Our Woodland Christmas Wreath

*A huge thanks to Silhouette America for providing the Portrait for this giveaway. This post contains affiliate links, denoted by an asterisk. My favorable opinion and borderline obsession with all things Silhouette is 100% my own. For more information, see my disclosures here.*

It is an exciting day here at Just a Girl and Her Blog! I am absolutely THRILLED to be giving away a *Silhouette Portrait* cutting machine to one very lucky reader! It is no secret that I'm pretty much obsessed with my Silhouette CAMEO*, so I could not be more excited to be gifting someone with her "little sister!" 🙂

Before we get to the giveaway, though, I thought I'd show you an example of one of the many, many things you could create if you were to win the aforementioned Silhouette Portrait. Now I make at least four wreaths per year (one for each season, and sometimes I make extras) and share them on the blog, so I am always trying to think of new and different twists on the traditional wreath. For this one, I decided to play a little game. I went to the craft store and picked out a surface-- a 12" x 12" piece of plywood-- and challenged myself to create some sort of Christmas door decor with it. A square piece of plywood isn't normally what you see hanging from someone's door, but hey, that's what makes it more fun! 😉

Here are all of the supplies I used to create my non-traditional "wreath:"

• White Adhesive Vinyl*
• Transfer Paper*
• Gold Adhesive Vinyl*
• Ribbon
• Paint (I used a sample of Behr's Marina Isle that I had in my stash.) + Brush
• Piece of Plywood
• Silhouette CAMEO*
• Drill (Not Pictured)

The first thing I needed to do was drill some holes in the plywood so I would be able to hang it up eventually. Donnie used to work from home, so I could have him do this type of thing for me whenever I was working on projects during the Cs' naps and it all went fine. But he doesn't work from home anymore, so if I wanted to work on my project that day, I was going to have to do it myself. After watching a couple YouTube videos and consulting with Donnie via text to change out the bit, I successfully drilled two holes in my board and promptly celebrated on Instagram. 🙂

I then painted the board and while it was drying, I got to work on my design. When I stumbled upon the Woodland Deer Papercut Garland in the Silhouette Design Store, I immediately knew it was "the one." 🙂 (And it didn't hurt that it only cost $0.50 since all designs are 1/2 off right now! Woot!)

I sized my design the way I wanted it in my Silhouette Studio software...

...and set my machine to work cutting it out for me. (If you are attempting this project, I placed my vinyl on the cutting mat and used the normal vinyl settings of speed 8, thickness 9, and blade 2.) Once I weeded out the excess vinyl, I was left with this:

In order to get this design over to my now dry piece of painted plywood, I used transfer paper. The longer I use my Silhouette, the more I realize how important it is to line up my design on the transfer paper grid. When I do this, placing my design where I want it (in this case in the center of the plywood) is super easy because I can use the grid as my guide. So first I place my design on the transfer paper, which is sticky, and use a scraper tool to make sure it sticks to the paper. You'll notice my design is now backwards.

That's okay, though, because when I flip it over onto my board, use my scraper tool to make sure it sticks, and peel away my transfer paper, it is exactly the way I need it to be!

I repeated the cut/weed/transfer process with the gold "L" I wanted to place in the center of my design, threaded the white ribbon through the holes, and my woodland Christmas wreath was ready to be hung on my door!

Yippee! SO easy! I love that the Silhouette makes projects like this one possible! I never would have been able to hand paint/draw/cut out this design, but the machine makes it simple.

Already a Silhouette user?

-Use my code- GIRL -for 40% off at SilhouetteAmerica.com* (*excluding machines, design downloads, download cards, subscriptions and gift cards) PLUS Free Shipping on orders over $25 for the lower 48 states

-Take 50% off all designs at SilhouetteDesignStore.com – no code needed!

*A huge thanks to Silhouette America for providing the Portrait for this giveaway. This post contains affiliate links, denoted by an asterisk. My favorable opinion and borderline obsession with all things Silhouette is 100% my own. For more information, see my disclosures here.*