Dad Shirt & Tie Gift Card Holder - Tutorial for Outlined Titles

Hi everyone, since Father's Day is right around the corner, I wanted to share a super card that I made, complete with a pocket for tucking a gift card to Dad's favorite store or restaurant. To make the card, I used a cutting file called Git Card Holder Father's Day Shirt (link below).

 

For the "Dad" title, I used a technique for making a welded outline that's pretty cool. So, I'm sharing the tutorial! You can also see this post over on Lori Whitlock's blog, here.

Here are the step-by-step instructions for creating a welded outline title like the one I made for this pocket:

Step 1:  Choose a thick, chunky font and spread the letters out a bit. I used Lori's font called LW Clementine (link below).

Step 2:  Highlight your word and ungroup the letters (right click, ungroup)

Step: 3:  Highlight the letters and go to the "Offset" window. Hit Offset and use the sliding bar to adjust the size.  I set mine around 0.025.  (You do not have to color fill your shape...I just did this to show you more details.

Step 4:  Once your offset is done, highlight each letter individually and group the letter with the offset (right click, group).  Then highlight each letter, right click, and hit "Make Compound Path".

Step 5:  Now move your letters so that they overlap each other (to keep them in a straight line, highlight them and use your right or left arrow to move them).  Once they are overlapped the way you want them, highlight the whole word, right click and hit weld.

Here is another example of how I used this technique on a layout. For the "SMILE" I overlapped the letters, and even rotated them a bit before welding.

Thanks for stopping by! I hope you have fun with this technique! Below are the links to Lori's cutting files I used. Happy scrappin'!