Using the Cut by Color Feature with Kathy

Hi everyone!  It’s Kathy today with a tutorial on how to use the Cut by Color Feature in the Silhouette Studio.  If you’re not familiar, this feature allows you to select different cutting conditions for each line color on your design mat.  This is super handy when working with the Silhouette Sketch Pens and shapes.  I used this feature to create the leaves on these fun Thanksgiving Place cards.

I started by loading the leaf place card from Lori’s Thanksgiving Place Cards set (here in the Silhouette Store).  I moved the leaf part of the design onto my mat.

Next, I loaded my sketch font and typed the names I wanted in my cards.  I changed the color of the lines that made up my names by opening up the Line Color Window and clicking on a different color (the color does not matter as long as it is different from the color marking the leaf shape)

This is what my mat looked like when I was done adding all of the names.

Once I was happy with my design, I clicked on the Cut Settings button, then the Adjust Cut Settings button on the bottom.  First thing I did was change the Cut Mode from Standard to Advanced (1).  Next I clicked on Line Color under Cut Order (2).  This brought up a grid with the two line colors in my design.  I started with the first color, in my case black or the color of my names.  I clicked on this (3), set the Material type to Silhouette Sketch Pen (4).  I then right clicked on the highlighted line color and chose add pause.  This is very important.  It stops the Cameo after it has written out the names using the sketch pen so that you can swap back to the cutting blade before it proceeds to cut the leaf shape.

Next, I clicked on the Red line color (1).  Since the Red line is my outside cut line, and I don’t want to cut the name, I clicked on the center square button (2) until it showed just the outline.  This tells the Cameo to only cut the outline, not anything inside.  Finally I set my Material type to Patterned Paper(3).

Once these steps were done, I loaded my black Silhouette Sketch Pen in the housing, inserted my mat and chose Send To Silhouette.  First the Cameo wrote all of the names.  It then paused.  I swapped the Sketch Pen for the cutting blade, then hit Resume cutting.  The Cameo went on to cut the leaf shapes around the names.

Here’s a close-up of one of my Place Cards…

I love using my sketch pens and this makes it so much easier to use them with fun shapes!  I hope you find this helpful!  That’s it for me today, thanks for stopping by to peek!