Making A Custom Stamp With The Silhouette Mint

Wow, I had so much fun making this project. I love instant gratification and the Silhouette Mint delivered.

This is a powerhouse at 2.25 in. x 4.75 in. x 3.25 in!!

In fact, this machine was included in the goodie bag from the Cameo 4 launch party, and that bag started me on this creative journey. 

Silhouette 101 offers a fantastic video on how to use the machine here.

What I do is offer you project ideas and help by doing it first and solving the problems that might give you trouble. And I had an itsy bitsy bit of trouble on my first stamp...OR so I thought, but no, it all turned out more than perfect. 💖

Onward...remember from a prior Maker's Make where I created these great door hangers for authors to give their readers...or for anyone to customize for their business and hand out?  

And I promised to next create a stamp to use on the back, or a bag, card or bookmark?

Here it is. 

Forgive the smear, I was a bit shaky as I pressed down on the label

This is the "signature" I use on my blog and website. It has my tagline and my call-to-action, join my mailing list. I can use this all the time!!  

Okay, now for the nitty-gritty. Again I highly suggest you watch the video that Silhouette has produced for the Mint. It's pretty straight forward.

Basic Screen for the Mint Studio

I recommend that you go to Silhouette America > Software > Mint Studio > current version 1.3.044 for Windows/Mac and download/install before you do anything else.

When you plug in the Mint to your computer and turn it on, you'll receive 50 free designs. I have two computers I use for design and was able to do this for both. 

Here's a tip for you. Save and print off the stamp size sheet I made here, and use it to help determine the size you need.











Since I already had this design made in Photoshop to use on my blog and website, I just opened it and adjusted it to fill my stamp blank of 60x30. 

If you decide to design your own stamp right on the chosen stamp blank, you can use any of the fonts you have on your computer, create shapes to add an icon like a heart or star. Then you can color in those items to see how it will look before inking.  As brought in my own Jpg I couldn't color it to test. 

But I did know I wanted a two-color stamp. 

The trick is not to place the items you want to be different colors too close to each other. I wanted my name and tagline one bright color and the call-to-action in black. 

Now I'm ready to make the stamp. 

I was a bit nervous as the image looked so jagged...but it printed exactly like the screen image. I didn't add any filter but standard (it will ask you to check) Although I must admit that playing with the filters was very interesting. 

I went back and forth about printing wondering about the very jagged edges. Nothing I did in the program changed them. So I finally decided to go ahead and print, after all, I was learning.  (BTW, I used a brush font so there are brush strokes)

The program automatically flips the design so it will stamp correctly.  

I grabbed this image off the Mint Studio page and it was not connected to my computer. But once you're connected, and feed in the blank stamp, the machine does the rest. It's quiet and pretty darn fast. I was impressed. 

BTW, they stress this on the video, do not remove the clear plastic sheet before you run your stamp through the machine. Once done, you can remove it. 

I broke it off the cardboard and removed the plastic. WOW.

Okay, now for the inking.  I attached my stamp to the mount it comes with. When you buy a kit, it also has the base.  So I got one full kit for each size and then extra stamp sheets which are less expensive than the full kit.

I used magenta ink on my name and my tagline. Then carefully added black ink to the call-to-action. Here is where I ran into a bit of trouble, but now I know how to keep my bleed from happening. Read on.

You let the ink set on the stamp 7 minutes to absorb into the stamp. I kept looking at it and it seemed like it was resisting on the raised areas, so I added more and more ink. WELL, I didn't need to do that. But only found that out later.  

Once the 7 minutes have passed you "stamp off the ink" onto a blank piece of cardstock. 

Stamping off sheet

Uh oh. If you look closely as I stamp off that the black in has smeared into the tag line. Well, I kept stamping off until the image was clean, and it took about 14 stamps which is normal. Then figuring I had nothing to lose, I added magenta ink to my tag line to cover the black, let it sit the 7 minutes and stamped it off. Voila, it worked (see right column). 

The reason it smeared with I first started stamping off is that I had WAY too much ink on the stamp. Lesson learned. 

I stamped my newly minted 💗 stamp on the back of the door hangers I made and it worked absolutely perfectly.

