Make your own toilet paper design

So, yes, we are all home a LOT. That means several things, but for my purpose today it means (a) many of us have extra time on our hands  and (b) we are using a great deal of toilet paper. Several cute sayings and designs have popped up around using toilet paper in the theme. My sister wanted a design for toilet paper for a class of 2020 shirt (the tp rolls are the zeroes), but since she lives in an area with very poor internet she wasn’t able to search in the Silhouette Design Store. And, of course, she couldn’t hop over to Starbucks or the library to use their wifi. Sister Cindy to the rescue! I made a quick design based off some I’ve seen and emailed it to her.

Today, I thought I’d share with you how I did that so that you can make the design too. This is a great time to learn some new things in the software that you’ve always wanted to try. In particular, we’re going to learn a few things with Modify and Point Editing. Feel free to set out a roll of toilet paper as inspiration LOL!

Note: This post contains affiliate links. That means if you click the link and purchase something, I may receive a small commission. Your pay the same price. This helps me to be able to keep my business going and provide more tutorials.

Step 1: Draw a rectangle

Look at the icon bar on the left in the Silhouette Studio software. The tools here are primarily for creating something from scratch. What the icon looks like will depend on whether or not you have used a drawing tool in the current software session, but it will be a square, rounded rectangle, oval or pentagon. You’ll see them all if you hover over the icon.

Click on the rectangle. Then move your cursor to the mat area. You’ll see that the cursor changes to a set of crosshairs. That tells you you are about to draw something. Click and drag the mouse and the software will draw the rectangle. Make it the proportions of a roll of toilet paper. Don’t worry that the shape isn’t rounded — we’ll get to that in the next step.

HINT: If after drawing the rectangle the software wants to keep drawing shapes, there’s a way to change that in your Preferences. See how in this post.

Step 2: Edit the rectangle

There are a couple of different ways to do this, but I’m going to show you the one that I think makes the cut best.

For this design, we want a curve along the bottom and along the top. We’re going to make the one at the bottom, then use that to make the one at the top.

Double click quickly on the rectangle to bring up the points to edit. There will be one at each corner. Hover over the one at the lower left, making sure your cursor looks like a diagonal line that has a box on it and an arrow shooting out of it. Once you see that, click your mouse to select that point.

Notice that the point turns white instead of black to indicate that that’s the selected point. Also notice that the line segment along the bottom of the rectangle is a bolder red. That indicates that that is the line segment that will be affected when you make line segment changes in the point editing menu.

Now, we know that on a rectangle each side is straight. We want a curve, so we’re going to use our second click in the point editing menu. You can use either the menu in the quick access toolbar or in the panel at the right. The latter has labels so if you are new to point editing do it there. You’ll select “Make Curve.”

That makes a great curve along the bottom. Are you beginning to see the shape?

Step 3: Edit the curve

For my taste, that curve is a bit too much. I’d like it to be a bit more shallow. You can play with skipping this step if you like.

This part is easier if you have your grid on your mat area and your shape centered to the page. To do the latter, just click on the shape and then choose Center to Page icon in the quick access toolbar.

I also think it helps to have the shape filled with color, but a semi-transparent one (so I can still see the grid lines).

I want to edit that curve, but I want to do it equally from the vertical center. Here’s a quick way to do that. Zoom in to the bottom of the shape. Add a point along the bottom, right at that center line. Since you centered the shape to the page, that means that point is right at the center of the shape.

That point is splitting that curved line segment into 2 parts, and the curve is the same on each side of the added point. I can now use the arrow keys on my computer keyboard to move the point up a bit. Doing that will make the curve shallower. Here’s my toilet paper design now.

Step 4: Make the curve in the top

We want to have the same exact curve along the top of our shape. There’s a really simple way to do that. Make a copy of the shape directly above using the keyboard shortcut CTRL/CMD+↑.  That puts them aligned along the vertical center.

Now we’ll scoot that top one down to overlap the bottom one. Move it until the curve is fully on the lower piece (the lower left and right corners of it are past the top edge of the bottom piece).

We are going to use these same pieces again in another step, so make a copy of them to the side.

Open your Modify panel. Select one set of shapes and choose “Subtract.” What that will do is use the shape on top to cut a curve in the upper edge of the bottom shape. It will perfectly match the curve on the bottom.

Step 5: Make an oval for the top

Pretend you are looking at a roll of toilet paper from the top. You would see what looks like a donut shape. If we were making the design looking down from above, we could just use 2 circles. But we aren’t, because then you’d just think it was a donut or a letter “o.” We are looking from a perspective that’s partially from the side, partially from the top. If you go grab some of that extra toilet paper we all have now and hold it at that vantage point, you’ll see we need ovalish shapes. BUT — we also want them to match our curves exactly.

Here’s how we’ll do that. We’ll be working with that second set of shapes. Select the bottom shape and rotate it 180° in the Transform panel.

Now scoot it up a little until those corner points just pass each other.

That’s the oval we’re going to use. What we want to do is keep only the parts of the 2 shapes that are overlapping. For that, we can use Intersect in the Modify panel. (Crop will do the same thing, since it’s only 2 shapes).

If I scoot that over to my other shape, this is what I’ve got now — a canister shape.

Make the top a little smaller to account for the gap.

Step 6: Make a hole in the oval

Now, in order to fit this toilet paper on the holder, we need a hole in the middle. We need to make one in the top piece. You can use an internal offset for that. I recommend making it at the default .125 size, and then resizing it different amounts in width and height. A straightforward internal offset will be the same distance from all sides, and that’s not what we need here. Because of the perspective, we want it closer to the top and bottom than to the sides.

