Diana Official Blog

I had several birthdays to celebrate this month and wanted to make them with my Silhouette SD. I thought I would make one design and customize to match the recipient's favorite colors. This pink and purple one is for our niece who turned 13. I have long admired paper cutters who cut by hand with a craft knife, but any time I think about trying it, I run the other way because I just don't have the patience for it. I finally drew a cake without measuring a single thing - no rulers or straight lines or grids or pre-thinking it. The fine lines are a delicate piece to remove from the adhesive mat and I manually thickened some areas to make gluing easier, but this is still not something I'd want to make many times over. My laziness is quite the task master! I dabbed a glue stick like a bingo card - up and down, not rubbing across, or else the glue goes underneath the paper and would show in front. Again, the fineness is a hindrance. As you can see, there is not much gluing surfac...

Who can resist a cupcake? Guilt-free and fun to make, these luscious swirls will make a card to keep. There is an unusual way the creamy icing is made. It's not simply rubbing the strips in strategic places - I think that would be a bit of work and I'm quite lazy! There is some prep work involved in the set up, and then after that, it's frosting all the way.  My file contains templates to print the 4.5" x 6.25" card backgrounds and also allows for you to type your own message as you see here. My file contains four ready-to-print 4.5" x 6.25" cards and also allows for you to type your own message. To top it all off, there is also an editable envelope as well. This fresh batch of goodies are available now in my Etsy shop .

It's the end of March now, and with Easter around the corner — just the right time to begin making Easter eggs. Have you heard about a lost and found Faberge egg that was almost sold for scrap, by the way? Amazing story. Read more »

When I saw Cecelia's quilling work the first time a few years ago, I was stunned by its delicacy. It is amazing what she can do using a very limited number of airy curls. Her quilling is not just the traditional paper filigree we all are used to. It is particularly fine, intricate, expressive, and I would say "laconic". It is different. You can always recognize Cecelia's style when you come across a photograph of a piece made by her artistic hand. I have been wondering how she does it. Read more »

Inspired by Jeffery Rudell 's post,  Oeuf Couture: How to Dress an Easter Egg , I couldn't stop all the ideas that kept cropping up (see previous Easter Egg Spaceship ). This is a black box about 5.5 inches squared. The letters are cut from metallic silver vinyl. The black paper is Canson Mi-Tientes. The simple purple ribbon helps to open the lid and foreshadows a hint of Easter without giving too much away. Once open, a floating planet is set against a galaxy of stars. Like a jaunty hat, it's rings are tilted off to the side. Wait a second, upon closer inspection... ...that's no sphere – it's an egg! It comes apart – the ring is cut from Stardream metallic silver cardstock (got mine at Paper Poet ) and simply rests on top of the egg. The egg is held aloft with a trimmed skewer stick that's been blackened with a marker. I used Pearl Posca metallic markers to dot stars in the background. I would have used yellow but my set didn't come with one. It's about...