Paper Therapy: Quietfire Design November Guest Designer

I am so thrilled to be able to guest design for Quietfire Design this month!!!

Quietfire Design has beautiful calligraphy word art stamps as well as GREAT cutting files and Silhouette America Cut files.

I started my project with the Snowflake Spray Card cut file that can be found in the Silhouette America cut file store.

The file is designed to cut a spray of snowflakes and the card base with a perforation for folding in one cut. In my Silhouette software I had to do a few modifications to make the mask I was looking for to achieve my background. Here are the steps I made…

Ungrouped the image and removed the cut for the card base and the perforation
I duplicated the image, flipped it vertically AND horizontally. In the below photo, I also added a gray background so you could see what the cut file will look like on your screen.

My end result is a mask, so it is important the cut is exactly how I want to place it on my card base.

For this project, I cut removable, clear Contact Paper.

I cut a piece that would be fitting to the size of my project, placed it on the Silhouette cutting mat, with the paper protective backing down. The contact material was face up on the mat. My settings for cutting this type of material are:

Speed #1
Thickness #9
Blade #2

With the above settings, I achieved a great cut, that didn't cut through the protective paper backing.

Once the design is cut, remove all of the extra pieces that are unneeded while the paper protective backing is still attached to the Contact Paper. In this case, I removed all of the cut snowflakes, because I will be applying ink to those areas. In the photo below is what the mask lookes like after I have removed all the extra snowflakes and removing the paper backing, but before applying it to my card stock.

You will now understand why it is important to be using removable Contact Paper. Place your mask, sticky side down onto your card stock and trim around the edge of your card stock. You will want to trim, so ink isn't applied where it isn't wanted. Apply your ink, chalk, paint or the medium desired to the snowflake area. Due to the sticky nature of the Contact Paper, you will see that ink is only where the snowflakes will be. The mask isn't shifting, making unclear images. Once the desired color and coverage has been achieved remove your contact paper.

THE PERFECT BACKGROUND!!! I LOVE IT!!!

I was lucky enough to stamp two gorgeous images from a Quietfire Design new release, Christmas Is The Day, a great set of 9 stamps.

The sentiment was stamped with embossing ink and heat embossed with Detail White EP from Stampendous, my fav!!!

The Flourished Holly Circle was stamped with Memento Rich Cocoa and I used Copic Sketch Markers to color the holly leaves. (Copic Sketch G40, G43, G46). The Flourished Holly Circle is accented with Spellbinders Parisian Motifs die cut.

The background, the decorative circle and sentiment were given an extra element of shimmer with Dreamweaver Stencils Iridescent Memory Mist. The is the best shimmer spray in the market.