Draw Balloons for a Birthday Card In Silhouette Studio
July and August are busy birthday months for me, so I thought this week I’d go for a birthday theme with my tutorial and freebie this week – although you can use the freebie for anything really. This week I am going to show you how to design a set of balloons in Silhouette Studio…. or is it a cluster of balloons?…..I’m not certain what a few balloons together would be, but I quite like a cluster of balloons. There is also the usual link below this post for this weeks freebie…cluster of balloons!
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Let’s get started…..
Open your Silhouette Studio Software and follow the steps to create your own ‘Cluster of Balloons.’
First off, To help size the balloons correctly. I drew a square the same size as the base card that I will be attaching my balloons too. (Delete this prior to cutting
Use the ‘Draw an Ellipse’ to draw an oval, so it resembles the blown up part of a balloon.
Use the ‘Draw Smooth Freehand’ tool to draw a wavy line that will represent the ‘string of the balloon’ (If you want, you can leave this part and use real string instead.)
The Draw Smooth Freehand will smooth out the line automatically, so if your a bit shaky with drawing this will smooth it out for you.
Select the wavy line you’ve just drawn, select object-offset – In the offset dialogue box, select offset and the distance of the offset. In this example I have used an offset of 0.08. Once you are happy with the offset delete the original wavy line.
Draw a triangle using the polygon tool, adjust and resize it, and then place it overlapping the bottom of the Oval (as shown in the image below) – I’ve moved the wavy line to one side for this part.
Not sure how to draw a triangle??? Click here for a tutorial on how to Draw a Triangle using the Polygon Tool in Silhouette Studio.
Select the Triangle and Oval and weld them together.
Next up, move the wavy line and position it overlapping the bottom half of the balloon. Copy and paste the balloon in front (Ctrl-C then select ctrl-F on a windows PC). This will paste the balloon in front, you’ll be able to tell that it’s pasted in front as the ‘Red’ line will look darker. Hold down the shift key and select the balloon and the wavy line. With these selected got to; Object-Modify – Subtract.
The balloon you pasted on top has now disappeared along with the section of the wavy line that was overlapping it.
Group the Balloon and Wavy line – (select them both, right click and select ‘Group’.) Copy and paste the balloons and position them in a ‘Cluster’ as shown – Don’t worry about the overlapping just yet.
Copy and paste the middle balloon twice. (Ctrl – C then Ctrl – F)
You can see from my example that the middle balloon is darker than the other two balloons, this shows that the balloons have been pasted on top of each other.
Hold down the shift key and Select one of the side balloons and one of the centre balloons, got to; Object – Modify – Subtract – Do the same with the other balloon on the other side. (if the middle balloon disappears, that will be due to it only being copied once, you can undo your changes and Ctrl-F again)
This is what you should be left with…Now you can leave it like this if you want….
….or you can add an offset. (I’ve added an offset of 0.08)
I’ve also added a number to the middle of my balloon. To do this, place the number in the centre of the balloon, select the balloon and the number, right click and choose ‘Make Compound Path’ The number will then be inverted.
Get ready to cut….
Here’s a card I quickly created, although I know it’s not the best – I was using the remainder of some card blanks that I had. I think it would look even better on some Kraft Card and with a personalised name at the bottom, and maybe some bakers twine for the ‘Strings’ of the balloon.
To stick the cut outs to the card i’ve used foam pads for the offset layer and a glue tape pen to stick everything else down.
This weeks Free SVG/DXF files is the below Balloon Design (minus the Watermark). I design all my files in Adobe Illustrator where I then convert too SVG and DXF files. In my tutorials I like to show you how you can create similar Designs within the Silhouette Studio software. Files are for personal use only.
Thank you so much for reading, I really hope this post has inspired you to experiment with designing in your Silhouette Studio Software. If you want to stay up to date with my tutorials and freebies then please feel free to follow me on: Pinterest,Facebook or Instagram.
Happy Crafting
Vicky xx
