Love Notes : Offset & Welding Tutorial

I moved recently, and last week while I was unpacking boxes a little note fell out of one of my books. It was a yellow sticky note that had obviously been there for quite a while because it had lost it's sticky. In messy handwriting it had "I love you" written inside of a heart. It was a fun little treasure to find,  placed there a lot of years ago by someone hoping to brighten my day when I saw it. It worked. :) With Valentine's Day just a little over a week away, now is a good time to hide little love notes, in a favorite book, coat pocket or lunch box. {not that a holiday is necessary, just good timing!}

They don't have to be anything fancy, but using the Silhouette is a little more fun than your average sticky note...

To create mine, I opened the heart shape in Silhouette studio, sized it and then opened the offset window.

With the shape selected I clicked 'offset', changed the offset distance to .170 and selected corner. Then, clicked apply.

Once the offset shape was created I duplicated it, and placed it off to the side of the mat to use later. 

Next, I selected both heart shapes, opened the modify window and selected 'make' under Compound Paths. This takes the two shapes and combines them into one. 

Then, using the type tool, I typed "love" over the top of the heart shape and resized it so that the 'l' and 'e' overlapped the heart border. You will also notice that the letter in 'love' are slightly overlapping. The font I chose did this automatically, but if you have a font that doesn't, use the down arrow key under 'character spacing' until the letters are slightly overlapping.

With both the word and the heart border selected, I opened the modify window and selected weld from the menu. The word and heart border were then connected and would cut out in just one piece. I repeated the steps and created others using a rectangle shape too. Then I cut them out of teal cardstock.

Once I cut out the love shapes, I moved the extra heart shape I created in step 3 back onto the mat, duplicated it and cut it out of white cardstock. Adhered together, they make for the perfect little love note.

If you use divided sheet protectors for a Project Life type scrapbook... you can use this same technique in making cards with important dates, titles, days of the week etc.

Happy welding!

Shapes:

3 mason jars {heart shape}