Hello lovely readers! Remember when I shared my DIY Bird Wall Art tutorial a while back?
Well, I am FINALLY back to show you how I made the inspiring Silhouette sketch pen art that is my favorite print in the art grouping in my craft room {you can check out the full craft room reveal here}. I just adore the quote on it and lots of you do, too! The full short poem by Erin Hanson is:
“There is freedom waiting for you,
On the breezes of the sky,
And you ask “What if I fall?”
Oh but my darling,
What if you fly?”
Isn't that AMAZING? Love it. Read on to learn how I brought it to life using my Silhouette sketch pens!
Materials Needed:
- A bird image to work with–I purchased the digital print I used from theinknest Esty shop for only $8.50 {and it included 7 other prints as well}.
- Silhouette Sketch Pens in metallic
- Silhouette CAMEO
{have you SEEN the amazing new Silhouette CAMEO that was just released?! I want one!}
{have you SEEN the amazing new Silhouette CAMEO that was just released?! I want one!}
- 12 x 12 Card stock in 6 different colors {I purchased this Brights Cardstock Stack 12″–needless to say, I have tons left over for other projects}
- 12 x 12 card stock in a neutral color to apply your birds to. I used grey/silver.
- Elmer's Craftbond Spray Glue
- Frames for your finished prints. I purchased mine from Amazon: 12×12 Scrapbook Frame
–needless to say, I have tons left over for other projects}
Steps:
For those of you that like video tutorial, I made one for you! It's my first, so please forgive the “ums.” It's around 6 minutes long and I think it's pretty easy to follow. If you watch it, please let me know what you think!
1) Open your Silhouette Studio software. Start by selecting a font that you want to use for your quote. I used a font called Sketch Lisa, which you can purchase for $2.99 in Silhouette Studio.
2) Adjust your settings to reflect that you are using 12 x 12 paper and a 12 x 12 inch cutting mat.
3) Next, click on the text icon, which is an “A” in your sidebar. Type out your text and adjust the size as needed.
4) Load your Silhouette sketch pen the same way you would load your cutting blade {be sure to remove the cap first}. I used the gold pen. Adjust your “cut settings” to select sketch pens in the “materials” drop down option box. Then, send it to your Silhouette and let it do its magic! When it was done, I decided I wanted the text to be a bit thicker, so I traced it with a gold metallic paint pen. I NEVER could have free-handed this, and the sketch pens made this super easy to trace. If you are happy with it as is, you don't need to trace it with a paint pen.
5) Now you are ready to add your bird. Open a new drawing in the Silhouette Studio software. Use the trace function to trace your image. This will set the cut lines for your project. You will have to tweak the settings until you get the cut lines exactly how you want them. You can see the image that I started with and what it looked like once I traced it. You can find an excellent tutorial for how to use the trace function for external images on the Silhouette America website–check it out by clicking here. There's also a fantastic YouTube video on the tracing feature here.
I started with this digital image that I purchased from theinknest Esty shop.
And you can see how it looks after I traced it. Bear in mind that I needed to cut the bird to a small size, so that it would fit the small, blank space on the bottom left corner of card stock.
6) Once your image is traced, select the media you are using. In this case, I selected card stock and adjusted my blade according to the recommended settings. I placed my first color of card stock on my cutting mat and let my Silhouette CAMEO work its cutting magic. Then, I removed all of the cut pieces from the cutting mat. You will repeat this step for as many colors as you plan to use. I used 2 colors, so I did this 2 times. Since the machine does the work for you, this is quick and easy! This is what you will end up with for each color after you remove the excess card stock.
7) After both colors are cut, you are ready to start “assembling” your bird on your card stock that already has the quote on it. For this step, you will you spray the area of your card stock that you are going to place the bird with your Elmer's Craftbond Spray Glue
.
Then, place the main body of your bird on the paper first. It should stick well because of the glue, but not so well that you can't reposition it if you make a mistake. Then, start filling in the rest of the bird with all of your “mosaic” pieces that were cut out from the second color of card stock. I did not follow any rhyme or reason in terms of picking my colors or following a certain color pattern–I wanted it to be fairly random.
Once all your pieces are in place, you are done! That's it! I just love how this turned out.
What do you think? Have you ever seen anything like this? I haven't, so I am pretty proud of myself for what I think is an original idea! If you love it, too, I would love for you to share it on Facebook or Pinterest :)
Interested in getting your own Silhouette?! Click the link to check out the amazing Black Friday deals going on through December 8th, 2014!
If you enjoyed this art project, you may also want to check out how I create my own DIY photo canvases {with REAL texture} and how I created DIY art for my powder room. You can also see how I painted that gorgeous geometric dresser here.
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[…] that I made for the room {the tutorial for the bird art can be found here and the tutorial for the Silhouette sketch pen quote art can be found here}. The bird art has special meaning to me, as does the quote you see on one of them. It’s […]