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

Cutting Bezels on the Silhouette

Recently I had the opportunity to take a metal clay class on how to cut bezels on a Silhouette.  This might require some explanation for those of you who are not familiar with one or both of those words.

A Silhouette is a machine that is sort of like a printer, except it cuts instead of prints.  It is designed for scrapbookers to cut shapes out of paper for their scrapbook pages.  Another brand that you may be familiar with is a Cricket, but unlike that one the Silhouette doesn't require cartridges.  It has software that allows you to create designs.  I have been using it to create stencils for etching glass for some time.  At right is a picture of my Silhouette.

In jewelry, a bezel is a strip of metal that holds a stone in place, as you will see later in this blog post.

Wanaree Tanner is a talented metal clay artist who apparently has been doing some experimentation with the Silhouette.  Holly Gage, another talented metal clay artist, was hosting Wanaree for a 2 day class in how to use the Silhouette to cut bezels.  I had to drive to Pennsylvania, but it was worth it!

The first thing we had to do was design the back plate and bail for our pendants.  We designed a texture for them using scratch foam and a ball point pen.  I love using scratch foam!  Here is a picture of mine at left.  I used a template for the bail, and I thought the shape kind of looked like leaves.  So I drew some leaves and made more leaves on the back of the pendant.  Since I'm kind of artistically challenged, I just had them poking in from the sides.  Then I decided to make a little bug flying through the middle.

We picked the design we wanted for the bezel, and Wanaree showed us how to cut them out on the Silhouette.  Then we attached the bezel to the back plate, attached the bail and fired.  After firing, we did not do finishing work before setting the stone.  We set the stone first, because the bezel is very thin and delicate.  The silver was still all white looking, as you can see in this picture.  (The chain is just one I happened to be wearing.)  The bezel is the zig zag strip that is holding the stone on.

I bought this stone off a hippie outside of Taos, NM at the Rio Grande Gorge bridge back before they rebuilt the bridge.  (It was really scary to walk across!)  Since this pendant was a class project that I would keep I wanted to use a stone that meant something to me.  He told me it was Spectralite, but someone at the class told me it was Labradorite.  It doesn't matter to me, it looks cool either way.

Below is a picture from the first night when several of us went out to dinner.  From left is Silvie Waals, Wanaree Tanner and Holly Gage.

Silvie entertained us with lots of interesting stories!

Here is my finished pendant, front and back:

To learn more about using the Silhouette with metal clay, check out Wanaree's YouTube video.