If you haven't yet been introduced to working with digital paper and digital patterns in Silhouette Studio, then say hello to a whole new world of paper crafting!
Digital patterns give you this amazing ability to customize and print your own patterned paper and allow you to be even more creative in your paper crafts. No need to be intimidated when it comes to digital paper and digital patterns because in this tutorial we'll show you how you can use digital patterns with Silhouette Studio for your paper crafting projects!
The Print Bleed feature in Silhouette Studio is a very handy tool for printing and cutting borderless stickers and decals.
There isn't much customization options with print bleed so it may cause you some grief with certain designs and fonts. But there's a work around for that... here, let me show you.
If you're considering the Silhouette Deep Cut Blade for Silhouette CAMEO or Portrait, this review and tutorial will give you a good start including cut settings for otherwise hard to cut materials.
The Silhouette Deep Cut blade can cut materials up to 2mm thick. Those
are usually reserved for the Curio, CAMEO 3, Portrait 2 and Silhouette CAMEO 4 which are the
machines that have the higher clearance and therefore can cut thicker
materials. However I was also able to use the Deep Cut blade with
success in my CAMEO 2. This gives you some options if you want to avoid or can't use the Kraft Blade.
If you've been holding out for a Pink Cameo today is your lucky day. The limited edition Pink Silhouette CAMEO 3 along with the sleek all black CAMEO are now available for pre-order.
The Pink and Black CAMEO 3's will begin shipping later in September.
I know a lot of people obsess over fonts. I'm not usually one of those people. I find fonts two ways for my Silhouette and crafting projects: 1) I scroll down the font list in Silhouette Studio and whatever strikes me, I go with - sometimes you just gotta trust instinct and not over-think it. The second way I pick fonts is from my list of favorite fonts.
So what are my go-to fonts? Well...when it comes to script fonts I have about a dozen that I gravitate towards. These are fonts that I know won't let me down - specially when I'm short on time and I need something that will work. These 11 FREE script fonts never fail me!
Silhouette School was a happening place in April! If you missed any of the 22 Silhouette Tutorials, you're in luck!
We've covered everything from how to design and print life-size graphics in Silhouette Studio to how to an easy hack for using craft foil on your heat transfer vinyl designs to creating mock ups in Silhouette Studio using your own photos!
Did you know you can customize your Silhouette CAMEO and Silhouette Studio with just a few clicks. Of course Silhouette America wouldn't expect us crafty types to live with the boring ol' gray defaults. That's why they're giving us options - color options - on both the Silhouette CAMEO2 (sorry CAMEO1/Portrait/Curio users) and in Silhouette Studio.
Oh happy day...today I'm sharing a quick Silhouette trick for you that's going to save you a ton of wasted material and hair pulling. It's just not the beauty of the test cut, it's the ability to move the test cut location...anywhere!
Let's say you take yourself on a little shopping spree at Expressions Vinyl...you wait your two or three days and all the pretty vinyl and glitter HTV arrives in the mail.
You're so anxious to cut it you go for it...wah wah wah. There's nothing like a kill joy when the gorgeous glitter heat transfer vinyl (or a new type you haven't cut before) isn't cut all the way through because you had the wrong cut settings.
I hear this time and time again from people that they've wasted an entire sheet of vinyl or HTV due to the wrong cut settings. If only they'd done a test cut and "wasted" half a square inch of that glitter HTV rather than the whole sheet.
The test cut gives you a tiny sneak peek into whether your cut settings will work for your material...no more guessing. But here's the best part...you can actually move the test cut location ANYWHERE. I love doing this for two big reasons:
The default test cut is in the upper left corner of the mat, but in that spot you have to fully unload the mat to examine the cut. Moving it further down the page allows you to check out the test cut without unloading the mat and material.
If your design is placed in the upper left corner of the cutting area, as many crafters do, the test cut could get in the way of the design cut..moving it eliminates that worry. I prefer to move it to the right side, near the bottom.
So how do you move the test cut location?
Open up Silhouette Studio and click on the 'Cut Settings' window. That's the little blade along the top tool bar.
Pick your material. In this case I have a custom material listing for 'Glitter HTV.' After you select the material, use the scroll bar to scroll further down the page. Use the suggested cut settings in Studio to adjust the blade.
Right below the cut settings, you'll see the test cut button. To the left of it are a few directional arrows on a blue square...bet you never noticed them before did, ya?. Don't press them yet....but they are key!
Place that pretty Glitter HTV onto the mat with confidence. Load the mat into the machine as you normally would.
Now in Silhouette Studio use your mouse to hold down one of those directional arrows - pick the one that correlates to the direction you want the blade to move. You can tap the arrow or hold it continuously until it goes where you want. For example, if you want the test cut in the bottom right corner...hold the "down" arrow and then hold the "right" arrow. Once you have the blade exactly where you want it to test cut, click "Test Cut."
Here's a quick video to demonstrate. Keep your eye on the mouse hovering over the test cut arrows as well as the blade housing.
