Category: Tutorial

Working With Silhouette Files Tutorial by Brigit

Hi Everyone, I have a couple of helpful hints today, things I do in Silhouette Studio Desiger Edition to help me prepare my files before I cut them out.  I’ll be using Lori’s 2 boxes on a 12 x 12 file and one of the cards from the belly band set.

The flag on the box is from the patriotic icon set, I resized both of these to make a smaller treat box.  The ungrouped box measures 10.170w x 5.840h and the flag pieces ungrouped measures, stars – 1.580w x 1.060, stripes – 3.015w x 1.905h and the flag box – 3.015w x 1.905h.

When I added the card the pieces are bigger than the mat, so I select all and ungroup.  Notice the score lines, they are ungrouped also, so I click and drag around the card and score lines to select, go to the modify window and select make compound path (or group), you can also right click and select make compound path. You are going to do the same thing to the belly band so it’s easier to have the modify window open so you can select make compound path or group again.

I like to fill with the color or pattern paper I’m going to use and arrange my project to see how it will look.

Here is a picture of the flag, I ungrouped but it also ungrouped the stars. If you go to move it and this happens just go to edit and undo move, then click and drag and select over the stars and box and make a compound path.

Here’s a picture of the make compound path and group, they both will cut the stars out, but I like to see exactly how it will look with the make compound path.

There are two boxes with this file, so I ungrouped and deleted the other box then resized, (I also did another ungroup and make compound path on this box so I would see the lines when resized and fit the flag.)

I group my pieces together by color or pattern paper.  Keeping your groups to the left side, moving to the mat to cut, then to the right side helps you keep track of what’s been cut.

For this project though I did a print-n- cut on two 12 x 12 pieces of white textured cardstock, (American Crafts 80lb), I arranged and grouped the pieces together.  I then selected my group and go to the line color window and select none.  Now print-n- cut. Next, move those shapes to the right and place the next group on your mat and finish cutting those out.

I used Echo Park’s 4th of July Mini Theme digital paper, Stars & Stripes Trendy Twine and Jaded Blossom’s Celebrate America stamp set.

Thanks for stopping by, I hope these tips help, I have a couple more project photos on my blog.

Hopefully this is a helpful tutorial. Thank you for dropping by!

Silhouette Tutorial Bending Text by Traci

Hi everyone!  I’m excited to share a fun and easy tutorial with you today!  These steps will show you how to bend lines of text, either to create a phrase that wraps around an object, or to fit inside a curved shape as I have done on Lori’s adorable hot air balloon.
Here is the card I created with a curved “Thank You” cut out of the band.
First, pull up the shape you want to place your text in and resize it if necessary.
If there are multiple pieces to your shape, ungroup them and move everything to the side except the piece you want the word in.  Zoom in on your shape a bit, and chose the text option on the left tool bar.  As you type your word or phrase, a green box will appear.  Note that there will also be a little circle, with a cross in it, along the green line.
If you place your curser over this circle and click, you are able to drag your word into your shape.  When you hover the word over a line, the letters snap to the shape of the line.  To move your word up into the center of your shape, you will use the grey sliding bar that appears through your letters.  If you place your curser along that bar and slide upwards, your letters will move up.  However, in some cases, the spacing on your letters will also move in and start overlapping.
To prevent this, move your word over to the left so that you can see how much room you will have to increase your character spacing.
Play with the character spacing (found toward the bottom of your text style window) until you like the way the word looks.


Now you should be able to go back to the sliding grey line and move your word up into the center of your shape without the letters bunching up together.  You will notice once you’ve done this however, that your original shape line is now grey (no cut line).  This would be okay if you just wanted to cut out the bent word.

But, for this tutorial, we want to cut out the banner shape for the front of my balloon, so I will need to make this a cut line (red) again.  Highlight your shape and click on the Cut Style icon at the top.  In the Cut Style window, click the button that says “Enable Cut Style”.

Now your entire image is red and will be cut.


This is also a fun technique to use for cutting a phrase to wrap around a circle.  You would just snap your phrase on the outside line of the circle, rather than inside the shape.  I will post another project showing an example of this on my blog today, so I invite you to stop by Artsy Albums to check it out!
Thanks! Traci

Silhouette Tutorial by Corri Using the Offset Feature

Hi everyone! Corri here.

I have a quick tutorial for you today using the Offset feature in Silhouette Studio software. The offset feature is great for creating a shadow layer around your image.

I used paper and a sticker from the Echo Park “Here & Now” Collection .  I love the chalkboard paper!

 

First, I typed 2013 in Lori’s Happy Font at 1.5″h.

Next, I opened this graduation cap file, ungrouped and deleted the 2012. I sized the cap file (including both layers) to 1.75″h and positioned the cap’s base layer on top of the numbers. Select the offset menu from the tool bar in the upper right of the screen and click offset.

You can adjust the slider to make the shadow smaller or larger.  I left it at .25 so that I wouldn’t get a cut out in the middle of the “O”.

 

Click apply.

 

To create a little tighter shadow, click the new offset layer that you just created and click internal offset and then apply.    Now you can drag the layers apart and cut.

