Honey Bee Card Tutorial

For a Christmas gift we received a jar of homemade honey.  I wanted to ensure I shared our appreciation so I started searching for card inspiration on Pinterest.  I found this absolutely perfect card at Cindy Lee Bee Designs.  I had just recently downloaded a similar hexagon style design from the Silhouette Design store that would work perfect in the background.  I wanted to do a little something extra with it then just cut it out of paper.  I had recently started dabbling in trying to make my own embossing folders and thought this was a perfect candidate.


I set up the silhouette cut file to make an embossing folder 4 x 5.5 inches.  I wanted to run this through my Texture Boutique and it will only handle embossing folders that are less than 5 inches wide.  I started by adding the stamping kit honeycomb file.

This file was included in the Silhouette Stamping Starter Kit.  I ungrouped the shaped and kept the hexagon outline.  I did a select all and grouped it together again.  I set the width to 5.5 inches and the height by 4 inches and rotated 90 degrees clockwise.  I added a square cutting line the same size to ensure the full honeycomb would cut out. I also created another box 4 x 11.75 inches to act as the actual folder I would adhere the above pieces to.  I decided to cut this out of quilter's plastic I found at Joann Fabrics.  Per suggestions I found on other sites I used the printable magnet cutting settings on the cameo.  This is what the final file looked like prior to sending through the Cameo.

At first I didn't think my cut settings were right as the cut didn't appear to go all the way through the plastic.  I tried for a second time increasing my blade settings and still didn't appear to go all the way through.  I decided to take the whole sheet of plastic off the mat and see if it could be salvaged.  What I came to find was that the plastic did indeed cut all the way through but needed a little bit of help getting pulled apart.  It reminded me of ripping the shapes out of fruit roll ups.

Now that all my pieces were pulled apart I had to figure out how I was going to adhere the cut pieces to the larger plastic piece I was using as my folder.  I start by scoring lightly a fold line in the middle of the 4 x 11.75 piece.  I tried using a glue adhesive and found the pieces slide around.  I decided to give my Xyron sticker maker a shot.  I sent all the pieces through and then started putting it together.

I started with the outline of the honeycomb.  I found this to be the easiest since this pieces will still all together.  Once this was stuck in place I took each of the hexagons and fit them into the honeycomb like a puzzel with the sticky side facing up.  Once all the pieces were in place I closed the folder on itself to get the pieces perfectly aligned on the opposite side.  I was super excited to test this out.

After trying my first run I realized I needed a bit more pressure to mimic the thickness of a store bought embossing folder.  I had some left out plastic from a previous project but anything would really work as a shim as long as you could cut it to the same width of the folder.

Now that I had my honeycomb embossing folder it was on to the paper bee I was going to add to the front of the card.  I found the Happy Bumble Bee cut file through the silhouette design store.  It took some trial and error but I figured out how to get this cut out so the colors would be the way I wanted them when fully assembled.

I searched for a coupled patterned piece to back the honeycomb panel and attached to my card base.  This ultimately ended up being a very labor intensive card but turned out great and got me using my Silhouette Cameo in new ways I hadn't before.