When the test cut is complete, the blade will should return (but doesn't always...I have no idea why) to the home position. Since the test cut is easily accessible and not blocked by the rollers, you can use your hook tool to peel up the little square or triangle to see if the current cut settings work well for your material.
If you're satisfied, you can confidently send your design to cut by clicking "Send to Silhouette."
If the material does not easily weed in the test cut location, adjust the cut settings and blade depth and perform another test cut, moving the test cut location to another spot on the material.
Now that you know you won't be wasting any more vinyl (or other materials)...buy all the pretty colors! Personally, the glitter HTV from Expressions Vinyl is my absolute favorite, but of course moving the test cut location works on any and all materials!
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!
Thanks for coming to class today at Silhouette School. If you like what you see, I'd love for you to pin it!
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Did you know it's possible to add a custom page size in Silhouette Studio? It is! The great thing about adding custom page sizes is that you don't have to manually adjust your media size each and every time you use your 12x24" CAMEO cutting mat, for example.
I'm sure now that you know you can can do this - you'll find other ways to use this awesome little know trick. For instance, adding an 8x24" size for when you tape two Portrait mats together, or a custom print and cut size mat (more on that in a tutorial tomorrow) or adding the Curio mats (because as you may know you can't access the Curio mats if your CAMEO was the last machine plugged in and vice versa).
Let me tell you a little secret about Silhouette School - I work at least a month ahead on blog posts. For the monthly reviews I schedule them for the last day of the month, but I do get them all written up well ahead of time. But here I am at 9:05pm on Sunday night...as in last night....writing this - that's how fast November got away from me.
I've had my Silhouette Curio now for several weeks so I'm slowly beginning to see more and more major (and minor) differences between it and the CAMEO and Portrait. If you read my first impressions of the Curio (not quite a review) you know we got off to quite a rough start.
This post, however, isn't about what I like and don't like about the Curio, it's just about straight up facts so you can decide if you need to add a Silhouette Curio to your crafting tool belt.
A few months ago I share a Silhouette tutorial on how to customize the control panel on your Silhouette CAMEO and I got a million follow up questions about doing something similar for the CAMEO 2. Unfortunately, unlike the original CAMEO it's not nearly as easy because there's no CAMEO 2 control panel shape in the Silhouette Studio library. However...using the power of PixScan and tracing I have created one so no one will be left out and everyone can customize their machines - even a CAMEO 2! Woop Woop!
This post contains affiliate links. Clicking on them
simply helps support Silhouette School blog. It does not change the
purchase price in any way.
Amazon is celebrating a one day global sales event they promise will be bigger than Black Friday this week - and the good news is you don't have to be a paying Prime member to participate. Amazon Prime Day is Wednesday, July 15. Mostly all Silhouette
brand items and many of my favorite blanks are Prime eligible, it's a
pretty safe bet there will be some good deals on at least a few
Silhouette and crafting must have's.
Only Amazon Prime members will be able to participate
in Amazon Prime Day to gain access to the thousands of
lighting and daily deals across all categories. If you're not a current Prime member, you don't have to fully commit to take advantage of this rare event - you
can sign up for a FREE 30 day Amazon Prime Trial.
Today you can
consider me your personal Amazon shopper. I've put together two
must-have shopping lists so you can simply go down the list, click the
link and check for deals. You can even add these to an Amazon Wish List so you can easily check prices on Amazon Prime Day. The first list is a list of my favorite Silhouette must-haves. The other is a list of popular blanks that can be 'vinylized' or are
popular items that are sold by Silhouette crafters.
So if you've ever tried to move the Silhouette CAMEO rollers to cut something smaller than the standard 12" mat (ie the stamp mat or vinyl without a mat) you know it can be a challenge. Moving the rollers on the CAMEO is not an easy task..usually. But I have a few tips to make the task easier - and a waring of what NOT to do unless you want to risk buying yourself a new machine!
The first thing you want to do to move the Silhouette CAMEO rollers is to flip open the top of the machine.
On the right side, there's a blue lever. Flip it down. This moves the roller bar up slightly making it easier to grab the white roller.
Alright so perhaps you've heard the advice that sharpening a Silhouette blade with tin foil will breathe new life into a dull blade. Well, my friends - I have too. And last week when I cut an intricate design and had the vinyl tear I went through my checklist of reasons why my blade wasn't cutting properly.
Three cuts later..I finally gave in and changed the blade, but kept the rest of the settings the same and whatdoyaknow: perfect cut!
So it was the blade after all and I'm just cheap and stubborn. I didn't throw that blade out yet though - I wanted to test out this little tin foil experiment since clearly the blade was dull.
A few weeks ago I added a Silhouette CAMEO to my collection of craft supplies essentials. I've been plugging along on my Portrait for almost a year now and having no issues, but when I spotted an awesome deal on the Cameo I decided it was finally time to upgrade.
Fast forward a few weeks and I realized NONE of the designs I had purchased or downloaded from the Silhouette Design Store, since adding the CAMEO, were showing up in my Silhouette library.
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