Friday, June 7, 2013

Guest Post from Amelia And Me Crafts!

How do I love my Silhouette Pen Holder by The Sensory Emporium? Let me count the ways…

Hello everyone! Jennifer here from Amelia & Me Crafts. I wanted to show off a recent project I made using the Silhouette Pen Holder by The Sensory Emporium. I purchased my pen holder back in February and it has quickly graduated to being one of my go to tools.

Scrapbooking is my first love, so I want to show you how this pen holder can help you with titles, journaling, details, etc. I have completed a scrapbook for each of my 3 children chronicling their first year. Benjamin, my third child, just turned 4 and I am STILL working on his first year scrapbook – but that is a topic for another blog post.
I like to add a ‘Watch Me Grow’ layout to these special scrapbooks. It includes 13 pictures - a newborn picture and one for each month. I just put the finishing touches on Benjamin’s layout. Ta-Da!



Let’s break it down. How did my Sensory Emporium pen holder help in this layout? It made journaling the month banners easy peasy AND nice and uniform with a black Sharpie Ultra Fine Point. Quick mention, my font of choice for this project is Aunt Jana Sketch, which can be found in the Silhouette Online store (click on Aunt Jana Sketch to go right there.)



For the titles, I switched over to a black BIC Mark•It fine point. I have to tell you, these markers fit like BUTTER in the pen holder. You do have to adjust the height of the pen holder a bit so that the marker does not drag across the paper. It is recommended to put a popsicle stick between the paper and the tip of the marker to get the proper spacing, then lock the holder in. I just eyeball it. Note the space between the pen holder and the blade carriage below. One of these days I will get a popsicle stick that does not have sticky remnants on it.



For the name title, I wrote out Benjamin Joseph in my Silhouette Studio software, then applied an offset. First step is to change the cut style to ‘no cut’ for the offset because I do not want the Cameo to sketch the outer edge. With the cut style set to ‘cut’ for ‘Benjamin Joseph, I loaded the pen holder into my Cameo, made the necessary setting changes and sketched out his name – as shown in the above picture. To cut it out for my scrapbook page, I shut the cut lines off for ‘Benjamin Joseph’ and turned them on for the offset. I loaded my blade back into the Cameo and cut out the name title!



I wanted the ‘Watch Me Grow’ title to fit across the 12” page and I wanted the lettering to be a bit thicker. To achieve this look, I offset the lettering just an itty bit – 0.050” to be exact - so that the marker would be making two passes for each letter. Here is what it looked like designed in the software:



I then applied an offset to the offset (not sure if there is an easier way to say that!), cut around the lettering and applied the title to my page:

Pretty cool, huh? Before I forget, the plain yellow and blue cardstock is by American Crafts (my favorite) and the patterned paper is from the Creative Memories Seasons Designer Prints pack.
Thank you for reading and I enjoyed writing this guest blog for all of you Sensory Emporium fans! Please make sure to visit The Sensory Emporium’s tutorial on the pen holder for additional information.

Be well!
Jennifer
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