If you've ever tried to design a rhinestone template with multiple colors and ended up with overlapping rhinestones that don't fit together...this tutorial is for going to show you how to use Silhouette Studio to avoid this issue.
Designing rhinestone templates with multiple overlapping elements requires one important step to ensure your rhinestones aren't overlapping.
Before we start - this is an advanced technique. It assumes you already know how to create basic rhinestones templates in Silhouette Studio. If you don't, I would practice with single color, single layer rhinestone templates before moving on.
When turning a cut file into a multi-color rhinestone template if you have overlapping pieces - like a cupcake with a cherry on top - you can't just apply rhinestone fills to create your template.
So you need to create space so you're stones fit together like a puzzle rather than being clumped on top of each other.
First, figure out which design elements will sit on top of or next to each other. In this example there are a lot of overlapping parts, but we'll focus on creating templates for the icing and cherry for simplicity.
What we want to do is create a gap between the layers and we'll do that by using an offset. So let's take the cherry shape and add an offset around it.
Pro tip: The offset distance should be roughly the same as your rhinestone spacing. If you're using size 10 stones with standard spacing, 0.1 to 0.15 inches for the offset should be good.
Select the original icing shape and the offset cherry shape and open the Modify panel. Click "subtract".
The offset shape is now cut out of the icing making room for when we convert the original cherry shape into a rhinestone template. What this does is remove the offset area from the icing shape.
At this point you want to scale the design pieces simultaneously.
When you're happy with the size, select the original cherry and give it a rhinestone fill. Do the same for the icing shape. Now you can move cherry rhinestone so it sits perfectly in the cutout of the icing without overlapping!
Remember not to scale your design up or down or it could change the size of the rhinestone holes for your template at all after applying the rhinestone fill.
If you need to manually move any of the rhinestones you can release the rhinestones to gain access to individual stones.
I have a much more in-depth video on how to create rhinestone designs on Silhouette U. You can preview it here even before joining.
Note: This post may contain affiliate links. By clicking on them and purchasing products through my links, I receive a small commission. That's what helps fund Silhouette School so I can keep buying new Silhouette-related products to show you how to get the most out of your machine!
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