I’ve been meaning to write this post for a few weeks, ever since I saw a logo design for a message series at our church. The series is called “Life in Pieces,” with the word “pieces” looking like a puzzle. There’s a bit of separation between the … [Read more...]
How’d they do that? Adding spacing between elements
Today’s tutorial is helpful for those of us, me definitely included, who have trouble lining things up perfectly. By creating an intentional spacing gap between different elements, you give yourself some wiggle room. This is helpful for any material, … [Read more...]
Thanksgiving place cards
We are hosting Thanksgiving this year in our home and I love to decorate for Fall. That includes setting a festive table. I made some quick place cards from standard designs. It's not hard to do, as long as you know a few principles. Once you learn … [Read more...]
Planning and Executing Large Projects: Phase 3 — Sizing, Tweaking and Organizing
This is part 3 of our series on how to do super large projects with your Silhouette. If you haven’t read the first 2 lessons, you’ll want to start here. This time, I’m going to show you how to make your design full size, use Subtract and Subtract All … [Read more...]
How’d They Do That? Graduated Horizontal Spaces: Take #2
Recently, I shared with you how to alter a design, usually a word, so that there were empty rectangular spaces across it in increasing widths. If you didn’t see that tutorial, you can find it here. Today, I want to show you how to create a knockout … [Read more...]
How’d they do that? Graduated horizontal spaces
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: This … [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...]
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...]