Father's Day "Dad" Card

 

Now that my Dad has received his Father's day card, I can blog about creating the card. 

I decided that I should learn how to use the pens that came with my Silhouette Cameo 4, and the best way to do that is to have a project for it. I picked the DAD Word Art SVG cut file by Creative Fabrica Crafts. 

Now, the original file looked like this.

I learned that the Silhouette pens actually follow "cut" lines by default rather than automatically coloring in the shapes. So that is why all my letters look like outlines rather than colored in. I actually wound up coloring in the hearts after the machine finished drawing because I hadn't yet determined how to tell the Cameo to color things in properly. That will have to be reserved for another project.

I had some minor issues with the pens skipping here and there, and also with pen drag lines, especially on the back of the card. It also looks like someone - probably me - touched it when the ink was still damp as it's smeared a bit at the top. No matter, Dad liked the card anyway. 

I have since learned - from reading on other sites - that the trick to avoiding the drag lines is to support the mat so that it doesn't bend, causing the cardstock to unstick near the upper edge. Next time I create something with the pens, I'll be sure to put down a few books or magazines under the mat to function as an extension table to hold the mat out flat. 

Now, the inside of the card is interesting because I wound up printing it to another piece of paper and then gluing the paper onto the card. 

Why?

Well, someone (me) forgot to adjust the size of the design area, so the first printout of this design was way down on the page and would have printed off the sheet if I hadn't stopped it. 

I edited the original design slightly by removing the moustache because my father has never had a moustache. The design is the free "Happy Father's Day" design by T-shirtworld, available on the Creative Fabrica site.

I set up the design to fill in the words using cross-hatching. I think I spaced it out too much. I haven't yet figured out how to get the pens to do a solid fill so it looks like I still have a lot to learn, and will have to do more pen projects in the future to really master how this works.

Stay tuned for future crafting adventures. 

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