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...]
Frugal Friday: Free Designs and other Deals in the Silhouette Design Store
Who doesn't like free? If you're raising your hand, you can stop reading now and go drive your expensive sports car to the mall to buy whatever you want. Since that's not most of us, I'll keep writing the post. Note: This post contains affiliate … [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...]
Run, Don’t Walk!
Did you ever go into a store and come out with only the thing you went in to buy? Nope, me neither. I was at Ikea over the weekend for some curtains and happened upon this lantern on clearance: Note: This post contains affiliate links. That … [Read more...]
First Steps in Acrylic Etching: Curio
One of the coolest things about a Curio machine is that it can etch materials. Initially, it was created to etch metal. Some super innovative folks have been finding other materials to etch. In particular, my friend Cindy Pope uses it to etch leather … [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...]
How to clean a heat press
I freely admit that although I'm a very organized person, I'm not necessarily a neat one. As my creative juices get going I sometimes rush through projects to get to the end result. Or I take so long in the designing portion (which I find more fun), … [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...]
Silhouette Summit 2019: Recap of new machines and products
Silhouette Summit wrapped up recently, which is the event Silhouette America holds each year to announce what's coming in the next year. There are LOTS of new things coming -- new machine models, new products and new software features. Here's a recap … [Read more...]
Time-saving tip for AutoBlade users
If you have a Cameo 3 or Portrait 2 machine, or are looking with longing at the new models coming in the fall (more on that in an upcoming post), you have the option to use the AutoBlade. While it's nice that the machine adjusts the blade for you, … [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...]