3 DIY Wedding Gift Tutorials for Gifts That No One Will Believe You Made! Part 2 of 3

Hello! Faye here back with the second part of our Wedding Gift Tutorials! Today we will make the Etched Wine Caddy and be using our Silhouette Curio. No Curio? Don't despair you can also use your regular vinyl cutting machine to make this item by using the same etched vinyl that was used to make our bottle stopper yesterday.

However, I love to etch so this is the method I used to etch the wine caddy. I recommend having the large tray that Silhouette has for their Curio.  It can be done using the small tray and Peggy Flannigan will be doing a video to show everyone how that is achieved. But since I had the large tray I made my life easy!

Start the same way you would any project, gather up your supplies and open up the files.

Supplies:

Items with * have a link to the Craft Chameleon products

* Acrylic Wine Caddy Blank

  SVG Design Program ( Studio, Design Space, SCAL, etc)

* CB09Blade Holder with Etching Blade 

  Silhouette Curio
  Large Curio Tray
* Double Sided Tape -optional

To start set your page to show the large curio cutting/etching mat tray instead of the standard cameo view.  

Then open up the Wine Caddy cut/etch design file that Craft Chameleon includes with the purchase of the wine caddy butler acrylic blank.  When the file opens it opens horizontally.  In order to make it fit on the mat, rotate 90 degrees. 

After it is rotated, place acrylic on your mat* and line up the design on your screen so they are in the identical spot on both the screen and mat. Leave the backing on the side that will be the bottom. If your mat is well loved you may need to secure your acrylic in place with double-sided tape. Craft Chameleon's tape is flat out awesome. My mat is new so I was good to go!

*Mat Set up is as follows: Use 2 of the layers marked 2 and the gridded layer marked 1 for a total of 5. 

After the design is rotated and aligned with the acrylic on the mat, choose the design file and then open the emboss panel.  

In that panel select deboss, select the pattern and select the spacing density you want.  I chose the circular pattern and adjusted the spacing with the smallest setting of .004. The angle doesn't change with the circles so no need to worry that setting.

When you complete these settings your image will turn red or blue. Now up to the top right-hand corner to select send. Don't worry it actually takes us to the material/blade set up. 

When etching you need to have an etching blade.  I personally use the cb09 blade holder and etching blade from Craft Chameleon.  I also use tool slot number 2 which shows up blue on the curio screen when etching.  You’ll need to select your material. 

Most crafters will have to add the acrylic material type so here is the Craft Chameleon YouTube video link walking you through step by step on how to do this and the etching process. Start around the 9:30-minute marker to get the settings for cutting acrylic. The video shows version 3 of the software. 

 

I already have acrylic programmed into my curio so I didn’t have to set it up this time. Here are my settings in version 4.

You’ll notice that once you select etch all your lines turn from a light blue color to a dark blue color.  At this time you’re ready to hit send and away goes your curio etching the acrylic wine caddy butler for you.

Now comes the fun part!  You are ready to hit send at the bottom of the page and away goes your curio etching the acrylic wine caddy butler for you. Don't forget to breathe!

Etching time?   I believe it took about half an hour.  I didn’t do it but I believe the next time I would pause the etching part way through and clean my blade. I think there was a little bit of build up towards the end which caused some small scratches to the surface.  Even if you don’t do this the scratches I noticed were next to impossible to see and you end up with a beautifully etched wine caddy.

The last installment of this weeks DIY Wedding Gift Tutorials will be tomorrow! See you there!