DIY North Carolina Art | 2 Little Supeheroes

I can waste hours away on the Silhouette online store. So much cleaning to do, yet so many images to search. I know my life is so awful.

Last night I was randomly searching the online store and found this image of North Carolina and knew I had to use it. They have all the States and Provinces & Territories (for all my Canadian readers). I’m not sure if I’ll do a Ontario or Canada one next.

I removed the “North Carolina” text by ungrouping everything and then just deleting each letter one by one. Sorry I forgot to take a screen shot of this step. But the button to ungroup is in the very bottom left hand corner.

NOTE: Be careful when enlarging your state. I think I stretched mine too much (vertically). Try to only use the corner squares to enlarge because they enlarge in proportion. The little squares on the sides enlarge either vertically or horizontally, but don’t do it in proportion. Does that make any sense at all?

Once I had it the size I wanted I cut it out with contact paper. I was only using it as a stencil so I didn’t want to use expensive vinyl. When I use contact paper with my Silhouette I don’t use a mat and I set the blade to 2. It works perfectly every time and never cuts the paper, just the sticky contact page.

I positioned my contact paper stencil on my canvas that I had already painted grey.

To ensure that paint doesn’t seep underneath your stencil you will want to go around the edges with either your base paint (in this case the grey) or with matte medium (you can find it in the art department of your craft store.)

Once the matte medium was dried I painted the State a dark blue.

I found this cursive “Love” text from Silhouette. This time I used some yellow vinyl to cut it out (just figured it would be easier than stenciling it.)

For the star (Raleigh) I just used the inside stencil (the actual cut out of North Carolina-it had the star on it) placed that on top of the painted blue state and painted the star yellow. Hope that makes sense (it will once you’ve cut the stencil.)

I wish I had made the State bigger and I felt it needed something around the edges (just to fill in all that empty space.)

So I picked out a square scallop border from the Silhouette online shop.

See image above for how to change mat to none and how to change the size of paper you are sending through your Silhouettte (this is how you create an image much longer than your Silhouette mat.)

Place the stencil in position and painted a small amount of grey paint around the edge (like we did earlier.) Let dry. Then I painted a pale blue around the outside.

The stencil should come off easily and leave perfectly painted lines. Yeah.

I wish I reversed the colours and painted North Carolina the pale blue and the border the dark blue. Oh well.

So what State, Province, Territory, Country do you plan on making? I’d love to hear.

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24 thoughts on “DIY North Carolina Art”

I love your project! I just did a state map art project myself using my Silhouette Cameo. I’m so glad I just saw yours over on Today’s Creative Blog and decided to check it out. Your tutorial is very thorough and taught me a lot of great tips. I’m extremely new to my Cameo, so I take all the tips I can get!
Allison

http://www.thegoldensycamore.com/2013/01/diy-state-map-art-and-striped-frame.html

24 thoughts on “DIY North Carolina Art”

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