Custom Mint stamp baby announcement

(This was originally posted on the Silhouette America Blog)

It's Carrie again bringing you more adorable baby photos to ooh and awe over!  If you've been keeping up with the blog lately (and I hope you have!) you'll know that I recently gave birth to my second son in March.  What do all parents want to do when they have a new little one?  Show them off of course!

 This brings me to today's tutorial on how to use your Mint machine to make an amazing, unique, and custom birth announcement to share with all of your friends and family.  

I will warn you that this is going to be a more advanced software tutorial showing you how to make the custom stamp, but I know you're all up for the challenge.  

Bonus feature:  This is a trick I learned to make ANY design store design into a mint stamp since some don't work well in Mint Studio™ without the edits first.  You're welcome!! :)

   

Ready to get started?  

You will need:

• Mint machine
• 90 x 45 stamp kit
• 60 x 30 stamp kit
• Mink ink: teal, green, gray, black
• white cardstock
• envelope
• Design ID #58867
• Design ID #66717

Step 1:  Editing the "hello world" design

I know this is a Mint tutorial but I'm going to have you work in Silhouette Studio® first.  This is my big trick because you have so many more editing features to work with.  Open your designs up in Silhouette Studio®  




Resize the "Hello World" design to fit the 60 x 30 stamp.  I cheated and used an online conversion calculator to figure out what that meant in inches.

  
 

Fill the design with the color black





Change the line color to black too.  This makes it a nice clean image to work with in Mint Studio™. Now "hello world" is ready for Mint.  

Note: This is the trick to make ANY design work with Mint Studio™.  For print and cut designs you will need to trace it first then make it black and white.

Step 2: Editing the "flags" design

Ok here is the tricky stamp to design, don't be scared to try this.  I'll break it down for you and please leave a comment if you have questions.   I wanted each "flag" to say his birth information.  I found a font that coordinated nicely with the "hello world" design in my vast library.  I may have a slight addiction to fonts.  

Tip: Here is an awesome website to use to help pick the perfect font www.wordmark.it

 

Just type a separate line for each statistic  


 

Resize the text to fit into each flag.  You will need to rotate it a bit to fit the angle correctly too.





Here's how it looked once that step was complete

 


This is the hardest part...stay with me!  Select the first flag with the words.  Next go to the modify tool and select "subtract".  What this does is subtract the words from the flag shape instead of the words sitting on top of the flag.  If you don't do this step you won't see the words when you go to print the stamp.  





Now group that shape together so it's all one object again.


 

Now you can fill it with the black color  





Make the line color black too  





Now repeat those same steps for the other 2 flags and fill the strings too so everything is black

  



Move the flags to sit on top of each of their strings and group the design together.  





Save the design to your hard drive because you're going to open that new file in Mint Studio™.
We're done working in Silhouette Studio® now.  


 

Step 3: Open the designs in Mint Studio™

 
 

Select the 90 x 45 stamp size in stamp settings and rotate the flag design 90 degrees  


 

An easy way to get the design to the correct size is to use the scale tool and select "fit to stamp" I usually make it a tiny bit smaller then so I have a little room around the design.  


 

Now find the filter you want to use, I used the standard one.  This is where you would discover any flaws with your design because it wouldn't show up correctly.  (Again, I know this because I learned the hard way.  Don't worry I'm here to make the mistakes and trouble shoot for you, I'm a team player like that!)  


 

Step 4:  Send designs to the Mint

You're ready to send it to the Mint!  The software automatically flips the design for you.  Follow the directions on the right hand side.

 

Here is a shot of the stamp printing, so fun to watch the magic!!  


 

Repeat the same steps for the "hello world" stamp.  I used the 60 x 30 size stamp.  




Here's how it will look when you go to send it to the Mint machine.

   

Note:  I also made a flag stamp without the words to use on the envelope.  Just follow the "hello world" fill method to make that stamp.  

Step 5: Ink the stamps

The fun part, adding those marvelous colors!  I went with some boy colors to coordinate with his onesie (that I made of course, would you expect anything else?) :)   The longer you let the ink absorb the better.  I applied mine and then made dinner so I didn't rush it.    


 

Here are how the stamps turned out, I'm kinda in love.


 

The custom stamp!  


 

Step 6:  Putting it all together!

  The challenge here was trying to line up the strings so it looked like Tyler was holding the flags in his little fist.  I'm thrilled with how this project turned out!

 



 Don't forget to stamp the envelope to complete the full package.