from your photo.

First Step: Edit your image in some variety of Photo Software

While I just signed up for a subscription to Adobe Creative Cloud and am having a great time with it, the cost may be prohibitive for some. If you don’t have a go to image editing software, I highly recommend GIMP. It is a free software and can do quite a lot – almost as much as Photoshop if you know how to work it.

As I mentioned before, it is hard to give explicit directions for this step as it can vary so much between images. However, the goal is always the same. You need to make your image into a black and white image with lots of contrast and you need to remove as much of the background noise and distraction as you can.

Here is what my images looked like after I had played around with them for a while and cleaned them up as best as I could. Because the one with my two girls in the tunnel was a cleaner image to start with, it was already starting to look like a cutting file. On the left, however, the image with the three holding hands still needed a lot of work.

Second Step: Trace the Image

There are several ways to approach this next step. You can use the built in trace function in Silhouette Studio, however I typically prefer to use Inkscape. Here is a demonstration of using the trace function in Silhouette Studio to produce your custom silhouette image. As you can see, the result is quite messy and would require quite a lot of processing to make it as nice as my final draft.

Now, here is a different way to generate your custom silhouette using Inkscape. Inkscape is a free software available for download and is quite versatile. Notice how the resulting custom silhouette trace is much cleaner. This means there will be a whole lot less cleaning up by hand to do and it will take a lot less time. Remember, your time is valuable! In addition, I have also found Inkscape to be much more responsive and kind to me when I edit cutting files node by node.

If you look closely in the GIF above, you will see that the “Trace Bitmap” function has lots of options. Take your time and play around with these features. For my image, the “Brightness Steps” option seemed to work the best. I then separated the layers it gave me and picked the best one. I didn’t take the time to go into detail regarding this feature, but there are lots of tutorials on it already if you poke around. Here is one that I found. And, another good site if you want to learn more about Inkscape.

Adobe Illustrator also works with SVG files and will probably be something I play around with more in the future. In the meantime, please enjoy these GIF images and feel free to ask me any more detailed questions you may have regarding the process.

Third Step: Clean it Up

While this step is the most tedious, it is also very crucial to getting a nice clean cut. Basically, you need to go into your traced cutting file and do a few things. Let me see if I can list them out.

Delete nodes that you don’t want (you can see there were a lot of cluttered points on my images above).
Connect the paths where the trace didn’t get it quite right. For me, I needed to reconnect the girls’ ponytails to their heads!
Alter any shapes that seem a bit off if you desire.

With some practice and a LOT of patience, you can end up with a file that looks something like this one:

Custom Silhouette of My Girls

Click to download FREE SVG file.

Fourth Step: Cut it Out

Finally, we get to the fun part! Now that you have your file all ready to go, open it up in Silhouette Studio. I have the designer edition and can open SVG files directly. If you do not, you can save your file as a DXF from Inkscape and import it from there. As a caution, I do warn that I have personally had struggles with this method and recommend you read my experience with it before you invest too much time into trying to cut out your files.

The file with the custom silhouette of my two girls that I show above I ended up separating into two cuts. My other file, with them holding hands, only took one cut.

Since their playroom is all decked out in pink and green, I used a pretty pink 12″ x 12″ cardstock I had on hand. While this playroom has been a long time in process, it just keeps getting more exciting (in my humble opinion, of course). Feel free to check it out.

For the two layer cut, I cut the tunnel background into the pink layer and cut the girls out of the white cardstock. On the other cut I just used the pink as a solid background.

Once you get your images cut out to your liking, weed them and get them looking just right. Take a minute to sit back and admire them! If you made it this far, congratulations! I know this is a long tedious process, but you can get such fabulous custom silhouette results!

Fifth Step: Frame It!

Don’t let your beautiful silhouette just sit there on your craft table. Get it off the table and into a frame! I promise, this part is really no so hard. You will need:

A frame large enough for your cutout. Some I found on Amazon.
A decorative background paper.
Something to add dimension behind the cutout. I used scraps of Cork that I had on hand.
Adhesive I used a tape roller from the scrapbooking section of the craft store.

Decide where you want your background. Mine was slightly smaller than the frame, but larger than the mat. In order to ensure it wouldn’t slip around, I adhered it centered to the example insert they always have in the frame. Next, add your cork (or something with similar dimension) to the back of your custom silhouette cutout. Then, adhere it to the background. Center your art in the frame and close it up. It is really that simple.

Father and Daughters finally in their frame!

My sweet little girls all settled in their frame.

Well, I suppose that is all I have for today. Have you made any custom silhouette artwork? I would love to see it! Oh, and please excuse the quantity of social media images that follow, I really can’t put down my new CC apps!

Posted on December 20, 2013April 12, 2017 by kabram — Leave a comment

Experimenting with my new Silhouette Cameo!

New Silhouette Cameo = Excitement

I can’t stop feeling thrilled about my new silhouette cameo, which I was really blessed to receive as a Christmas bonus from my work – LTIIT. And… working on my new craft table was awesome!

First Project

After opening up and marveling at how light it was compared to my ecraft, I knew exactly what I wanted to try cutting out first. Awhile ago, I had made a file from one of our engagement photos that I was really excited about. It is an image of us standing together and it made a great silhouette.

Unfortunately, the ecraft could not cut this image out no matter what I tried. It would always mess up either my husband’s pants, or my nose and face. I think that due to the no mat cutting approach of the ecraft, it would always slip a little. Or, maybe my machine is just out of alignment. At any rate – the cameo got it on the first pass! Here is a picture of the finished cut:

Feel free to download the SVG for this file below.

Sketching with my Silhouette Cameo

My next thought was about sketches. Now, while the ecraft has a pen and theoretically can cut and draw an image simultaneously, the results are always less than stellar. The pen usually skips or doesn’t write, and the cut is not lined up properly. So, though I don’t yet have the cameo’s sketch pens, I decided to try a makeshift option. I wrapped a pen in some cardstock, stuck it in the cameo, and tada! Here is what I got:

So, how did I do it?

Well, for both images, I played around in both gimp and inkscape – both free programs you can download online! For the engagement silhouette, I simply picked a photo that I thought would make a good silhouetted and played with it in gimp. I changed the brightness and contrast dramatically. Turned the image to grayscale. Simplified it quite a bit and then pulled it into inkscape and hit “Object to Path”. Once I had a path, I simplified it further in inkscape and played a little with the nodes until I was satisfied. Since I don’t have the designer edition of the cameo software, I saved it as a dxf file for import into the cameo studio, and cut it out!

Making the Sketch File

The sketch was a bit more complicated. I started by following directions from this blog post that I pinned. The best thing I learned from that post was about the Eggbott Extension for Inkscape which allows you to fill a path with a hatch. This looks like a sketch and gives you a bunch of open paths – exactly what you want for a cameo sketch file.

However, I wasn’t satisfied with the very straight looking results in the post. I explored further and found the path effects editor already in Inkscape! Once you have a bunch of open paths, click one of them and go to Path -> Path Effect Editor. In the drop down, select “Sketch” and hit add. Then play around with the options until you get something you like. Once I had done this and liked my result, I then selected each part one at a time and hit “Object to Path” once more. The results of the Path Effect Editor aren’t turned into paths automatically, so I think this step is necessary. Now, you have a nice sketch! Save as a dxf file, and import it into your cameo software (this took more than a few seconds on my computer – it was a big file!).

Let me know if you have any questions!