Creating Your Own Ribbon With Your Silhouette

Happy Spring, Everyone!

Ironically, as I’m typing this, we’re gearing up for 5 – 8 inches of snow here in the north east, but as you can see, I’ve got spring weather on my mind. Today I have a quick and simple technique you can use with your cutting system and sketch pens that I think you’ll love!

See that cute “Happy Spring” ribbon in my photo up top?

That’s just plain old grosgrain ribbon that I wrote on…wait for it…with my sketch pens!

Here’s how simple it is:

• • Cut the ribbon a few inches longer than needed, just to be on the safe side.
  • Put the ribbon on the cutting mat, at the very top.
  • Type “Happy Spring” in the Silhouette Design Studio Software, and resize it to fit on your ribbon. (My ribbon was 5/8″ wide, so I made my text about 1/2″ tall.) 
  • Reposition text if necessary, so that is also is at the very top of the drawing area, and will fall on the ribbon what you put it through the machine.
  • Replace the blade with a sketch pen.
  • Select Silhouette Sketch Pen in the “Silhouette Cut Settings” window.
  • Click cut!

Now remember, it’s not going to actually “cut” your ribbon. You have the sketch pen in there, so it’s going to draw your text (or even an image if you’d like!) right on your ribbon!

Pretty neat, right?

Now, a few things to note:

1. I’m not sure if this is washable. In fact, I tend to doubt it. I still need to play a bit, but for now, I’m sticking to using this technique in projects I know won’t need to be laundered.

2. I used grosgrain ribbon in my project above. Surprisingly, the grooves of the ribbon didn’t effect the clearness of the text. I’m sure there are some ribbons that will work better than others. If any of you decide to play a bit, and find some that work really well (or find ribbons that don’t work well and we should avoid), please share with the rest of us!

3. Just as in the note above, there certainly are combinations of ribbons and sketch pens that work best. Light colored ribbon and dark colored sketch pens are probably best. I’m not sure if a light colored sketch pen will show up on a dark colored ribbon.

4. If we can write on our ribbon with the sketch pens….why wouldn’t we be able to write on fabric with them? That’s what I’m playing with next!

XOXO,

Nikki, In Stitches