Anna & Eleni

In which I play with a cutting machine, washi tape stripes, patched polka dot fabric and cardstock to create something for Anna and Eleni...

Anna and Eleni are two sweet little girls (Anna a new arrival) that live on the other side of the world. Ever slightly behind in ideas and projects, I decided it was about time I got brainstorming and made 'welcome to the world' presents for each of them.

I realise that most people use cutting machines (mine is a Silhouette Portrait) to cut out shapes to use in other projects. Somewhat strangely, the only reason I ever really wanted one was to play with the spaces left behind by the shapes that are cut out. Especially letters. With colours and textures peeking through.

So I played with washi tape stripes and hidden foam stickers to add depth to Anna's letters...and patched together polka dot fabric with cotton stitched "scribbles" for Eleni's letters. And whilst I'm a big fan of whitespace, I used haphazard stitching for a very thin border right where the frame matting meets the card stock...just for an extra hint of colour to break up the white.

It took a LOT of trial runs to get the cutting to land where I wanted in relation to the already printed lettering. I realise I'm very new to the Silhouette but I found it hard to predict where the cutting would start and finish based on what I saw on screen vs. what I saw on paper...even after reading the manual...and having to count to ten before trying again! It literally ended up being trial and error to get the two sets of letters to line up....hence all the discarded lettering you can see in the photos. But now that I've got templates saved, I'm good to go...and brainstorming future projects. Looking forward to packaging up these two pieces and sending them on their way to Anna's nursery and Eleni's bedroom :)

What project are you working on at the moment?

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