Simple Frosty Metallic Hand Lettered Die Cut Card

Hello everyone! Today I’ll be taking you through a hand made wintery card design using metallic card stock, calligraphy, digital die cutting, and manual die cutting techniques. 

This design is pretty simple and mostly focuses on creating your own typography, so I’ll be taking you through my process of nailing down how I want the sentiment to look first. 

Using a Pentel water brush filled with black sumi ink, I cover an entire page with different variations on the phrase “warm wishes.” I keep the letters straight up and down for the most part, applying more pressure on down strokes and lighter pressure on up strokes. 

Interested in seeing the step my step process? Don't forget to watch the video tutorial:

Once I am happy with the variety of type designs on my page and I think I see something I like enough to turn into a digital die cut, I scan everything and bring the black and white image into Adobe Illustrator. You can also use a free vector program such as Inkscape.

Using the Pen tool, I trace each letter to create a vector design. At each step I am making sure the distance between letters is correct, that the width and thickness of downstrokes/upstrokes make sense, etc. 

Vector lettering on top of the original brush lettering scan.

Once I’m happy with the final design, I save it as a JPG and import it to the Silhouette Studio library. Trace the image, make it into a cut file, fit it so that I can cut three copies from some Neenah classic crest card stock in the color Pewter, and cut. 

I cut it out three times so I could stack for dimension. Seemed like a good excuse to try my new Quickie glue pens. The glue flows out really well and it’s super convenient for intricate die cuts as it applies blue but dries clear, so you can see exactly where you put it. I was able to glue all the layers together in no time, letting them dry under a heavy acrylic block as I went.

I manually die cut some snowflakes from Neenah classic crest solar white card stock to add to the card front, which is a pre-cut and scored Stardream Metallic Rose Quartz folded card. I wanted the dark gray letters to have a subtle texture to stand off from, and the white snowflakes were the perfect added touch. 

I attached the stacked die cut letters with Ranger multi medium matte. I also used my negative-stencil method from die cut scraps to help align and place the letters. Just add a piece of tape to the top and be sure to hold down the letters you glue as you lift the stencil. 

That completes the process for this card project. Perfect for a winter birthday or even just a note. 

We plan to create some envelope art to go along with this card design, using the Stardream metallic card stock as a unifying element. So stay tuned!

- Haley

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