Saturday, May 2, 2015

Graduation Banner Tutorial

Hi Everyone:
Happy Saturday.  I am here with a tutorial on how to make the most of your cutting mats when you are making a lot of cuts for one design.  I created this graduation banner for my son who is graduating from Northeastern University on 5/7/15.  We are so proud of how hard he has worked to be a mechanical engineer.
This Spring Banner pattern by Doohikey Designs comes with wonderful, easy to follow directions and allows you to either cut the paper to use as a template and/or use fabric to be cut in your machine.  I decided to cut out a full sheet of templates and then traced that shape onto the back of my fabric.  I then cut the banner pieces out with pinking shears.
I knew that I wanted to make several different sizes of the graduation caps and the stars that are part of Jamie Cripps' 3D Grad Envelope Bag and I wanted to fill my cutting mat so as to not waste paper.  The original cut file is below.  I ungrouped them and got rid of the envelope and band.  I copied the star and grad cap and pasted them onto my mat. 


  I then resized one set of them and grouped all four together.


Next I copied the grouped set and pasted it on my mat until I filled it up.
I wanted to plenty of black and red stars and grad caps to choose from to embellish my project.  There are so many things that you can do with your cutting system and these very versatile cut files from DigiPlayground
I mixed paper and fabric with my banner because it only needs to look nice for his party.  I fell in love with this font set called Squeeze Me from Rivka Wilkins.  You can find the link for it below. 
I laid everything out first to see how it would look and then used foam tape and fabric glue to adhere the parts of my banner.

This was a fun and easy project and I know my son will love the personalized grad banner.
Hugs,
Anita
Project Cut Files:
Spring Banner
Spring Banner by Shari for Doohikey Designs
3d graduation envelope bag
3 D Grad Envelope Bag by Jamie Cripps
Squeeze Me Font OTF

Squeeze Me by Rivka Wilkins

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