Style Boutique home decor sample created for Bother ScanNCut

Good morning – I am so excited to have been chosen to join the Brother ScanNCut Design Team. I still cannot believe it. I am so looking forward to creating and sharing my new creative journey with you all.

This is one of my first projects using the lovely set of images and cutting files from the Cutting Craftorium Style Boutique Collection (CD images and SVG files on a USB) recently launched from Tattered Lace on Create & Craft TV.

I printed images from the CD and used the ScanNCut to cut out decoupage elements for layering. I hope that you like my mini canvas. I particularly like the sentiment – describes my craft room perfectly! Tee hee.

Anne x

A bit about the Style Boutique Collection:

The CD is packed with wonderful background papers, scenes, ready made toppers, and all the separate images for dressing up some lovely ‘dolls’. Think paper dress up dolls (I used to love playing with those in the 60’s and 70’s). Images include lovely ladies with a range of gorgeous dresses, hair styles, hats, shoes and handbags etc. There is also a young boy and girl doll. There are also templates for A 3D wardrobe and dressing table. Fabulous CD with images designed by Nikki Hall from Polkadoodles.

My Craft Studio Elite software is also included on the CD which enables you to build scenes, resize, recolour etc. This is a great stand alone CD. You can dress the dolls digitally and create projects for printing. Alternatively you could print a sheet of elements to cut out by hand for decoupage or dressing the printed dolls. No need to have a cutting machine.

The USB contains SVG files to cut out the dolls and all the elements which can be directly read by the ScanNCut machine – just insert the USB. SVG files can also be used with many other cutting machines including the Silhouette (with Silhouette Studio Designer Edition software). I also have a Silhouette Cameo and had no problem importing the files into my software. Again this could be used as a stand alone set of images for drawing or cutting – e.g. used pretty patterned papers to cut out the dresses etc. There is also a free SVG download available for drawing the faces on the dolls if you are not confident with drawing them yourself.

Note about My Craft Studio Elite:

I am a complete newbie to My Craft Studio (MCS) software. I generally use Serif Craft Artist for all my digital crafting, importing images and creating digikits as I need. However, as this CD is designed to use alongside that MCS software I simply had to get to grips with it – especially as I wanted to provide project instructions for you all.

Due to the tight deadline for TV show samples I only had one evening to get to grips with the basics! If you have never used it before, don’t be scared. The software really is easy to use and has lots of versatility for advancing and growing with it’s capabilities.

Materials:
Style Boutique CD (image files) and Cutting Craftorium Style Boutique Brother ScanNCut USB (SVG files)
My Craft Studio Elite software (included on the CD)
Photo frame (aperture approx. 11.7 X 16.7cm, to fit 12.7 X 17.7cm mat)
Fine tipped pink glitter pen
Super smooth paper for colour printing (approx. 120gsm)
Card for backing and scrap black card
Standard A4 Colour printer
Brother ScanNCut machine

Summary of how it was done:
Using MCS I loaded a new A4 page and dropped on the Hessian (47) background image. I reduced the opacity to make it paler.

I then dropped on the ready made scene from Lil May’s Wardrobe, centred it and resized it to approx. 15cm high (to fit my frame). I then added a rectangle vignette in pink around the image (to give the effect of inking the edges). Printed the image as shown in the pic below.

I trimmed the printed image and glued to backing card to fit my frame (12.7 X 17.7cm). Note: there is capability of adding shadows in the software and I would add these if I made another. This would give more depth and 3D effect to the image.

Next I added another blank page to my project. I then added individual images from Lily May’s Wardrobe – dropping them onto the scene and resizing them to fit over the elements in the scene. (dresses, shoes, bows, skirt, cat and, T-shirt). Once resized I copied and pasted them to the blank page so that they could be printed out for decoupage.

I copied the dress images (i.e. 2 copies of each for printing). I also added the chair and an extra cat, flipped (tip: right click and select flip – took me ages to work that one out – tee hee) and resized so that they could be used to glue onto the outer frame. I changed the colour of the chair to fit my colour scheme better (green). Finally I added some hearts and flowers in various sizes. See pic below.

As the sentiment was quite small on my project I cropped it from the main image and enlarged it for printing. I trimmed it out and layered onto white card and drew a faux stitched border with pink glitter pen. I glued to the frame (covering the smaller printed sentiment) using 3D glue gel (see pic above).

The cut elements were shaped and glued to the image and frame with 3D glue gel – et voila!