There are some FANTASTIC new freebies from Michaels for Silhouette users. That’s the subject for today’s Frugal Friday tips.
NOTE: This post contains affiliate links. That means if you click the link and purchase something, I may receive a small commission. Your price is the same. This helps me keep my business going and provide more tutorials.
Free online classes
Last year, Michaels began doing Zoom classes for free. That’s a great thing that’s come out of this pandemic — companies are getting creative with reaching customers in new ways. You can watch the classes live, or view them later on the Michaels website or YouTube channel. Each class is about an hour and covers a project with plenty of tips. So far, the Silhouette classes available are–
- Wild About You Valentine Party
- Valentine Cupcake Accents
- Sketched Card Set
- Snow Cute Phone Case
- Shadow Box Card Scene Christmas Snowman
- Rustic Christmas Card
- Fall Sign
- Reverse Canvas Halloween Decor
- Felt Flower Bouquet
- E-learning in Progress Sign
- Fall Sunflower Impossible Card
- Customize Your Space with Vinyl
- Paper Wisteria
There are classes from Siser also, since Michaels carries this brand of HTV. There are also classes from American Crafts, We R Memory Keepers, Sawgrass and more. Those classes are all in the category called Technology.
In the Paper category, you’ll find classes from companies like Craftsmart, American Crafts, Mambi, Craft Smith, GelliArts, Tombow, Sharpie, Ranger, Paper House and Sparkleberry, Ink.
You’ll recognize some familiar names such as Lori Whitlock and Kelly Wayment as teachers. Keep an eye out for a class from yours truly (ME!) coming later this year.
Free designs on the Michaels website
As if free classes weren’t awesome enough, Michaels is now offering FREE digital designs. You can find them here. Right now they have designs for Black History Month, Girl Power, Easter, Spring, Valentine’s Day, Winter and Christmas. The free designs come in 2 file types–
- SVG — Some of these are straight cut designs, some are for Print and Cut. To use SVG files, you need Designer Edition and above. You can read about what Designer Edition is here and purchase it here.
I will warn you that the Print and Cut Snowman shown here is made from regular cut shapes. What that means is the designer created shapes and filled them with different colors, then grouped them together and added a cut line all the way around the outside. (Some print and cuts are just raster images with a cut line around them).
The good news about that is you could use it as a regular cut file — just ungroup and cut the different parts from different colors. The bad news is that you need to make 1 small adjustment to use it successfully as a print and cut. In the Send area, select the image and choose Cut Edge. That will cut only the cut line that’s an offset of the design, because it’s outside all the other pieces. - JPG — The ones available so far are used for fill patterns. You can use these in any level of the software. To learn more about how to import and use them in Silhouette Studio, see my series Pattern Pizzazz.
Scroll down to the bottom of their homepage to enter your email address to sign up for the Michaels newsletter. That way, you’ll get info via email when new designs are available.
How to use the designs in Silhouette Go
There’s a pretty quick way to use the digital cut files in the Silhouette Go app if you’re on an iPhone or iPad. It probably works in a similar way with Android, but I haven’t been able to test that.
- Download the file from the Michaels website directly onto your mobile device.
- In the Silhouette Go app, go into the Library and click Device at the bottom right.
- That opens the iCloud storage area on your device. Click on the Downloads folder.
- Here’s the content of my Downloads folder. You can see here I’ve got one design in that folder and another one is still downloading.
I can click on the one I want and it’s added to the mat area in the Silhouette Go app.
Now I can work with it just like a file from my Library.
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