April showers bring May flowers, and also give me an excuse to make raindrop-themed art for the kitchen. This month's Silhouette Challenge theme is "sketch pens," and I designed a printable raindrop pattern that your Silhouette draws for you — no printing required.
How Silhouette sketch pens work
If you haven't used sketch pens with your Silhouette, here's the quick version: you replace the cutting blade with a pen holder, load a Silhouette-brand pen (or adapt a regular pen with a DIY adapter), and the machine draws your design instead of cutting it. The pen follows the vector paths exactly, so you get perfectly consistent results every time.
I use the Silhouette sketch pens for all my envelope addressing and hand-drawn looking cards. They come in a bunch of colors and tip widths. My favorites are the fine-point metallic pens — gold and silver look amazing on dark cardstock.
The April Showers design
I drew a repeating raindrop pattern in Silhouette Studio using a mix of solid and outline drops. The sketch pens draw the outlines, and some drops are left empty for a scattered, organic look. It works on an 8.5 x 11 sheet of cardstock or watercolor paper.
I used blue and gray sketch pens — the blue for the main drops, gray for smaller accent drops. After the Silhouette finished drawing, I went over a few drops with watercolor paint to add some dimension. You could skip this step and it still looks great on its own.
Tips for sketch pen projects
Always do a test draw on scrap paper first. The pen pressure varies depending on how worn the tip is, and you don't want your final piece to have half-drawn lines because the pen was running dry. Keep spare pens on hand — I go through about one pen per 15-20 drawings.
Tape your paper to the mat instead of relying on the mat's stickiness alone. Sketch pens put lateral pressure on the paper that cutting blades don't, and the paper can shift mid-draw if it's not secured. A few pieces of washi tape on the corners fix this completely.