If you know me at all, you know I LOVE LOVE LOVE football. I was watching a game last night and saw a design on the shirts of some of the coaching staff. The team name had graduated horizontal spaces running through the team name. Note: This post … [Read more...]
How’d They Do That? Geometric Designs
One of the current design trends is geometric designs: regular images constructed of a combination of simple triangles or quadrilaterals (4-sided shapes). I thought it would be fun to show you several ways to take one of your regular solid, single … [Read more...]
How to make a stencil
I had a great question recently from a Silhouette user. She was wondering how to make a regular image into a stencil. This is a common question, and it's easier than you might think. Let's look at a few different ways to do stencils, from easiest to … [Read more...]
How’d They Do That? Half in, Half Out Logo
I'm one of those folks who looks at signs not only for the information on them, but to check out the fonts and graphics. This past weekend I was in an airport and saw a sign with the logo for Colorado Mountain College. It looks like this: Note: … [Read more...]
Simple Subtract: An intro to the Modify panel
Recently I was making a birthday gift for my sister. I had an idea in my head from a sign I saw at Hobby Lobby. It's a pretty common graphic right now -- a rooster standing on a pig standing on a cow. Sometimes they have words on each animal like … [Read more...]
Making a shape into a card
This year I found myself needing a Father's Day card and having only about 15 minutes to make it. (Ya, don't ask). I had bought my husband some golf head covers and a pass to his favorite golf course, so I wanted -- you guessed it -- a golf-themed … [Read more...]
Planning and executing large projects: Phase 2 — Designing with the Layer tool
This is the second lesson in my series on how to do very large projects using your Silhouette machine. You can find Phase 1 on setting up the file here. In today's lesson, I'll show you how I added my design elements and used the Layer feature … [Read more...]
Quick fix for graduation card
I was making graduation cards this week and thought about a quick tip to share. There are times when you have one with a specific year in the design. What do you do when you need a different year? I'll show you! Note: This post contains affiliate … [Read more...]
Planning and executing large projects: Phase 1 — Planning and Set-up
I've been working on a VERY large project lately -- a forest of trees and animals for the children's wing at our church. We're going up 10 feet on the wall and it's 45 feet wide. Plus we're working around the entrance doors. How do you do something … [Read more...]
How’d they do that? Shattered technique
Have you ever seen a design and wondered, "How did they do that?" That happens to me all the time, and I usually don't rest until I've figured it out. If you can understand the techniques someone used, you can use on other designs. Today in our How'd … [Read more...]
Modifying this week’s Free Design to fit your project (and fixing some mistakes in it)
This week's Free Design in the Silhouette Design Store is a great one to teach you some concepts about how to modify a design to fit your project. It also is a teaching tool for how to fix messed up designs. I want to point out the mistakes and show … [Read more...]
Frugal Friday: make an easy Christmas tree shape
I'm betting we ALL need to save some cash this time of year. In today's Frugal Friday tip, I'm going to teach you to make your own Christmas tree. That means you don't have to buy one. It just takes a few simple steps. Once you begin to understand … [Read more...]
4 simple-to-design Christmas tags
Recently I was out shopping for Christmas. My sister called me in a panic because she needed a design for Christmas tags. I told her I'd help her as soon as I got home. 30 minutes later, she called again to say she had figured out how to design her … [Read more...]
Adding a multi-color design element into a school mascot
My son's girlfriend coaches high school soccer. Of course, that means I just HAVE to make her some spirit swag with the mascot. But I didn't want just any old design. I wanted to find a way to incorporate soccer. I love the final result, so thought … [Read more...]
How to create a custom plaid pattern
Recently, I was helping with the decorations for a baby shower. The organizers wanted a sports theme with an emphasis on University of Tennessee. If you know that school at all, it's main color is a rather bright orange. The trick was to find … [Read more...]