Using Your Silhouette Cameo Vinyl on Stained Artwork

In a few days I will be sharing my Industrial basement playroom. When I had the room mostly complete, I realized it needed one more thing. 

I had a lot of 12x24 in boards laying around, So I decided to stain one, and create some fabulous artwork for the playroom. 

I love the contrast between stained wood and paint, so decided to bring out my Silhouette Cameo and create a fun playroom appropriate saying. 

I quickly quickly realized applying vinyl from a Silhouette is nearly impossible on stained wood if you do not spend a lot of time wiping extra stain from your board, which I never did!!! So this was a much harder project than it needed to be!! (Doesn't it always seem to be like that, something that should be simple always finds a way to be extra difficult.)

I love my finished result. I think it looks great in my industrial playroom!! And now I know how to stain a board and use vinyl from your silhouette!!

See more of my projects using stencils I made with my Cameo.

See more of my projects using my Cameo.

DIY Railroad Crossing Sign

Last week I revealed my son's train bedroom. If I did't say it enough in my reveal post, I LOVE this room. Love it!!!! I would not change a thing (ok I would add a headboard..... which I never got around too... )

One of my favorite pieces in his room is this large railroad crossing sign.

When I started planning for his room I knew I wanted this sign to be a feature. I just was not sure how I was going to create or find it!

After a lot of thought on how to cheaply get a big circle piece of wood, I decided to search for one of those 3 legged wooden round decorative side tables! I asked around with family because someone had to have one of these tables laying around!!! My aunt did and the legs were broken so it was a great free win for me!!!!

A little bit of painting tape, some "R" stencils (I made mine with my Silhouette) and some yellow and black paint and I had a free large railroad crossing sign!!

If you need more information on stenciling, visit my other stencil projects!

Wood Veneer Sketch Artwork using Silhouette Cameo

My mom has some simple leaf art she purchased from Pottery Barn a few years back and I have always liked it and thought I could make something very similar and probably WAY WAY cheaper! The artwork is so simple - it's sketches of leaves on green paper and since I just discovered the sketch feature on my Silhouette I figured this was a great project to copy. 

I thought I would take this project a step farther and use some wood veneer I had left over from a dresser project and sketch my leafs directly onto the wood veneer! I used Band It Veneer Facing, 24" x 48" Birch and I just used a piece that fit onto my cutting mat and used the sketch feature like you normally would with paper and it turned out awesome! 

I love how they turned out. I have to admit I was a little nervous if it would actually print on the wood veneer but it worked out great! I love how easy these sketch projects are and I love the extra detail of the wood grain in these prints! 

 I made three of these so far and have a feeling I will be using the last bit of veneer to create some more!! 

Ok, random, but look at the below picture.... there is an EYE in the wood grain and now that I saw it I feel like I am being watched at all times!!! CREEPY!!! Halloween and everyday art all in one! 

Chalk Art With Silhouette Sketch

I have had my Silhouette for almost 3 years and I finally played around with the sketch function! I think it is safe to say I am slightly obsessed! 

Not only was it SOO easy to create some cute artwork but it was so fast and did I say EASY! 

Black paper, white Silhouette pen and a map of the US shape and I had some super fast and super cute artwork for our playroom! And I love how the white pen on black does look like a chalk board! 

Train Artwork

I have slowly showed bits and pieces of Little Man's new Big Boy room. Well today I have some simple artwork I made for his book shelves. I downloaded the shape from the Silhouette website. 

Little Man loves to say "All a board" so it was an easy addition to add to the sign!

This was so easy to make!! Check out the other stencils I have made with my Silhouette Cameo for tutorials on how I made this! 

Christmas Subway Art

I love the Subway Art I made for my living room.  As I was recently admiring it, I thought I should figure out where I bought that board so I could make another one in that size since I like the size!! It's a 12 x 24 inch board. Well...... a light bulb went off..... why not just use the back side of the board, then I don't have to store either when its not in use!!!!

SO here is my new Christmas Subway art. It works for this year, but I created my file in Silhouette Studio on my laptop using the same font I used on my black one and sent it to myself to cut out on my desktop.... and SOMEHOW the font changed!!!!! I didn't realize until I had the entire thing cut out and placed on the board... so I had extra space.... so its not as perfect as I would like it to be.... it meant I had to done some piecing together and some of the lines are not straight :) Has anyone else every had this problem???

Maybe if I am bored in the next couple weeks or next year I will re-do it!!! But just think of all of that vinyl I would waste and it works for now!!!

Fishy 3rd Birthday

When my friend asked me to help her with her son's 3rd Birthday party I jumped at the chance! I love party planning and was very excited with the opportunity. It was also a good challenge since I am not great about that little B word.... Budget!! She gave me a $100 budget and I was actually able to stay within the budget!!

The theme was blue and green fish! I am so happy how it turned out and I hope Collin and his mommy are just as happy with it! 

I started with a back drop of streamers. So easy and I really like the look!!! I then cut out a TON (seriously no clue how many I cut out) of circles in paper of white and blue. And sewed and sewed and sewed them together into four strands of garland and attached it to the streamers. I then used my Silhouette Cameo and cut out green fish spelling out "Happy Birthday Collin" I repeated the process for making garland to line the shelf. I have to say I am really happy with how this turned out and this was really just paper, streamers, ribbon and lots of time sewing!!

I bought these cute but boring blue buckets from the Target dollar isle. But a little vinyl and they look like cute custom party favors!

