Father’s Day was a couple weeks ago now, and since The Hubs had just gotten me my Silhouette Cameo for my birthday back in April, of course I was going to use it to make his gifts.  I mean, hello, right?  We usually don’t do gifts for each other for the holidays, or at least nothing too fancy or expensive….we usually put a $20 max limit on gifts or make something for each other (that’s right up my alley!).  We’d rather save our money and do something special for The Cub or get something for the house that we’ll both enjoy (can you say “new mattress”!).

The new Transformers movie is almost ready to come out in theaters, and since The Hubs is really just a little boy trapped in a man’s body, I knew I wanted to make him a Transformers-themed card.  The Hubs is also crazy about his morning cup of Joe, so I planned on making him a personalized coffee mug as well.  And thanks to my Silhouette, both plans became reality!

 

Transformers Father’s Day Card & ‘Coffee Makes Me Poop’ Mug

 

Supplies for The Hubs’ Father’s Day Card & Mug

• Cardstock (white, yellow, & black)
• Silhouette Sketch Pens (gold and silver)
• Silhouette Cameo
• Cutting mat
• Glue Dots
• Brown coffee mug
• White vinyl
• Transfer paper

 

Transformers Father’s Day Card

I had already used my Silhouette Cameo to make the Grandpas a festive banner/greeting card for Father’s Day, but I wanted to do something a little different for The Hubs.  He has been a life-long fan of all things Transformers, going back to the original cartoon series.  He can name off every. single. character. as well as their respective plane/train/automobile likenesses.  No joke.  Here’s a little story that goes to show just how much The Hubs loves this franchise:

There’s a sweet little farm on our street that is home to a horse, a donkey, and a miniature pony.  Since we drive past them everyday, I decided not long after we moved in a few years ago to name them….I mean, I’m sure they all must have real names from their owner, but these would be OUR names for them.  I know, I’m weird.  For the donkey, I chose Petey, and the miniature pony was given the name Lulu (although The Hubs swears that one day he saw visual proof that Lulu should actually be a Louis, if ya know what I mean….).  I asked The Hubs for input on what we should name the horse, and without any hesitation and with a deep, intimidating growl, he proclaimed “He shall be known as MEGATRON.”  Now whenever we’re driving past and see our friends in their field, we’ll say (or I guess I’m the only one that says) “Yay!  Petey, Lulu, and Megatron are out!”   One thing isn’t like the other though…

 

Designing The Transformers Card

Anyway, back to the point of this post!  The Hubs has seriously been talking about the newest installment of the movie franchise FOREVER.  Or at least that’s what it seems like to me.  So I knew I just had to make him a Transformers card for Father’s Day.

To do this, I first did a Google image search and found a nice, clean, easily cuttable image of the Autobots’ symbol (a.k.a the good guys), and imported it into my Silhouette Studio software.  I traced it to use it as the front of the card.  For the rest of the card, I used the Offset tool over the face to create an outline of it, then duplicated it, flipped it 180°, and moved it directly above the original offset (overlapping just a tad), then welded the two pieces together.  This would serve as the actual card (or flipping) piece.

I then created a speech bubble from a dingbat font for the front greeting and gave that an offset outline as well.  I downloaded a font called….wait for it….Transformers….and used that along with a font called KG Beneath Your Beautiful for the greeting.  Keeping with the Transformers theme, I decided for the card to read “Happy Father’s Day, Optimus Daddy!” on the front, and then on the inside, “Daddy, I hope I TRANSFORM into a man like you one day.  Love you!  Rowan.”  I know, super sweet.

 

Sketching The Card

Up until this point, I had only used my Silhouette to cut card stock and vinyl, and also some print & cutting, so I had just been dying to test out the sketch pen function.  This seemed like the perfect test project!  As part of the bundle that came with my actual Cameo, I had a four-pack of the Silhouette brand sketch pens in metallic gold, silver, bronze, and white.  For this project, I chose to use the gold and silver….very Bumblebee-esque, right?

 

Cut/Sketch Settings

Since I had my design all finalized, it was now time to select my cut/sketch settings.  I chose to sketch out the yellow words first.  To do this, I went to my Cut Style menu and selected only those words that I wanted cut….errr, sketched.  (Is it not confusing that the menu is still called “CUT Style”, even when you’re sketching??  Or is that just me?)

 

Next, I went to my Cut Settings menu and changed the settings in two places to ‘Sketch Pen’.  Then I placed some 12″ x 12″ white card stock on my mat, loaded my mat in the machine, and swapped out the blade for the gold sketch pen (first I scribbled the pen on some scrap paper to get all of its juices flowing nicely).  Then it was time to hit ‘Cut’!

 

The gold pen is actually more of a sparkly yellow (and it doesn’t photograph well….#sadface), but we had success!  Now it was time to sketch the rest of the words in silver.  To do this, I simply went back to my Cut Style menu and deselected all of the words that I had just sketched in gold, and instead selected the remaining words so they were now highlighted in red and ready to be sketched in silver.

 

Here is a very important thing to remember when using multiple sketch pens and cutting in one design: DO NOT UNLOAD THE MAT IN BETWEEN STEPS.   You will never, never, never get everything aligned properly if you do!

