scanncut Archives - Studio Katie

Tips for Cutting your own Stencil Masks

Hey everyone, Today I am up on the Hazel and Ruby blog sharing my settings and tips for using their “cut your own stencil” material on die cut machines. I decided to share them with you guys here, as well in case you are curious about what settings to use!

I love using Hazel and Ruby’s stencil masks on my projects and while there are a good variety of shapes and fonts already available you can also purchase the stencil mask material to cut your own stencils!

Silhouette Portrait

Settings:

Blade: 4
Speed: 5
Thickness: 15
Double Cut

At a thickness of 15, the silhouette cuts through the mask material, but not the backing. Which I like so that I can easily place my mask back on the backing sheet after I’m done using it.

Brother ScanNCut

Settings:

Blade: 4
Speed: 5
Pressure: 2

I did these settings so that the machine cuts through only the mask material and not the backing, just like on my Silhouette.

Spellbinders Artisan X-Plorer

To cut my material in my manual die cutter (the Artisan X-Plorer) This is how I stacked my plates/dies:

Base Plate
Die
Mask Material
Cut Plate

My best tip is to always do a test cut if you’re not sure of the settings. On both the Brother and the Silhouette you have the option of doing a “test cut” and you can just use a tiny die on a manual machine to test out the settings.

This was you know for sure if they’ll work without having to cut your whole design. It’s disappointing when you unload the mat and find that it hasn’t cut all the way through.

I hope you find these settings and tricks helpful! The other design team members have been sharing their tips this week as well so be sure to look back at the previous posts!

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Tips for Cutting Fabric on Die Cut Machines

Hey guys, I announced this here on the blog last week- My Mom and I are part of the new Love My Fabrics design team! We’re a mother/daughter team so we’re coming up with projects and blogging them together, which should be lots of fun. My mom is an amazing quilter.

Today I am up on the Love My Fabrics blog and I wanted to share with you my post here as well. I shared a couple of my favorite tips for die cutting fabric on electronic cutting machines as well as what settings I use.

I have 2 die cut machines, the Silhouette Portrait and the Brother Scan N Cut and it has taken a bit (lots of cutting fails) of practice to figure out what works and what doesn’t when it comes to cutting fabric.

Here are the settings I use for the Silhouette:

Blade: 4, Speed: 5, Thickness: 33

Here are the settings I use for the Brother Scan N Cut:

Blade: 6, Speed: 3, Pressure: 0

I’ve found that I have to have either really stiff fabric or have something like heat n bond on the back of the fabric to cut it. I recently found a product called Terial Magic. It’s a spray you can use to stiffen your fabric and it works wonderfully with die cutting. Here’s a bit about it from the website:

“Terial Magic allows you to play with single ply fabric in a whole new way. It replaces stabilizers and fusibles for quilters and embroiderers, keeps fraying in check for scrapbookers and crafters and gives the fabric a firmer hand for holding shapes and folds for all fabric projects. It is quickly becoming a household product suitable for any quilter, sewer, crafter, embroiderer or other DIY’er’s toolbox! Treat your fabric in 3 simple steps… spray, air dry and iron! Terial Magic™ lasts, but is water soluble and can be washed out if desired. “

It’s definitely helpful for cutting fabric on die cut machines but I can’t wait to try it for other projects as well.

Another tip I have is that you always have a separate cutting blade for fabric. Just like scissors, paper will dull your blade, so be sure to have 1 blade for paper and one blade for fabric.

What are your favorite tips? Have you cut fabric out on a diecut machine?

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Wood Burned Hexagon Coasters

A couple of weeks ago Taylor was in town so we decided to rope our Dad into helping us do some wood cutting projects with a jigsaw. Taylor made the most amazing handmade cutting boards and I cut out these hexagon coasters.

Not only did I cut them out with the jigsaw, and burn words into them but then I decided to be adventurous and stain them using a natural dye- beets! This was my first time trying out a natural stain, and I love how the beets gave the coasters a pink tint!

When I was using my wood burner to embellish them, I decided to make them reversible and have them all say “coffee” on one side and “tea” on the other. I personally am a tea lover, but Taylor is all about the coffee. 😉

I didn’t do a tutorial, but here’s a peek at my process-
First I cut a hexagon out on my Brother Scan N Cut and used it as a template to cut out my coasters from a piece of wood using a jigsaw.

After that I burned both sides of the coasters.

And then let them soak in canned beet juice for a few hours.

Over all I think they turned out pretty good! Since this was basically my first time using a jigsaw they’re not perfect, but I don’t really care. I think they would make an awesome gift for a friend.

Do you do any wood projects? I kinda love playing with my Dad’s power tools when I get the chance.