Inside each party favor bucket was a custom made wrapper for Gold Fish, a sucker with a vinyl sticker cut from the Cameo and a small container of bubbles (because what kid does not LOVE bubbles!!!)

The birthday boy's mommy made this fabulously cute cake!!! And it was surrounded by more green and blue candy!! (Do you realize how hard it is to find blue and green candy :) ) I used my Cameo and some ribbon to decorate the glass jars.

Don't you love the cupcakes the birthday boy's mommy also made!! I tried one, they tasted as good as they looked!!

I also made some candy fish. I sort of have this strange obsession with liking to make these chocolate candies.... even though I don't actually like the taste of this chocolate.... but I find them fun to make... and I love how cute they turned out!!!

More circles sewed together and hung from the ceiling.

I made the pendant banner from scrapbook paper and washi tape. So easy to make! We added some cute blue and white striped straws (with a little fish attached of course) to some simple kids cups from Target.

I also made water bottle labels, but I didn't take a close up picture of them! I seriously love these little cups with the fish straws!!

Happy Birthday Collin! I hope you enjoyed your fish party!!

More Subway Art

I finally made myself some Subway art, after making it for everyone else!!

I used a 12x24in piece of plywood for mine and pretty much followed my previous post Subway Art Sans the Silhouette except this time I did use the Silhouette!

I learned a few lessons on this. I designed my 12x24 inch file in the Silhouette studio software which was fine but its kind of hard dealing with that large of a piece of vinyl! I used transfer tape (not the transfer paper) for the first time. Did you  know there was transfer paper and transfer tape? I kind of like the transfer tape better, its basically a large roll of masking tape. So again dealing with a 12x24inch piece of transfer tape was a lot of tape to deal with. I placed the entire 12x24inch piece at one time and then ripped the transfer tape row by row only removing one row at a time. The whole thing took a lot more time that I thought BUT it worked out perfect!

The vinyl was perfectly straight!!!

  AND I used the trick of painting a layer of your base coat over the vinyl before using your top coat (in my case white) I really do think it helps! AND I have one letter that up close was not 100% perfect!

I am so happy with how it turned out! I love its "odd" size! I decided not to distress it. I might still go back and do that. I was just so happy with how it turned out I didn't want to go back and play with it any more!!

Nail State Art

My spin on the pin! I have seen this project on Pinterest several times and really wanted to try it out!

I started by spray painting my board with chalk board paint because I had it out from another project and I am sort of obsessed with chalk boards at th moment!

I cut out the state of Wisconsin using my Silhouette, but you could just print it out and cut it out by hand. I taped the paper image down to my board and started nailing!!!

Nailing the nails was a little more difficult than I thought it would be. In some spots it was just hard to hold the nail because of the angle and some I did not get in tight enough (this is important!! especially on the heart because it holds a lot of string!)

I love how it already looks!!!

I then started wrapping my string over all of the nails. The key here was to go slow and to pull it tight but not too tightly or you might pull the nails out. I did have to go back and nail in a few nails as I did this part. Since I used chalk paint I love that I can write whatever I want on the bottom! I ended up giving this to my sister and her husband for part of their wedding gift. I plan to make myself one sometime soon!

 

Not including painting and drying the background, I completed this project over a 6 hour time span. And I did put my little man to bed, make dinner and a few other things, so it took me less than 6 hours. Which is not too bad, I thought it would take a lot longer! 

Linked up at Dog Days of Winter Link Party

Baby Girl Name Plaque

Over the weekend we went to a Baptism for an adorable 9 week old. I didn't know what to get her and since I didn't get her anything when she was born I decided to make her a wall hanging for her bedroom with her name on it.

A while back I purchased these awesome wall plaques from Restoration Hardware Baby and Child. They are thick 17x17 inches of wood. I had to prime the board to cover up what was there, which meant I only needed two thing coats of pink paint!

I made the stencil with my Cameo Silhouette. I forgot to grab my transfer paper so I improvised and used wide painters tape. It worked in a pinch!

I am loving this plaque and so happy with how it turned out!! 

The boards come with the ribbon attached and I actually removed it before gifting it because the ribbon is brown and the paint is gray (pretend you don't notice that in my picture :) )

Brownie Box to Washi Tape Mail Sorter

In my procrastination for my wedding duties, I decided I needed to organize my kitchen (there will be more on this later!!!) I decided I needed an inbox for bills and things that needed attention. Yes I could have gone to Target and bought one, BUT this was SUPER easy to make and really took me less than 30 minutes!

I started with 2 brownie boxes and NO plan, just a vision!

I started by cutting the top 1/3 of my box off and then cutting down the front of both sides of the box.

I then drew a diagonal line on the side of the box from the top to the bottom (see the picture on the right) to allow for the angled shape I wanted.

Fold on the line and cut off the extra little flap (Don't cut off the extra from your fold line, this is how you attach the two sides!)

Repeat this for the other side of the box.

Then, repeat the above few steps for the other box! I used the first box as a template for the second (see the image below on the left) Then to assemble, a little hot glue on the flap side, press and hold.

Glue both sides, and assemble the second box. SO easy! Then hot glue the two boxes together.

A finished, yet ugly In Box!

To decorate I used my Target Washi tape. As long as you don't look at the back.... I just applied layers of the tape until I had the design I wanted! (I changed my color from this picture to my final pictures!!) 

I used my Silhouette Cameo to cut out two fun shapes with Chalkboard vinyl! A couple Command Adhesive strips on the back and I have a new organized in-box!

It feels so much better to be organized!