I am a member of the Silhouette Flickr group and I keep seeing these cute 3D word displays from
Needles n Knowledge. First she did one with the word "Spooky" and then "Thankful." Her latest is "Joy." Jodi is very nice and answered several questions I had about her "Thankful" display but I ended up deciding that it was just too long of a word and I felt overwhelmed looking at the cuts.
When I saw her "Joy" display I decided to give that one a try. Only 3 letters, can't be that bad, right?
All I can say is, Jodi has the patience of a saint.
3D letters are probably my least fun thing to ever assemble. Especially curved ones like the J and the O. The Y wasn't too awful. It's also very time consuming to glue together zig zag edges and wait til they are sturdy enough to glue more zig zag edges, not to mention trying to put pressure on a hollow 3D letter when you are gluing it together...eek!
All 3 letters are from the Sil store (I just searched 3D letters). I made the J as large as it would fit on a 12x12" page, turning it diagonally to get it even bigger. The Y was resized to be about 1/2 the J and the box under the Y was meant to be the other half of the J, size-wise, but it came up a little short so I used corrugated cardboard to quickly make a sweater box (maybe?) so it looks like a stack of presents and balances out the J. The O was sized to match the top half of the Y.
After those were cut, I used the Silhouette Knife Tool to slice all the tabs and stuff off of the letters so I just had a flat J and Y (I don't need the O for this part). I used the line tool to fill in any missing lines, pattern filled them with the argyle (J) and holly/berry pattern (Y) and used the Print & Cut feature. I then glued these to the front of the J and the Y.
For the O, I downloaded a wreath in the Silhouette Store and cut every layer out of print and cut in different shades of green with one layer being a pattern that had berries. The bow was color filled in red and print & cut at the same time. I like to stick as much on a sheet as I can when I do print & cut! I also downloaded a 3D Star, color filled it yellow, and, you guessed it, print & cut!
The bow and the tree pieces were cut out of green paper (different papers) and the box was cut at the same time I cut the Y, since they both fit on a 12x12 paper. In fact, the box is from the "BOO" display I made in October! I just erased the B and voila, plain box. The base of the tree I filled with a wood pattern and again utilized the print & cut feature.
So...everything is cut. I already mentioned what a pain in the butt it is to put together these letters. Here's some in-process photos. Yes, I gave up and started trying to discretely use tape.
The most noticeable pieces of tape were going to be on the end of the J where the tree rests. The tree just wouldn't hide it that well.
I cut a square of that same red paper and used spray glue because at that point I was hating my glue stick.
Not perfect, but this is the angle that looks the worst.
Now I had to figure out how to get the letters stuck together. Glue was an obvious choice, except you can't put pressure on hollow paper letters. Both sides of the O had to stick to the J and the Y and it just didn't seem like it would work.
I came up with an idea, and it works very nicely, but it looks completely awful from the back.
Yep. Paperclips. Also, I see the glue on the tree isn't dry yet, which reminds me, I totally found that liquid white school glue works VERY nicely when you can't put pressure on something, but it doesn't dry all that fast which can be a problem.
So, about 3.5 hours later, 2 pieces of green paper, 2 pieces of red paper, 1 piece of printable card stock, and some corrugated green cardboard later, we have....
Is it perfect? No. Is it real? 100%. I'm not paid by Silhouette, endorsed by Needles n Knowledge, on any design teams, or anything like that. I'm just a mom who really, really likes Print & Cut because I never have card stock on hand.
I may tweak some things, including more branches on the wreath, making the corrugated card board look nicer, and some other minor changes, but on the other hand, I'm kind of done with this sucker now.
I recommend finding wooden or even the paper mache type letters at craft stores, assuming they have sizing that you like, and decorating those with Silhouette designs. They will be sturdier and therefore last longer (hopefully) and you won't have to worry about assembling them.
Also, I am looking for recommendations on glue if you make lots of 3D crafts like this! I have Scotch Crafter's Glue Stick and some 3M Spray Glue, but maybe some of my assembly problems are bad glue choices? What do you think?
