What’s the main reason that we all bought our Silhouette machines? To make awesome stuff, right? So why setting for a “boring” planner when we can make our own cute accessories to dress it up! When I found this faux leather paper in my stash, I knew it would be perfect for this project, so let’s take a look at this neat new media!!
THE PRODUCTS
This Faux Leather Paper from Silhouette America is really a cool new media — I say new, I think it’s only relatively new. But when I first saw Faux Leather Paper, I expected it to be thin — like paper. Of course, I was totally wrong, and for once I soooo glad.
On top of being nice and thick (and durable!), you can use it just like paper and most fabric uses — which is where this planner band comes into play! We are pairing the Faux Leather Paper with some really great and economical HTV from SewingMachine.com called FirstMark.
Last but not least, we have a cute elastic headband from the HairBow Center — which is (YES!) the same cute headbands we used in the fabric baby box!
THE TUTORIAL
First things first, unroll that beautiful Faux Leather Paper and lay it on your mat. Luckily Silhouette Studio has presets for Faux Leather Paper, so that took out a lot of the guess work!
On the design, I used my inspirational phrase “girl boss”, in which I’m totally obsessed. But this design was created with a series of offsets, so don’t be afraid to create your own. Here’s the files we’re working with:
Girl Boss Planner Band File Download
Studio Format | SVG Format
So the first thing to do is unroll that beautiful roll of Faux Leather Paper and lay it on your cutting mat. Separate the thick white offset in the file to cut the leather paper with.
Now I will say that I didn’t get a clean cut on my test cuts, so I did up my blade to a 7. Just remember that each machine is different, so test cuts are the key!! So here are the cut settings that worked for me:
Blade: 7 | Speed: 3 | Thickness: 3
Now you’re good to cut. Feed it in, on your mat, just like normal.
Now here is the key…. Surprising as it may sound, you will want to wash your newly cut paper. This seems to release some of the stiffness and give it more of a fabric feel than a stiff paper feel. I even ran mine through the washer and dryer with some laundry — that’s how durable this paper is.
I also went back and cut a mirror image of my design, so that I had two mirror copies. It’ll make sense a little later in the tutorial.
Now’s the easy part, since you guys are already familiar with how to use HTV. Cut the remainder of the design in your black (or pink, or both) FirstMark HTV from SewingMachine.com.
On the original cut (not the mirror cut) of your Faux Leather Paper, all that is left to do is to line it up and press on the HTV. As you can see on the data sheet, FirstMark is a WARM TO COLD peel, so don’t forget to set it aside before peeling it.
Once the HTV is pressed, we are going to run your headband through the middle of your leather paper. So we will only glue the edges of the design, allowing the headband to stretch and contract through the middle of the two pieces of faux leather.
I secretly added DecoFoil to mine, but we’ll talk about that in the next tutorial…
