I didn’t realize when I bought my first Silhouette machine that I could use it to make custom shirts, or that heat transfer vinyl would turn out to be my favorite type of material to work with. My boys (and their friends) seem to have several new … [Read more...]
Successful Beginner Projects: #10 – Vinyl Wall Quote
Are you ready for your final beginner project? If you haven’t gone through the Software Basics series and the other Successful Beginner Projects yet, I recommend you do those first because we will build on the skills already taught. In this project, … [Read more...]
Successful Beginner Projects: #9 Baby stroller vinyl layering decal
Today’s project is another one using vinyl layering. We’re going to learn about doing our vinyl layering before we put the vinyl on our project. I’ll also teach you about cutting 2 colors in the same pass, some new weeding techniques, and another way … [Read more...]
Successful Beginner Projects: #8 Snowflake decal with vinyl layering
In today’s beginner project, I want to teach you about simple vinyl layering and show you a new application technique. We’re also going to learn a bit about working with small designs. Let’s get going! To start with project #1 in this series, go … [Read more...]
Successful Beginner Projects: #7 Teapot vinyl decal
Now that we’ve gotten a simple 1-piece vinyl project under our belt, let’s move on to one with multiple pieces in a single design. If you haven’t done projects 1-6, I highly recommend you do. As we go in order through the lessons, I add new concepts … [Read more...]
Successful Beginner Projects: #6 Snowman flat ornament
I hope you’ve gotten comfortable with cutting cardstock in our first 5 beginner projects. If you haven’t yet done those, I HIGHLY recommend it. You can find project #1 here. This set of 10 projects is designed to teach you in incremental steps and I … [Read more...]
Successful Beginner Projects: #5 Birthday Cake Card
For our last cardstock project in the Successful Beginner Projects series, we’re going to make a birthday card. In this lesson I’ll introduce you to welding, drawing lines, setting line attributes, scoring, cutting by line color and more. We’re going … [Read more...]
Successful Beginner Projects: #3 Initial Gift Tag
In today’s Successful Beginner Project, we’ll learn to add text, draw a simple shape, create an offset and a compound path, use more scale and align features, and cut by fill color. This tag is great for any time, but especially Christmas. By putting … [Read more...]
Successful Beginner Projects — #2: Butterfly Gift Bag Decoration
As a Silhouette beginner, the best thing you can do is start with some simple projects that get you successful right out of the gate. That’s what the Successful Beginner Projects series is all about. In project #2, we’re going to use the butterfly we … [Read more...]
Successful Beginner Projects — #1: Butterfly Card
I used to work in Customer Support for Silhouette America. I vividly recall taking a phone call from a beginner one day who was having trouble cutting her project. As I talked with her, I found out she-- had never used a computer before. had … [Read more...]
Software Basics (version 4) — Lesson 13: Basics of working with text
Text in Silhouette Studio is different than most other software programs. You may be used to working with text in something like a word processor or even email. In those, you add text just to make words for someone to read or to print out. That’s not … [Read more...]
Software basics (version 4) — Lesson 12: Adding shapes to the page and basic manipulation
You’ve got your free shapes in your library and you’ve learned how to get around in the software. Let’s learn how you put those images on the page and start working with them. Step 1 — Start a new file We want to start with a clean page. I find it … [Read more...]
Before you Series Begin #7: Good Materials to Start with
Our next lesson will be on unboxing and setting up your machine. Before you do that, you’ll want to have some materials on hand to start with. Even if your goal is to make t-shirts with heat transfer material/vinyl (known as HTV), you want to start … [Read more...]
Before you Begin Series #6: The Silhouette America website
While working in Customer Support for Silhouette, I once spoke to a woman on the phone. She was upset about something and asked, “How would I have known that?” I replied that the information was on our website, to which she then replied, “Well, how … [Read more...]
Software Basics (version 4) — Lesson 11: Getting your free shapes
Your Silhouette cutting machine comes with free shapes to get your started. They are stored in the machine itself. So we’re going to open the software and hook up the machine to bring them into your library. We’ll do your first projects with some of … [Read more...]