 

For the base of my card, I used the Easel Bracket Card.  I used my new sketch pens to draw this pretty flower flourish in each corner.

To get your Cameo to sketch the flourish, first select the bracket shape.

Click the cut style menu at the top of your screen and select no cute.

Replace your blade with a sketch pen and select sketch pen in your cut settings.

Click cut.

 

Do not unload your mat.  Replace the pen with the blade.

Select the bracket again, go to the cut style menu and change it to cut.

Select the flourishes and change them to no cut. Adjust your cut setting back to pattern paper and then cut.

Resizing a Box Tutorial by Christine

Hello, it’s Christine, and I am here with a tutorial for you today.  I tried to be very detailed in my instructions and pictures so I will warn you it is rather long, but I think that you will really enjoying learning how I took Lori’s Sliding Box and made it bigger to fit a 5×5 inch card.  I also only giving you a little sneak peek at the box, but I’ll have the rest of the pictures of the whole project, card included, for you next Monday.
Here is the way that I changed the box file to fit my card.

Here is the original file on my work area.  Right now there are two pieces.  We are going to make it into three pieces.

 The bottom right piece is fine the way it is, so just Ungroup the file, and pull it to the side.
3.  Now to work on the largest piece.  This is the piece that we are going to split in two pieces so that when we enlarge all of the pieces, they won’t be too big to cut.  You will see at this point, that by ungrouping it, this portion of the file is actually separated into many pieces.  The main outside part, all of the score lines, and the two holes.  We want to make sure that they all stay together but we need to delete one of the score lines because that is where we will be cutting this piece in half.
To delete that row of score lines, just click on it and hit delete.  The next step is to group the rest of the score lines with the main outside area.  It will just make it easier to move things around later.  Click and drag around the whole piece and choose group from the top menu.
Now we are going to use your knife tool to cut the piece in two.  You can do this simple cutting procedure with your knife whether you have the regular version or the designer’s version.  You just won’t see the menu options pop up like I have on my screen.  We are just making a straight cut, so both versions will work.
Starting at the left edge right, where the tab ends, click and hold your mouse to activate the knife.  Then without letting go, drag your mouse across the screen, in a straight line, to the other side.  Make sure to keep it straight or else you will have a crooked cut.  Zoom it while you do this if it makes it easier to see and get it straight.
In the picture below, you can see that I am almost all the way over.
As soon as you connect to the other side and let go of your mouse, you can click and drag one of the pieces a little bit away, to see if you have cut it correctly.  The knife, when it is cutting, also makes a cutting line for both pieces on the edge so there is no need to draw that in.
We will need to draw in another tab though so you can attach the two pieces of the main box together.  You will need to use your eraser and line drawing tools to do that.
First, we will need to erase the outside line and replace it with a scored line.  Click on the eraser tool and click and drag across the outside line.  In this picture,  you can see how the line is disappearing.
Now using your line tool, draw a line that closes the box.  You will want to change your line settings to the 3rd selection in the line style panel, the medium dashed line.
Now we need to make the extra tab.  Make sure that when you start drawing the lines again that the settings of your line tool are back to solid line.
Select the line tool on the left hand side tool bar and draw a line at a 45 degree angle from the main box about 1/2 inches up.  Click on the line that you just drew and  go to Replicate, Mirror Right.  This will be your right side angled line.  Move it over to the right hand side of the box piece.
Then using the line tool again, draw a straight line from the top of the right angled line to the top of the left angled line.
Select all of the dashed and drawn lines as well as the main outline of that piece and group together.
Now you have three separate pieces for your box. You’ll want to know how big of a box you need to fit your card, so move the tray piece over and line it up with the grid so that you can measure the inner space, inside the score lines.
Now, (and this is important), while you are resizing your box, you will need to select all of the main pieces and resize them at the same time. Select all, and then pull on the bottom right corner handle and watch the tray piece to see when it will gets to be the size that you need.  All of the other pieces are then sized proportionately at the same time.
If you look at the grid closely, you can see that the inside tray of my box is approx. 5×5 which is big enough to hold my card.
Now, it’s just a matter of placing one piece at a time on the cutting mat and cutting them out individually.  Make sure that none of the other pieces are on the cutting area of the screen, like they are above, at the same time or your machine will cut that part too.
To assemble your box, follow the directions as they were before, just add some glue to that extra tab and adhere the two outside pieces together again.
If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me through email at christineousley@mac.com.  Thanks!

Silhouette Tutorial by Mendi

Today I thought I would share one of my new favorite techniques that I utilized on this fun layout about my daughter dressed as a butterfly fairy from last Halloween (although I think this butterfly theme would work so well for Spring and Summer projects too).

The focus of my layout (and my tutorial today) is this beautiful butterfly cutting file which I enlarged to take center stage on my layout.

Below is my video tutorial (For the clearest picture, please click on the gear in the bottom right portion of the screen and select one of the HD options).

To complete my layout I used the following cutting files designed by Lori Whitlock:

Borders (Silhouette Store only)
7 Borders, Tabs & Corners (Silhouette Store only)
Butterfly (Silhouette Store only)