Silhouette says you can get about 50 stamp impressions from one inking. I've done about 29 so far and it's still bright and sharp.

You can get the Mint directly from Silhouette as well as the inks and refill stamp sheets. 

There are periodic sales at Silhouette (sign up so you'll get emails) AND SEE MY AMAZON LINK BELOW, CURRENTLY, IT'S A GREAT!!!! PRICE.

I can think of a lot of uses for this machine. I mean a lot. 

Once you see that Silhouette video, you'll have so many ideas, it's wonderful. I also watched k.becca's tutorial which I also recommend highly. 

What do you think you can make?  

Have fun, and show me what you've done with the Mint by Silhouette.

xoxo

L.A. 

Door Hanger For Authors To Gift

Welcome to another edition of Makers Make. This door hanger is a lovely gift to give your readers or design one for your craft. The possibilities are endless.

So, let's begin.

I'm using the 2 Door Hangers design #42414 by Alaa'k from the Silhouette store. Notice this comes with a pocket, which I thought was a great way to add a business card to the back. This design comes with a scalloped pocket and a crenelated edge, along with a rectangle that serves as a notecard. Very cute.

However, I chose to cut off (slice) along that dotted line (which would be a perforation line, and make mine simple. (And I added my info to the back via a stamp which I'll show you how to make in an upcoming Makers Make!)

I ungrouped all parts of the two designs, deleted the other design and placed this on my matt.

As I'm an author I chose a variety of designs that I could use for my reader base, but you can use whatever is applicable to your niche. 


Since I cut off the pocket, I needed to add a line so that the design was complete and cut. Then I grouped it to the main image. I also changed the size as the original seemed very long. I kept the width because it worked well with the images I used. 

Now for the creative part. I found these images in the Silhouette  Design Store: 

• Tropical Flowers #296632 by Sweet Elsie. 
• The book, The Magic of Reading #94027 by Sophie Gallo 
• My Weekend Is All Booked #271234 by Sophie Gallo. 

I used the pattern "Checkmate". Also remember, if you own a digital paper, you can drag and drop it into "patterns" in your library!!

I MERGED the flower into my design, removed it from its trace and duplicated it. Then flipped the duplicated flower horizontally and had to rotate it to match the way I wanted it to.

Then I moved the right flower on top of the left, grouped and sized it appropriately for my design concept. Then to make it easier (not a necessary step, but it helped tremendously) I traced and detached the flowers to have a smaller square. 

I MERGED My Weekend Is All Booked design, then ungrouped and selected all of the book as I didn't want that particular book. Then deleted those parts.  

I picked a color from the flower and filled My Weekend Is All Booked.  

Then MERGED in The Magic of Reading. Sized it, ungrouped it,  colored it, picking colors from the flowers with the color dropper made the bookmark on the book (in orange) bigger, moved all its parts into place, then regrouped.  

(Hint, if you use the layers panel and create the layers as you go, it's easier to do this, and I'll show you a layers tutorial later, but right now, scan YouTube for them, or check out Silhouette School blog or Silhouette 101. In this case, I moved the text out of the way, grouped the book and moved the text back into place.)

I made a rectangle at the bottom and filled with a pattern, I used Checkmate, but hard as I looked I couldn't find it in the current pattern selection in the Silhouette store.

So I used a striped pattern that is available in a number of colors in the store. I added the flower and haven't centered anything yet. 

So now I've selected the door hanger, the graphic and used the TRANSFORM PANEL (my favorite panel of all) and centered the graphics. An OOPS, I realized somehow I made the left words green. Easy fix, just used the dropper on them again. 

Final Touch, adding a gradient fill to the background.  Make sure all your elements are forward or on top of the hanger itself. Click the hanger, fill with gradient and ROTATE to 90 degrees or it will be a sideways gradient. 

Then be sure to add your registration marks from the set-up page and while there, add this tip from Melissa Viscount at Silhouette U,

"Turn on the PRINT BLEED in your set-up page. You won't see the bleed, but it does print."  Thanks, Melissa.

Then make sure your door hangers are within the red Print and Cut lines.  Notice my setting in the red box above. This gives you the maximum space on the card stock. 

