More than Car Decals

A few weeks ago, when Lettering Delights asked their Facebook fans for suggestions for a new SVG set, "stick people" were mentioned over and over again. In response, LD released The Stringbeans, or their version of the stick people last week. Car decals are always popular and these new LD designs are the perfect candidate for the vinyl decals. Unfortunately, Hubby is not a fan. In fact, he doesn't like it when I put things up on the walls or stick vinyl jack-o-lanterns on our outside lamp either. Sticking vinyl on the mini-van was definitely out of the question.

Lucky for him, I'm not into car decals either and lucky for all of us, these "Stringbeans" are Cut Its files that come with several formats including SVGs. I could use them for many things besides car decals so I made a card with them instead.

Image no. 3 in the Stringbeans Darling Daughters set look just like my girls. Seriously, with the bob cut and headband, it is the splitting image of the kids. It is no wonder then that I just had to use it for their end-of-school-year Thank You cards for their teachers.

I used Silhouette Studio Designer Edition (SSDE) to make the printed cards. I imported the image onto the virtual mat and cropped the body (command: OBJECT>MODIFY>CROP or in MTC use Boolean Join>Intersect) as I only wanted to use the face for the card. The font LD Mon Cherie was used for this project. By changing the sentiment to "Miss You!", my girls could also send these cards to their friends during the Summer Break to let them know that they are missed.

Traditionally stick people are black and white, although sometimes a little colored accent is added. I like the simplicity of these "stick people cards". They have a modern, minimalist look but they come with a clear greeting. I thought about adding color to the headband but I did not want to take any attention away from the sentiment, so I decided to keep the main image uncolored. The good thing about using these LD cut files is that, if I prefer to add colors to the card, I could easily do so by using the Fill Color or Fill Pattern tools in SSDE.

Just to show you how the colored versions of the cards would look like, I made the following two colored cards. The first is color-printed while the other is paper-pieced with patterned cardstock.

For the printed card, I used the Fill Pattern tool and various LD digital papers to add colors. The LD papers that I used include the Pucker Up Paper Pack (blue), Matryoshka Doll Paper Pack (orange), and the Love is Sweet Paper Pack (green). 

The patterned papers that I used for the paper-pieced version of the card came from My Mind's eye Lime Twist Happy Go Lucky (headband) and the Fine and Dandy Girl.

Whether The Stringbeans are used for vinyl projects or for paper-crafting, the 38-set bundle is too great of a deal to pass by. The regular price of the bundle is $114, when the 38 sets are bought separately, but LD is currently offering it at a crazy price. For a limited time, all 380 images in the 38-set bundle is available for only $30. This insane offer will expire in one week. Don't miss out. Click HERE to get your Stringbeans Simple Shapes bundle now!

P.S. When using LD Cut Its cuttable files with Silhouette Studio Designer Edition, don't forget to Ungroup the image and set the cut lines to "Cut" by using the Cut Style window.

P.P.S. I used my Silhouette Cameo to cut the vinyl piece pictured above by using the following settings: Blade Depth 1, Speed 8, Thickness 9.

Update:

MTC users, you can crop the image with the program too. Just select both the rectangle shape and the Stringbean girl, and CTRL+U for Boolean Join and select Intersect (i.e. use Boolean Join>Intersect).