So, I left my mat loaded from the previous golden sketch, swapped out the gold pen for the silver one, then went to my Cut Settings menu and hit ‘Cut’.

 

Cutting The Transformers Card

And we had success again!  Everything was sketched and looking pretty.   Now it was time to do some actual cutting.

So, I went back to my Cut Style menu and deselected all of the words since they were already sketched.  I then selected the parts that I wanted cut out of the white card stock, which were the main card portion that contained the inside greeting as well as the speech bubble that was home to the front greeting.  Also, since this was going to be a card that folded flat, I selected the line that was to serve as the fold, and instructed that to get a perforated cut.

 

Then I had to go back to my Cut Settings menu and make some changes there too.  I selected Cardstock as my medium and also selected Blade instead of Sketch Pen.

 

Next, I removed the silver sketch pen and then installed my blade after first making sure it was set to a depth of 4.  Then I hit ‘Cut’ and watched the magic happen.

 

Ahhh, I just love it when a plan comes together….everything sketched and cut where it was supposed to!  It’s the little things in life, I tell ya.

Now I just had to do a couple more cuts then it would be time for assembly.  Since I was finished with the white card stock, I could now unload my mat and remove the two cut pieces.  Then I applied an 8.5″ x 11″ piece of yellow card stock and loaded it onto the machine.  To minimize the amount of card stock that would be wasted in the cut, I moved the face design to the top left corner.

 

I then went to my Cut Settings menu and hit ‘Cut’.

 

Lookey there….a perfect little Autobot face.  Then it was time to cut out the outline of the speech bubble in black card stock.  I just repeated the same steps as above for this step, except I obviously loaded up my mat with black card stock instead of yellow.

 

 

Assembling The Transformers Card

Now that all my pieces were cut out (which I unfortunately do not have a group picture of…..doh!), it was time to assemble everything.  The adhesive that I like to use when making things with card stock is Glue Dots.  The little dots are super easy to use, don’t make a mess of any kind (love!), and I like how they sort of give a little three dimensional look to the projects since the pieces stick up a little bit.  Plus, a roll seems to last forever!  They worked great for The Cub’s ‘Year of Firsts’ mini photo album keepsake, so I decided to keep on using ’em.

 

And viola!  Here is The Hubs’ finished Transformers Father’s Day card.  Not too shabby, if I do say so myself.

 

 ***Friendly heads-up here!  The remainder of this post will include a light-hearted, humorous, playful discussion of poop.  If you are uptight or have no sense of humor, please do not read any further. :)

 

‘Coffee Makes Me Poop’ Mug

Now that The Hubs’ card was complete, it was time to make his coffee mug.  Like I mentioned earlier, The Hubs loves him some morning coffee, and on the weekends when he’s drinking it at home, it’s sort of become a running joke at the breakfast table….he’ll be sipping on his cup of Joe, then a few minutes later, he’ll excuse himself with a simple declaration of “Coffee makes me poop,” then he’ll return a few minutes later a changed man.  Therefore, I thought I’d make him a little tongue-in-cheek coffee mug in honor of his morning routine.

 

I was so focused on making The Hubs his coffee mug that I completely forgot to take photos along the way!  Oooops.  So I only have photos of the design and finished product.  Oh well.

I bought a simple brown mug from Amazon….it looked MUCH darker on screen, so I was a little disappointed with the color in person, but it worked just as well.

In Silhouette Studio, I used a font called thisfontlookslikeagiraffe to make the sayings.  On one side I had it saying “Coffee Makes Me Poop” since that is The Hubs’ standard phrase.  The other side said “I Get {Poop} Done.”  Instead of spelling out “Poop” again, I thought it would be fun to have a little cartoon poopy graphic on this side.  Why not, ya know?  So, I did another Google image search for the perfect, cute little poop graphic (yes, I wanted some cute poop).

 

***Here is another friendly PSA:  Do not, I repeat DO NOT, under any circumstances, do a Google image search for “poop” or even “cartoon poop”….you will see things you will never be able to unsee.  I am still traumatized….

 

I cut the sayings out in white vinyl using the default vinyl settings except for speed….I bumped that down quite a bit since my design was small and intricate text.  Once cut, I cleaned the mug nicely then applied the sayings.  Tada!  Easy, funny, personalized homemade gift.

 

Since The Hubs might take this mug to work and use it at the office, I put our last name on the top of the handle.  That way all his coworkers will know that this mug is only for him and his coffee (and poops). :)

 

The Final Gift Package

And here is The Hubs’ final gift: the Transformers card, mug, lots of his favorite candies, and a Kentucky Bourbon cupcake from Gigi’s.  Needless to say, he was a very happy daddy.

He loved his card and had a hearty chuckle when he saw his mug.  Plus, I don’t know how many times he asked “You made this??”  That definitely made me feel good.

 

So The Hubs was happy with his gift, which made me happy.  It’s always nice being able to put a smile on the face of someone you love….and getting to share their candy. :)  Happy belated Father’s Day to all the daddios out there!

Thanks so much for stopping by!