2012 : Captured Tutorial with Lisa Truesdell : making a custom diecut frame

Hey everyone! My 2012 : Captured class for September went live yesterday, and this month I'm talking about embellishments.  I'm here today to share a tutorial for welding text to a frame in to cut with your Silhouette Cameo. These frames won't add a lot of bulk to your album, and they're the perfect place to gather a few small accents alongside a photo.

To start, open Silhouette Studio and use the rectangle tool to draw a frame. I sized mine a bit below 3x4in - I didn't want it to extend to the edges of my journaling card.

Use the rectangle tool again to make the inside of the frame. I opted to go fairly narrow - under .25in.

Select both of your shapes together and right click so that this menu comes up - you'll now select "make compound path." 

Use the text tool to add your text, and then position it so that it slightly overlaps the inside edge of your frame.

Select all of the shapes, right click, and select "weld" - this will join your words to the inside frame.

Here's what it should look like when you're done! Now it's time to send it to your Silhouette.

Here's the finished cut! I went ahead and added a little washi, a heart sticker and an enamel dot to decorate it.

I hope you have fun playing with this technique - there are so many possibilities! Why not try mixing up the fonts, or adding shapes, or changing up the frame so it looks like a faux polaroid? Link me up if you give it a try! -Lisa

Comments

[Nirupama]

Love these frames!! I always forget which weld tool to use, hehee...thanks for the easy to use tutorial.

[domi95]

J'adore, merci :)

[Suz]

Love making frames with my Cameo! Who am I kidding, I love using it for every creation! :)
Simple, easy tut!

[Suz]

(Continuation of my previous post)...Thanks for sharing Lisa and for keeping it simple and straightforward. :)

[Shandra]

I think I'm just having issues, but maybe you've got an idea. I love this and I want to label some picture frames I have in my living room with my kids' names (since I have a baby pic and a current pic of each kid and they look a LOT alike as babies!), but somehow when I hit weld, it's separating the letters in the name, rather than welding it to the frame. Am I somehow missing something? I've tried doing it with and without the compound path and it hasn't made a difference either way.

[lisa truesdell]

Shandra - Sorry I'm just seeing this now! do you have the letters overlapping the frame?

[Rebecca Richards]

Hi Lisa! Thank you so much for this tutorial! I'm hoping you can help me. I want to do a similar project to this picture frame for my Christmas family picture. I want to mat the picture on cardstock and have the words partially cut out so I can tuck the picture behind the words and the words will act as a kind of photo corner. Basically the same thing as your frame above, but without the smaller rectangle being cut out. How do I do this? I tried following this and then deleting the 3 sides of the rectangle, but it didn't work. I think I'm probably missing a step somewhere?

[Rebecca Richards]

Actually, I think I figured out a work around, based on what you show here. I just need to make the smaller rectangle *much* smaller, so it just surrounds the text.