Graduation!

My little brother is graduating today! I don't know why this makes me feel so old but it really does... After graduation we plan to have dinner as a family at a local restaurant and solicited a family member to make desserts. My cousin is a sort of "cupcake connoisseur". She is the reserved baker in our family! She even has her own out of home cupcake business by the name of A Delightful Bite. 

However, while browsing on Pinterest my mom found a cute way to serve the cupcakes:

http://birdonacake.blogspot.com/2012/05/perfectly-packaged-rose-cupcakes.html?m=1

These are packaged so nicely! Now of course, me being recently addicted to my Silhouette Cameo figured we could take this look a bit further using vinyl. 

Isn't it so cute?! I'll show you how I made this in the Silhouette software. 

I have the designer edition of the Silhouette software but I know this method will work with the regular edition as well. I found an image of a grad cap off google images and imported it into my software. 

Next, you'll want to open the trace window. This allows you to create a cut file for an image found online. 

The area that is highlighted yellow is what the Silhouette will trace. For images I find online, I usually select low pass filter because it eliminates a double line that is created when normally tracing images. 

After this, select trace and then you'll have your cut file. 

Yay!!! A new cut file! This process can be used to create a cut file from most images found online.

I played around with a couple of different variations of this design and my mom eventually picked the top left design. 

That's it! I sent my design to the Cameo and used black vinyl for the design. 

We placed purple grass in the cups for the cupcakes to sit upon. We figured this would allow for easy access to the cupcakes. 

The beautiful cupcakes inside their containers! Overall, I think these came out wonderfully and hope they'll be successful at the dinner tonight! 

Something to hold you over...

I'm in the process of finishing an actual tutorial for this blog. I know. It's practically a miracle. So until I finish that product, here's another painting! 

This was requested by a friend of mine! I printed out a map of Texas and traced it onto the canvas. Then I just free handed the letters where I felt they fit nicely. My brushes were BRAND NEW here and it made this lettering so much easier. 

Be on the lookout for my next post which has a graduation theme!