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Recent Scrapbook Layouts

Although I’ve been posting them in my online gallery, I haven’t posted any of my most recent scrapbook layouts on my blog, so here they are:

This one uses a photo from a recent camping trip, Taylor and I were toasting bagels over the fire and took a selfie. I used this sketch from Elle’s Studio, I loved the big piece of patterned paper on the side, but the paper I used was a bit bold, so I went over it with a white gelato to tone the colors down a little.

This layout was for the Bokeh challenge at Scrapbook Circle. I loved the idea of bokeh, so I cut out a bunch of hexagons on my ScanNCut.

This layout used sketch #19 from The Paper Bakery. I had to play with the sketch a bit to fir my 3 large photos on it.

And this last layout used another Elle’s Studio sketch. I love the little elephant stamp by Amy Tangerine that I have and it was perfect to go with this picture of a baby elephant I took at the Oklahoma zoo.

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Cutting out Stamped Designs with the ScanNCut

You may or may not know this (I haven’t written much about it here on the blog) but about a month ago I sold my older Cricut Expression and bought a Silhouette Cameo. I made a couple of projects with it- Coffee Typography Notebook, Tea Typography notebook, but it never quite worked right for me. It cut where it wasn’t supposed to and made a lot of noise. I probably just got a lemon of a machine, I know a lot of people that love theirs, but I returned it and bought the brand new Brother ScanNCut machine.

I love my new ScanNCut, I like that I can easily draw things and cut them without having to hook up my computer! I’ve found a fun way to easily cut out my stamped designs. You can just stamp, scan and cut which means no more fussy cutting around a stamped image!

Here’s how I do it-

First I stamped a couple of snowmen using a Stampers Big Brush Pen on white cardstock. After it dried (which was pretty quick.) I loaded it onto my ScanNCut mat and loaded the mat and click “Scan”, and then “Direct Cut”.

The ScanNCut cut around my snowman for me! I will never have to fussy cut around another design again! 😉 This is not the only thing I use the machine for, obviously, but it’s definitely a handy trick to know.

I’ve been using my ScanNCut on a lot of projects, scrapbook layouts, cards, etc. I love Julie’s ideas using the ScanNCut!

Do you have the ScanNCut? I’d love to see your projects with it!

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She was an Artist Journal Page + Document Life…

The challenges at Document Life Workshop are always inspiring and this weeks challenge at Document Life Workshop is to get inspired by a magazine cover. I was inspired by the black and white cover of I Heart Paper. I love how the magazine cover has a fun chalkboard feel and I wanted that on my page as well.

Curious about how I made the girl? Well, I certainly didn’t cut her out by hand, I don’t have the patience for that. 😉 I drew her on paper and then scanned her into my Brother ScanNCut. I cut her out from black cardstock and placed her over the mixed media background I did.

For the background, I applied matte medium through stencils directly onto my journal page. Once that was dry I lightly rubbed silver, gold and metallic mint Gelatos over top of it for a bit of color.

If you get a chance, go see what magazine covers the other members of Document Life Workshop were inspired by!

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Currently Art Journal- Document Life Workshop

The challenge today at Document Life Workshop is to “Use Autumn Colors” which is super easy for me, because I love Autumn. It’s definitely my favorite season.

I used the tag I made a few days ago because it’s full of Autumn colors. I needed something for the background of my journal page though so I got out my gelli plate and went to town. I gelli printed multiple pages from an old old encyclopedia as well as a few tags. (I didn’t use those tags on this page but I’, sharing a picture of them below.)

For my journaling I used a Currently card by Rukristin, it makes a nice easy way to journal about what you’re currently doing/feeling. I added a strip of washi tape to the top to make a little pull tab, and I used my Autumn tag to make a little pocket to slide it behind.

Here are the tags I gelli printed when I was also printing my background for my art journal page. I cutmost of the stencils I used on my new Brother ScanNCut. I love that machine! I tried to stick with Autumn-y colors and I like how they turned out. 🙂

If you haven’t already, You should hop over to the Document Life Workshop blog to see the other takes on today’s Autumn challenge!

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Prairie Dogs Layout- Document Life Workshop

Today I’m sharing a scrapbook layout made using the November sketch at Document Life Workshop. I love this sketch because it works so great to use multiple photos! They’re small, but I like them that way. You could always make them bigger photos and do a 2 page layout.

I used my new Brother Scan N Cut to cut out the flowers and the titles for this layout. I doodled the flowers onto paper then scanned them and cut them out of dark grey paper and backed them with patterned paper. The title is actually my hand writing that I scanned in and cut out.

To see the November sketch, Go stop by the Document Life Workshop blog!