Unusually, I’ve got a great number of work commitments every day this week, except for today, when a little fun was forecast.

After I’d been to the dentist, that is.

Oh, and after I’d been to vote, too. 

No fun until after my responsibilities have been addressed.

But yesterday, during a short break, I was doing one of those mindless internet browses, mooching around Facebook to see what folks are up to when I stumbled across a good idea for using my Silhouette.  Knowing that I had – somewhere – a pen holder for it, I thought that perhaps I’d give it a go.  Driving to and from Cheltenham last evening, I considered the possibilities and looked forward to cranking the machine up and giving it a try.

 

 

For my non-crafty friends, the Silhouette is a digital cutter.  There’s a small blade by that blue knob and the machine works just like a printer, but instead of printing a line, it cuts it.  So, like me, you’re probably thinking that there’s not much point in having a pen instead of a blade, because surely that’s going to make it behave just like a printer, isn’t it?

Well, yes.  That’s exactly what I’ve thought until now, too, and the pen holder (a small moulded piece of black plastic) had gone to the place where small moulded pieces of black plastic go – who knew?  Except later in the morning, I came across it – ta dah! – in a box on my desk.  Lucky, eh?

 

 

Anyway, I used the same file as the person who shared her work on Facebook, I copied her to the inch and drew this doodled “thank you” using a black Muji ballpoint pen on white paper.  I was pretty pleased with the result and enjoyed watching the machine draw all those little squiggles.

 

 

But yes, I’ll bet you’re still thinking “but it’s no different from printing it out on a printer”.  Well, we have an inkjet printer, and of course, if I put water anywhere near a printed image, the whole thing runs.  So, how about using a waterproof pen in the Silhouette, then, and doing a watercolour wash over it?

 

 

Huh.  So much for waterproof pens, eh?

 

 

The Jellyroll Glaze pen was better – but the line it produced was so gloopy that the design lacked precision.  Since that was one of the attractive features of the process, I wasn’t too keen on the result, even though it didn’t smudge one bit when I inked over it.

 

 

I messed about, trying several different pens from ball points to roller balls and felt tips.  I’m not sure that I was finding out anything I didn’t know but hey, I was having fun.

 

 

I even thought of trying the white Jellyroll Glaze pen and putting a wash over it.  Not bad – but gloopy in the same way as the black one was.

 

 

But of course, the main reason for wanting this to work was this – white ink on black paper!!

Clever, eh?

 

 

And, even though I found my pen holder in the end, I discovered that a bit of masking tape wrapped round the pen to make it fit the blade holder worked perfectly well too.

 

 

So, thank you, Debbie, for sharing your idea on Facebook!  (sorry, I can’t make the link work)  Find more information and ideas for using the pen holder here.