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Tracing Tips & Tricks — #6 Text and Potential Pitfalls

January 28, 2021 By Cindy Eckhoff Leave a Comment

Today we’re continuing in our series on Tracing. If you haven’t read the previous lessons, start here.  I could have included this in the last lesson, but it was getting pretty long so I thought you could use a break. We’re going to cover what to do … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Designing, Silhouette Studio Software Tagged With: Text, threshold, trace, tracing

My entry for Silhouette’s gift wrap contest

December 3, 2020 By Cindy Eckhoff 1 Comment

custom gift wrap with silhouette cameo

Recently, Silhouette America held a contest for their blog affiliates. The challenge was to come up with gift wrap and a gift tag. That's it -- that's all they gave us. We had free reign to do whatever we chose. The winning designs will be featured … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Designing, Materials, Projects, Tools and Accessories Tagged With: cardstock, christmas, crepe paper, Curio, flower, foil, foil quill, gift wrap, singe quill, tag, wood

How to design your own flower petal

November 23, 2020 By Cindy Eckhoff Leave a Comment

I shared a post recently about making crepe paper flowers. You can find it here. In it, I gave quite a few recommendations of designs in the Silhouette Design Store that work for this. But it's also relatively easy to create your own petals. Today, I … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Designing, Silhouette Studio Software Tagged With: designing, flexishapes, flower, petal

Tracing Tips & Tricks — #5 Simple multi-color images

October 30, 2020 By Cindy Eckhoff Leave a Comment

Welcome back! If you haven't started with Lesson 1 of this series on tracing, you'll find it here.  So far we've covered when you need to trace, selecting images, what's in the trace panel and how to trace simple, solid shapes of 1 color. Today, … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Designing, Silhouette Studio Software Tagged With: Compound Path, raster, simplify, trace, trace by color, tracing

Wood tag using the Singe Quill

October 6, 2020 By Cindy Eckhoff Leave a Comment

I've been working a great deal lately on bringing my house out of the 90s. I've just finished my powder room and it's a HUGE transformation from dark, earthy colors to light, farmhouse ones. I like to keep out extra TP and room spray in arm's reach … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Designing, Projects, Tools and Accessories Tagged With: Curio, pen, projects, singe quill, tag, wood

Tracing tips & tricks — #4 Simple, solid shapes

September 23, 2020 By Cindy Eckhoff 4 Comments

So far in our tracing series, we've just been learning about the prep work -- the most important part of any project. (You can start with Lesson 1 here).  We've discussed file types and image selection and gotten an overview of the Trace panel. Now … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Designing, Silhouette Studio Software Tagged With: autotrace, png, threshold, trace, trace and detach, tracing

What in the world??? When the shape won’t let you change its fill color

September 15, 2020 By Cindy Eckhoff Leave a Comment

I LOVE LOVE LOVE mystery/detective shows, particularly British ones. And I really enjoy doing puzzles and playing games where I have to solve a problem. Lots of folks do. But very few of us like to have to solve a mystery when working with … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Designing, Silhouette Studio Software, Tips Tagged With: color, detach lines, Fill, line, modify, open path

Tracing tips & tricks — #3 What’s in the Trace panel

September 10, 2020 By Cindy Eckhoff Leave a Comment

This is part 3 of the series on tracing -- creating cut files from things like photos and clip art. Be sure to read Lesson 1 on why and what to trace and Lesson 2 about choosing images before you read this one, as I will refer frequently to the … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Designing, Silhouette Studio Software Tagged With: panel, trace, tracing

Tracing Tips & Tricks — #2 Image Selection

September 8, 2020 By Cindy Eckhoff 6 Comments

In this series (lesson 1 is here), I'm showing you how to take a clip art type image and turn it into a cut file for your Silhouette. This gives you a tremendous amount of designing flexibility. Lesson 2 is about graphic styles and how to choose … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Designing, Silhouette Studio Software Tagged With: raster, resolution, trace, tracing

Tracing Tips & Tricks — #1 Where to Start

September 4, 2020 By Cindy Eckhoff 4 Comments

Silhouette tracing

Today I'm beginning a series that's LONG overdue. It's about tracing -- how to turn an image such as clip art or a photo into a cut file. I've taught this as a class at the All Things Silhouette Conferences for years and am finally starting to do it … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Designing, Silhouette Studio Software Tagged With: clip art, images, jpg, photo, png, raster, trace, tracing, vector

What in the world??? — Text doesn’t cut the right size

August 12, 2020 By Cindy Eckhoff Leave a Comment

silhouette text myth letter size

In this series, I'm covering topics that stump new users (and even old pros like me). They're the things that drive you BATTY unless you understand them. The good news is that in almost every case, there's a quick fix. Today, I'm explaining why you … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Designing, Silhouette Studio Software, Tips Tagged With: font, size, Text, words

Frugal Friday: using last week’s free shape with a new design

August 7, 2020 By Cindy Eckhoff Leave a Comment

I hope you got last week's free shape, as it has SO many uses. I mentioned in this post that you can use the butterfly by itself. But even though the box is shaped like a butterfly, there's a way to use it for an unlimited number of designs by … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Designing, Silhouette Studio Software, Tips Tagged With: 3d, box, cardstock, design, free shape, modify

Tuesday quick tip: Designing larger than the mat

July 28, 2020 By Cindy Eckhoff Leave a Comment

One of THE best things about using a Silhouette machine instead of any other brand is the ability to design and cut projects that are larger than the mat. Couple that with the powerful software and you have quite a few tools at your fingertips. But … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Designing, Silhouette Studio Software Tagged With: big, large, mat, page size

Total Transformation: How to use the tools in the transform panel — Lesson 5 Shear

July 21, 2020 By Cindy Eckhoff Leave a Comment

Here's our 5th and final tab to explore in the Transform panel -- Shear. If you haven't read my posts about the Align, Scale, Rotate and Move tabs, I recommend reading those. There's more in them than most people realize. The tools can save you a … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Designing, Silhouette Studio Software Tagged With: italic, shear, skew, slant, tilt, transform

Vintage-look sign letter on acrylic

July 3, 2020 By Cindy Eckhoff Leave a Comment

Our family room is decorated to express, well, our family. There's an old Disabled Vet license plate that was my dad's, a football, locker baskets with tags whose numbers are our old house numbers, an old Clue board of my mom's and more. For years … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Designing, Materials, Projects Tagged With: acrylic, paint, plexiglass, project, sign, stencil, vinyl

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