Weddingbee Blog

So we’ve talked about what is going to be on our jam favour labels. It’s time to show you a few test labels I made! I’m all about testing and prototypes, and I’m so glad I didn’t dive into this with my first idea! You’ll see why soon.

I bought something I’d been coveting for a while back on Black Friday. I’ve never really made scrapbook layouts like Miss Lox does, but I have always been a huge fan of scrapbook supplies. I finally gave myself an excuse to start buying them by making greeting cards. You should see my stash! No wait, you shouldn’t, it’s a mess. Anyway, I’d been wanting a Cricut for a long time until I heard a card-making blog mention the Silhouette SD. It is similar to the Cricut in that it is a digital cutting machine, but unlike the Cricut, you don’t need cartridges to get new shapes! It comes with software, and once you’ve installed it you can use any font on your computer. They also sell shapes for about $0.99 in the Silhouette online store, which I think is way more convenient than any cartridge. So on Black Friday I found the best deal I could, and the Silhouette SD became mine. I’ve tested it out a few times, but this is the first project I’ve started.

The other great thing about the Silhouette is that you can set things to print or cut.

It isn’t a printer—you print on your regular printer then feed it in the Silhouette to cut. The Silhouette software prints registration marks so the machine can find where it is on the page and cut everything perfectly. This feature is great for getting text on shaped pieces of paper!

I took all the following photos of the process myself.

The scene: My compter/crafting desk, with the Silhouette in the centre. Here you can see the paper I printed the words on. You can see 3 L shapes on the corners of the paper—these are the registration marks. The transparent thing to the right of the cardstock is the cutting mat. It is sticky, and you stick your paper to it before it goes through the machine. There are different ones for paper and for cardstock. Do not stick paper to the cardstock one—the adhesive is so strong it rips printer paper to shreds when you try to take it off (ask me how I know!).

Paper going through the cutting machine. Each of these labels is a combination of 2 different fonts. I wanted to test out a few to see what Cinnamon Buns and I liked best.

I made a small mistake when setting up the document - I sized up a copy of the shape so I would have a mat, but I forgot to take the mats out of that document before sending through the cutter. That just meant it cut a separate ‘border’ that it didn’t need to, but otherwise it didn’t affect anything.

The Silhouette doesn’t come with it, but I totally recommend buying a spatula by Cricut or Slice (that’s the brand of mine). They’re made for other similar machines, and really help for getting the paper off the sticky mats without bending/ripping/curling.

I cut the larger shape out of a page from a theatre reference book I bought from the library for $0.50. **No great works of literature were harmed in this project.

Then I stuck the label to the mat, and got these! I used glue stick on some, and my Xyron on the others. The Xyron ones turned out way better, but it was also a really old glue stick.

Awesome! Punny labels! When Cinnamon Buns came home from work, I showed him. He said, “they’re a little big…” I said, “Really?” And then CB went and got me a jam jar from the kitchen.

Yup, bigger than the jam jar (you can just see the rim behind the upper right of the label). We also realized that we should use cardstock instead of printer paper, so you can’t read the book text through the label. I went into my library of shapes to show CB what other scrolly labels shapes I had, and he pointed at a shape I hadn’t even considered and asked if I could try that one. He had pointed out an open book shape! Smarty-pants!

Etc. etc. etc., same process, and we had this! Not only is it smaller than the jam jar, it is book-shaped! We also picked our favourite fonts out of the ones I’d used: American Typewriter and Ahnberg. I’m not too worried about matching fonts with our invites, but will try to keep venue stuff to the same ones for continuity.

Once again, we wondered if this size was a little big, so today I sat down and made a few sizes of book labels. I cut everything out of one sheet of cardstock to save paper, but knew I’d have to do something to make the ‘covers’ different than the ‘pages’ because it’s awkward to see white-on-white. Enter Glimmer Mist:

An awesome tool, and friend to scrapbookers and paper crafters the world around. It is basically sparkly spray ink that comes in tons of colours. You bet I have some in our wedding colours! Again, this isn’t what we’re planning on doing for the actual favours, I just needed to make my white test-covers a different colour, and it was either this or scribbling with a Sharpie.

Labels ranging from 2.25″ to 3″ across

After seeing these, I’m toying with the idea of Glimmer Mist-ing the book paper, but I’m not sure about that yet. I tucked these all into the jam jar so they’re handy to show Cinnamon Buns when he comes home. I think the tiniest is a bit too tiny, but they don’t need to be as big as the biggest. I guess I’m with Goldilocks on this one.

And then, because I had the book and the Glimmer Mist available, I made this:

I used both Dragonfly and Lilypad Glimmer Mist and made a Kusudama flower.

Do you take a few runs at your craft projects, or jump in with both feet and cut out 60 of the first idea you had?