Do you have a favourite overlay design that would look great as a Greeting Card?
Today I’m going to show how easy it is to transform an overlay design into a card. I’m demonstrating with an overlay file design that I shared previously, The Quatrefoil Overlay .
How to….
If you’d like to play along, Download and open the cutting file in Silhouette Studio. I’m using the overlay on the top left side of the screen in the pic above.
- First, Decide what size you wish the card to be. I’m making a 12 cm which is smaller than the existing Overlay.
- Draw a rectangle 12 x 24 cm, being 12cm in height and 24cm for back & front of Card at 12cm each.
- In line Style tools: Select> a dotted line. Hold down Shift and Draw a line the depth of the card. Select >. Align and “Center’
- Drag the overlay design into the Card Front and Resize to fit leaving a space between the overlay and the card to form a border. Ensure it’s aligned evenly within the card front. If your overlay has a fill colour make it transparent so it’s easier to to what’s happening in the next steps.
- Right click on the overlay and select > Release compound path
- It will look like this. Then click away on a blank space on the mat.
- Select and carefully drag away & delete the outside line of the original overlay – (shown in Blue below).
- Move the Centre Fold Dotted line off to the side out of the way.
- Drag a bounding box to select the entire card and overlay, then Right click and select > Make Compound Path.
- Put the dotted Fold line back on the card. Select the card and the dotted line and Select > Align Tools >Center
- Finished! The Card design is all set now to cut out.
If you were wondering….
…..why I did it this way and didn’t just weld a box on one side of the overlay to form the back of the card. Well, I could’ve as that’s easy and effective too. However, In this case the edge of the original overlay border was fairly thin. I was worried that my lacy card front would be a bit flimsy. My method creates a border around the overlay that is as thick or a thin as needed or desired. It also allows the flexibility to put in a non standard shape overlay. For example you could use a round overlay in a rectangle card or square card.
Here’s an example of a square overlay inserted into a rectangular A2 sized card using the above method. 
