Hello,

Now we are into February, traditionally the month of love, we thought we would share our love of card making with you, and in line with last weeks blog, where we made 2 designs out of the one file, this design could be made into a variety of projects, including cards, canvas and framed art, and you could use the heart layers to create a bag or T-shirt design too, or alternatively use it with your sewing machine instead and create something truly unique.

Did you see last weeks blog? showing you how to create a Heart themed design, reusing the waste weeded vinyl, to create a second design? Click here to see it.

Have you found our papercrafts section on the website yet? We have a great selection of A4 card packs, including bright and pastel solid core, metallic mirror finishes, glossy, linen textured card, as well as standard white and of course a fantastic selection of non shed glitter card, which is perfect for cake toppers. Lastly in the papercraft section is our Printable media, and our Transfer adhesive, which is fantastic to use within your crafting as well as around the home too.  Click here to see the full papercrafts range.

We would love to see what you make!  Have you found our You Tube channel yet? The video showing this and all of our other tutorials are  available on there, as well as exclusive demos, inspiration and more!  Join us on Facebook , Instagram or Tiktok or  send us an email to [email protected] we would love to hear from you!

 

What you’ll need:

• Cricut machine Available  Here Or Silhouette Cameo 4. Available Here 
• Matt self adhesive Vinyl, Available Here
• A4 White Card. Available Here
• A4 Black Satin Gloss Card . Available Here
• A4 Red Linen Card. Available Here
• A4 Silver Glitter Card. Available Here
• A4 Pack or roll of Transfer Adhesive Available Here
• Application Tape Available Here
• Squeegee. Available Here
• GMCrafts LED light (weeding) panel. Available here 
• Weeding tweezers . Available Here
• Scissors from your own stash
• Cut files, which are free below! Including, Cricut, Silhouette and Brother cut files.

Love Art Card Cut Files for all machines click here to download

Instructions;

1. Before you start you will need to download the cut files for your chosen machine, link above. Unzip the file to use it by right clicking it in your downloads.

2. Upload each PNG into the design space. Click “Upload Image” on the left-hand Design Panel, and navigate to the  files you want to open. Select ‘Insert image’ and select image type ‘simple’ when prompted. Next you’ll be asked to delete any space that does not get cut, you can skip this part by pressing ‘continue’. When asked if they’re print-then-cut images or just cut images, select cut images. Click save. When it has been uploaded, Insert the images onto the canvas and resize to suit your project, I Recolour each one differently, so I can cut the different Card, Vinyl etc for each layer, which means I don’t have to keep returning to the design page, see below.

We have included 2 varieties of the red and silver heart layers for you, 1 is spaced out as we have shown in the demonstration, the other option is close together to prevent waste, which one you choose depends on your preferences. Please see below we have resized this to it a A5 card front. When you are ready click make it to move on to the next screen. On the next screen, If using the Cricut Maker 3 then you will need to choose to cut on the mat (unless using smart media) Click done, and then continue on the next screen.

3. Click continue in the bottom right on the next screen. In the next window make sure your settings are all set to the successful settings from your test cut and ensure your machine is linked before proceeding to cut. Cut settings: (**please test cut) Press the flashing Cricut symbol on your maker to cut, after loading the sheet into the machine. Apply the settings needed for your chosen Card or Vinyl, we made it with our GM card on the maker 3, and used the Heavy Card stock setting on the Cricut maker 3 with More pressure. When cutting the Matt Self adhesive please use Premium Outdoor Vinyl- with Less pressure.

**A reminder that these settings, including the blade setting, are specific to the materials and machine we’re using, adjustments may be necessary if using different materials and machine**

We always recommend before proceeding, you test cut your materials when first using so if you have not recently used this product in your machine. Please test cut for your chosen machine found on our Application guide, and also Blog.  Load the Vinyl chosen individually for each layer.

 

4. Place the Vinyl for the splash layer you are cutting on the mat. Press the up arrow to load the mat, and press the flashing light to proceed to cut on the machine. Once cut remove the mat from the machine by pressing the down arrow, flexing the mat away from the vinyl, peel the sheet away from the mat in the opposite direction, before trimming the uncut part away, saving for another project, as below.

5.  Once cut remove from the mat to prepare to weed, switch your LED pad on ready to take the excess waste vinyl away (weeding). Proceed to trim the excess uncut areas away from the Self Adhesive vinyl as mentioned above, before proceeding to weed all the unwanted vinyl surrounding material.

6. Take the Transfer Application tape, lay it on the table Sticky side face up. Place the sheet with the design onto the sticky side, with the design face down onto the sticky side. Rub the back of the vinyl carrier with your squeegee as shown, then trim with scissors.

7. Place the Card for the first layer you are cutting on the mat. Press the up arrow to load the mat, and press the flashing light to proceed to cut on the machine. When cut remove the mat from the machine, and flex the mat away from the back of the card to allow easier removal. Repeat this step for all the next Card layers.

TOP TIP- we have included 2 versions of the Red and Silver card layers in the cut files to allow you to cut as we are showing below, or to cut the hearts close together to save waste, which one you choose is up to you.

8. Once you have cut all your layers, take the first Vinyl piece you’ve cut and weeded, and the cut white card layer, place the white card on your table, then place the vinyl in position on the card, with the sticky side face up first, to allow you be sure of the alignment before turning over to apply.

9. Rub with the squeegee from the middle out to remove any air bubbles, before gently rolling the application tape back upon itself to remove from the card leaving the vinyl in place.

10. Take your pack (or roll) of Transfer adhesive, fold it back on its self to reveal the adhesive layer underneath as shown below and place the white card plain side, onto the sticky yellow side of the sheet. See below. You can place the white sheet back over and rub with your Squeegee, should you wish.

11. Peel the yellow backing, leaving the adhesive behind on the card, ready to layer this onto the Black cut piece as shown below.

12. Repeat step 11 with the back of the Black layer, and apply this to the Red layer as shown below.

13. Take the transfer adhesive sheet, and the cut Red and Silver hearts, applying these to the transfer sheet before applying to the front of the card design as shown below, this transfer sheet can be used to adhere any embellishments, ribbon etc should you choose, and even to cut and apply loose glitter as well as gilding flakes too- we have a tutorial for this by clicking here

14. Now we have our finished card front design, we can take it to create our finished card, take another piece of the A4 white card, as shown below, fold it in half, matching each corner to create a square neat finished edge,  to create your A5 card blank, and burnish the fold with your squeegee.

15. Once again take your transfer sheet and apply the back of the red card layer to it, to coat it in the adhesive, before applying to the front of your card blank, creating your finished card design. See Below.

Don’t forget your finished design can be matched by using any material cut using a cutting file, card, self adhesive vinyl or even HTV. We’d love to see your makes on our social media pages! Or email them in!

Silhouette Cut File

Instructions:

Before you start, you need to download the cut file,  Upload the cut file into Silhouette Studio and resize as necessary,  (when resizing bring all  layers into the design software and select all  at once to get the correct offset layers and save the adjusted file, so you can cut layers individually at that correct scale you have chosen) Remember to test cut if necessary and cut settings are found here along with test cut guidelines for every machine.

Brother Cut File

To import these files into the Brother Canvas Workspace:

After downloading, please log in as usual to your design space account, open a new project mat, then left click on the SVG  icon in the top left bar in canvas, this will then allow you to import your files. Once you left click this icon, a pop up box appears with you to choose where to import file  from, choose to import the file from your downloads list or where you have chosen to save when unzipped.

Cut settings are found here

Just incase you need the link CanvasWorkspace (brother.com)