Recently I saw a card I liked on a Facebook page. The lady who posted it had made a design for her Cricut machine. This is similar to my Silhouette Cameo but I think the software is much more restrictive. Anyway I cannot use Cricut files in my Silhouette, so I looked up the link where she said she had found the original design. This was by a designer called Iced Images, and the card design is called Z-fold pop-up block card. She does not design for a machine but measures and cuts everything by hand. Her video tutorial was good, so although she was working in inches, which I left behind many moons ago, I followed her step by step and made a birthday card that I was quite pleased with. (Unable to show it yet).
But I realised that it would be a lot easier if I cut it all in cms on my machine, so I set about making my own file for Silhouette, changing the dimensions of each piece slightly to fit my usual base card (17 x 11.5cms). I used this to make a second birthday card and was very happy with the results, so I now have a file in my library that I can use at any time. And I used for my Christmas designs this time.
For my first card today I chose a sheet of scrapbook paper from my extensive collection on the computer, and down sized it to give the effect I wanted.
The santa was made from some clipart pictures merged together, resized and cut from glossy black vinyl.
I cut the background twice so I could continue it across the front and side panels. I chose some navy card snippets for the mats, and finished it off with a silver peel-off sentiment and some randomly placed stars.
I then decided to have a second go while I was on a roll and this time I used some dark red card for the mats, red patterned paper from a magazine, and a pale pink sheet from a give-away. It has probably been in my files for years.