Happy St. Patrick's Day! I hope you have fun celebrating today. If you find that pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, let me know!
I wanted to make something that "looked Irish" for the holiday. When I saw this design in the Dover Sampler offerings, I had to give it a try as a cutting file. (Remember, you can sign up for the Dover Sampler here - it's free. I have no connection to the company - just a happy customer).
There is actually a vector file that you can download. I could tell it was too finely detailed to cut well at a small size but I tried to cut this directly from the Dover file in a larger size (about 8 inches) using the Make the Cut program and my Silhouette SD. It worked pretty well except for one segment where the paper pulled up from the mat and the blade and carriage then chewed up the cut.
In this closer view you can see just how tiny some of the cuts are - particularly the cuts inside the "pretzel" shape. I decided to bring the file into my Silhouette Studio software, trace it and eliminate areas that I knew would cut poorly.
I eliminated many of the interior cuts to come up with a design that I hoped would be "cuttable" in a card size. Then I created layers so I could add colors to create the interwoven effect of the image.
I was very happy to see how cleanly the design cut after I had modified it.
A lot of the lines in the design are less than 1/16th of an inch!
Most of the inner pieces stayed on the mat when I gently lifted the top layer of the cut. Sometimes I save the negative space pieces to make a second image but I decided this would be too fiddly to try to adhere to another card.
I tried several color combinations, adding in some orange and yellow but I decided it would be best to use just shades of green. I found two glittery sheets of Core'dinations Core Couture - one light and one dark green - to coordinate with the two solid shades I started with.
Once I had all of the layers cut, I did a "dry fit" to stack them up and create the design. This design is not totally symmetrical and I wanted to be sure I had it lined up correctly.
I flipped the pieces over and made a light pencil mark on the back of the same point on each layer. This gave me a quick reference when I was adhering the pieces together.
I used the Letra-Tac adhesive sheet for the delicate top layer. These tiny dots are great for holding the thin layers together. (Click to see my first post about this adhesive with more details).
Here is the adhesive side of the second layer after I burnished it on the Letra Tac sheet. The adhesive holds the cut very well but you can peel it up and realign the layers if you get a bit off.
Each of the layers fills in a section of the design - the first two alternate with three triangles each and the last is for the connecting "ribbon" that weaves through all of the sections.
The second layer adds the darker green glitter cardstock.
Finally, the shadow background fills in the "ribbon" and adds an outer border.
For a little more sparkle, I added a light green Vintage Gem from Creative Charms in the center. (These are included in the Inventory Clearance right now).
I looked around a bit more and added some gem stickers in three shades of green at opposite points.
I used lots of foam circles to lift the heavy layered medallion off the front of the card. The card base is Papertrey Ink cardstock in "New Leaf" from the Perfect Match series.
I do not recommend using this punch with the glitter cardstock - I had a very hard time getting the punch to release and had to use a tool after each punch to pop it back into starting position (fortunately it only took three punches to get the border piece long enough for the card).
I cut the strip a bit longer and then trimmed to bottom to match the card. At the top, I wrapped it over just a bit to avoid the "not quite long enough" look that you sometimes get when you try to cut the border flush to the fold.
I punched a four leaf clover from some of the dark green cardstock and added it to the back to finish the raw edge.
The width of the loops is about the same as the width of the lines in the medallion so I thought they went together nicely.
You could stamp a sentiment on the lower right corner...
...or add a couple more shamrocks.
You could also make this a vertical card. Once you have the medallion made, there are lots of possibilities for using it. I think it would also look pretty on a scrapbook page.
If you have questions about how I used the sample image to create this final design, let me know. I'll add it to the list of videos I need to make!
Have a great weekend - we expect some nice weather from Sunday into the middle of next week (in the 70's!).
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