Laura Rumble – Altering a cut file

Hello! Laura here today with some happy accidents.

When I first saw this Portcullis Quadrant cut file (pre-cut available here) I thought about cutting the shapes separately in different colours of cardstock and piecing them together like a mosaic. To do this I thought I needed to have a play in my Silhouette Studio software. I pulled the file into Studio and right clicked on it. This gives a menu and from that I clicked “release compound path”. I deleted all but one quadrant and selected just the large shape from the remaining quadrant and deleted it. I was left with such a fantastic pattern that I abandoned my first plan and changed direction!

Highlighting all of the small pieces I grouped them together and duplicated them. I dragged the second set of shapes to the side and lined them up off-set. I overlapped one off the diamonds so I ungrouped one of the sets of shapes, highlighted just the overlapping diamond and deleted it. From there I grouped all of the images together so I could move the new pattern as one. I placed it fairly centrally leaving a slightly larger area at the bottom of the page than the top and sent it to cut.

I backed each section of the cut file using scraps of blue and green. Most of them were small pieces left over from the Best Friends layout I created previously. I pulled out a few more project life cards from a Quirky Kit to use as layering behind my photo. I created a little pocket for some hidden journalling and embellished the layout with a handful of acrylic stars.

You can see the layout coming together in this video here.

And coming back to my first plan… if you just cut each quadrant on a different coloured cardstock you can then mix and match the pieces and create a mosaic effect. So I needn’t have tinkered with the cut file in the first place – but I’m so glad I did!