Now it's time to cut. On the send panel make sure nothing is selected but the edge. CUT EDGE. If there are any red lines on your artwork, and generally on a composite like this, everything you've added has a red line, you have to Click to select each lined section on the design and then click NO CUT in the panel. 

Remember to set your material. I use heavy card stock so generally pick Textured card stock, and I usually do an overcut to get squared corners. As usual, do a test cut!!  

So what do you do if you don't have a Cameo Portrait, Cameo 3 or 4?  You can use scissors to cut it out. Or a craft knife.

You can use other brands of cutters by saving the design as an SVG.  

The important item to note is that the free version of Silhouette studio doesn't support saving SVG's, you must upgrade to Silhouette Studio Business Edition. 

But to be honest, it's an amazing program for around $60, easy to use, save and then cut with your other brand of cutter. You'd just skip adding the registration marks here and add them in your cutter's cut program. 

Hope this post gives you tons of ideas.  I'm making a dozen of these to hand out to the ladies of a book club that have invited me as their guest next month.

I'm putting my tag line, Live The Adventure ~ Love The Romance© and my website addy onto a Mint stamp, which will soon have its own tutorial right here at An Indie Adventure Blog.

Happy Creating

~L.A.

Debut Launch of Makers Make

Today I'm launching a new series of posts. 

I've been lucky enough to be chosen as a Silhouette Creative!

The reason I so wanted this to happen is that in addition to being an avid creative I'm also an author with a large mailing list. AND I love to give gifts to my readers.  

My thought was that other authors and folks might want to offer their fans, friends and family fun gifts. And that we can make these fabulous giveaways and gifts for a fraction of the price of buying them. PLUS we can personalize them. 

So I hope you'll follow the blog, I've been around many years and love reaching out via An Indie Adventure. 

Today we're making keychain tassels. I've already given away a few, and the recipients loved them. So follow along, and if you don't have a Silhouette Cameo or Cricut machine, this can be done with scissors and a ruler!!

 I use Silhouette Studio for my design work. It's free to sign up at The Silhouette Design Store. They offer a free design every week and sales galore. Many of their designs also available in SVG format for non-Cameo users.

The tassel that I'm making is 2.25" long, so I'm modifying the design with the following commands.

Ungroup > Remove 1 of the designs > Count 28 tassels and use the knife tool to cut. 

For me, the tassel fringe as is was too thick, but it might be perfect for what you're looking for. I sized the image to the dimensions on the screen, making sure my tassel cuts were stretched to be 2" long. 

The next step is to make sure the solid band (which we'll be wrapping in the video below) is 1/4 or .25". Note on the image, I put in some guides and you can tell by the ruler marks in the upper left corner, that it is .25" from the fringe. Use the knife along the guide and you'll get a straight cut. 

Keep the piece you cut off with the knife and make it (by using the transform panel, my fav tool of all) a 3"x.25" rectangle (green image) make another rectangle and size it in the transform panel to 3"x.13" which will be the loop (blue image) we'll glue on. Group all 3 pieces. 

YAY.  Now we're ready to cut. I have used the black Silhouette brand of faux leatherette, which cut well. Unfortunately, I couldn't get the white to cut at all it simply tore, so I'm still working on that one. I also used other faux leathers and each brand is different. I'm currently cutting with a Cameo 4, ratchet blade

Here is a link to a video that shows you the cut settings. I love Silhouette School and their sister site, Silhouette U. I learn from them all the time.

 

Now for the fun. Rolling the cut material to make the tassel. I made a video because it's far easier than telling you.

 Part 1 Of Making Tassels

And here is the matt for the tags, using Silhouette Studio Design #46320 by Sophie Gallo. 

Part 2 of Making Tassels

Supplies:

Silhouette Leatherette available at Silhouette America

Circut faux leather

Jump rings from Michaels

Keychains from Michaels and see below for Amazon

Adhesive Vinyl

Aleene's Tacky Glue

Tools/Equipment:

Two pliers (smooth jaw preferable)

Toothpick

Silhouette Cameo 4

Silhouette Design Studio

Coaster