Wedding Reception Place Cards With The Silhouette

Some of you may know that I use the Silhouette, especially since my post about using it to make metal clay bezels.  Usually I use it to make etching templates for my dichroic glass.  But if you know anything about the Silhouette you know that it is primarily intended for making cards and scrapbooks.  I am an amateur photographer, so I also love to scrapbook.  Unfortunately, I don't get to do it as often as I would like.  I did do a project a while ago that I have been meaning to share, and that was the place cards for my daughter's wedding reception.

Photo by Kate Perez

It was a garden themed wedding at the botanical center at the Indianapolis Zoo.  The colors were Wisteria (purple) and green, which by the way, go great together even with a little white mixed in.  I got several sheets of card stock and paper with various textures, some green and some purple, in various shades.  Although they were different shades, and some even had patterns, they all went with the two basic colors.  

To do this you will need whatever card stock you want to use for the place card itself, and various colors of paper for the flower layers and letters. 

3 sizes of flowers and mini paper fastener

 I used little mini painted paper fasteners in pastel to fasten them.  (I think we used to call them "brads".)
  
I used a design from the Silhouette store called "petal flowers".  They even already have holes in the center, which is probably what gave me the idea in the first place.  You could use any round design that has different sizes.  If they don't have holes in the center, you will need to add them.  (The easiest way to do this would be to copy and paste the holes from the place card template.)  I noticed now there are some 3D flower designs in the Silhouette online store now that would look really cute with this.  

 I made my own place card design, and have uploaded the template.  You can find it by clicking here.  I have a silhouette SD, so I have them 4 up on a 8.5 by 11" page.  The names are cut out, so you just type in the name you want.  (Do this by selecting the name, then right click and choose "edit text".)  Then glue a piece of contrasting paper inside the card so it shows through the name.  

The flowers I used came in three different sizes.  Make sure you get them the sizes you want in relation to the place cards.  You can stack them on the screen to see how they look.  (Just make sure to remove them before you cut the cards!)  Since I had to make about 75 place cards I filled a page with all three sizes of flowers, then cut the flowers out of several different pieces of paper.  As a result, I have several options of colors and patterns in all three sizes.  Stack them from lithe smallest on top to the largest on the bottom, and fasten them onto the place card with the paper fastener.

 Above is a picture showing the inside of the card.  You can see the piece of paper that I glued to the inside, and also the back of the brad that is holding the flowers on.

Here are a few of the finished cards:

A few of the finished place cards