At this point, our design could be a lot of different things. But we want it to really come across as a roll of toilet paper. Our next 2 steps will take us there.

Step 7: Make a sheet coming off the toilet paper roll

First, we want to make a sheet coming off the roll. We’re going to have it come from behind. (Ya, let’s not get into the whole “under or over” debate).

Make a copy of just your bottom shape to the right (use the keyboard shortcut CTRL/CMD+→).  At this point, I recommend you select the set of 3 pieces and make them all into a single compound path. Scoot that right single shape over a bit to work with it. Adjust the size with the side boxes so that it’s skinnier.

There are a few different ways to make this look more like a single sheet. I’m going to show you 2 options.

Option 1: The Warp panel

This is the easiest way. It does require Designer Edition. If you don’t have that, use option 2. (I do always recommend it, though, because I think it’s well worth the cost. There’s a Silhouette Elite banner along the right side here on my site. Click that to go to the Silhouette America site and use the code 10OFF for 10% off.)

Open the Warp panel, select that shape, and then click “Warp Selected Shapes.” (HINT: You may need to press the arrow key at the bottom of the right side icon bar to see this icon).

This puts a special grid over the shape with lots of control dots. You can move those control points to warp the shape. All I’ve done is to move the red dots along the top and bottom at the right.

Option 2: More point editing

The other option is to just use point editing to adjust the curves yourself. That’s what I did here.

Step 7: Add Perforations

There’s just 1 more thing we need — perforations. What you need to do for this may depend on your material. You can also choose how many you want to do (I just did one, but maybe you have the cheap toilet paper with really small sheets cuz that was all that was left in the store — you might need 2).

Option 1: For paper

Let’s say you are going to cut this out of paper. Then maybe all you do want is a series of slits that are visible on the paper. All you have to do is draw a line and select a dotted style for it.

Start by drawing a vertical line the height of the roll. To get a perfectly vertical line, hold the SHIFT key as you draw.

Now open your Line Style panel or look in the quick access toolbar for the line options. Choose a perforated line and you’re done. Group it with your other pieces.

For other materials, you probably want more than just a series of slit in the page. You want 2-dimensional shapes (with both height and width) that you can remove so there’s a hole there.

Again, there are many ways to do this, so I’ll give you options. All of these can be done with any level of the software.

Option 2: A series of rectangles or rounded rectangles

Draw a single shape — either a rectangle or rounded rectangle. It will be the size of 1 perforation. Then duplicate it through about 2/3 the length of your tp shape (don’t forget those useful keyboard shortcuts).

While that last one is still selected, scoot it down toward the bottom of the roll. Then select all the rectangles and space them out vertically.

Select all your pieces and make them into a single compound path.

Option 3: A thick line with cut edge

Start by drawing a vertical line as in Option 1. And, as in that option, you want to choose a perforated style. You’ll do one additional thing – raise the line thickness.

The key to this option is to cut around the OUTSIDE of the thick line. You’ll do that in the Send area. Just select the line and do Cut Edge for that line only. (Cut will go right down the middle of the line, which would only give you slits — you probably don’t want that, although you might on paper). If you’re cutting by line, fill or layer, then it will be AutoWeld.

Group it with your other pieces. You don’t want to make them all into a compound path, as that wouldn’t work the same on the cut.

Option 4: Detach Lines

Let’s say you don’t want to have to remember to set Cut Edge, or you’ve always wanted to learn what Detach Lines is. Then this option is for you.

You’ll start similarly to Option 1 — draw a line, make it perforated and raise its line thickness. Make sure it has a line color. Then there are 2 extra steps–

1. Open the Modify panel. Select the line and choose Detach Lines. That separates the outline of the shape from the inside, but only if you’ve raised the line thickness. In our case, since this is just an open path (not a closed shape), this just changes the line to a regular shape. In other words, it’s as if we did Option 1.
2. Since it’s now a regular shape, you do NOT want it perforated any longer. So just change the line style back to solid.

Voila! You’re done.

The finished toilet paper design

Here’s my finished design in a compound path. (I put a black rectangle behind it so I could see how white HTV would look on a t-shirt).

Want more?

No, not more toilet paper. Do you want to learn more or do more things in the software?

If you’d like to learn more about Point Editing, then read my series here on the site starting here.

Let’s say you’ve gotten to the end of this tutorial and learned it all and have made your project, but you are still bored/excited to learn more/your kids haven’t yet burned down the house. Then here are some other options.

The sheet is attached

You can make the single sheet to the right attached to the roll but with a perforated line. Here’s how:

1. If your pieces are grouped, ungroup them for now. If they are a compound path, release the compound path.
2. Take the single sheet and scoot it over until it overlaps the roll piece.
   
3. Select only the roll and sheet and Weld them.
   
4. Make a copy of your perforations. Move that set to the point where the sheet meets the roll.
5. Regroup or remake the compound path.
   

Here’s a card I made with the design like that:

Outline only

Perhaps you only want an outline, not a solid roll. This is something you might do with a material like vinyl or HTV, but probably not paper so not with the option that only uses slits. Here’s how you can do that from the design you already made. Note that you won’t do this with the Option 1 slit-only lines.

1. Ungroup your pieces or release the compound path.
2. Make the 2 the ovals at the top into a compound path.
   
3. Create an internal offset of those ovals, making note of the size you use.
   
4. Make an internal offset of the roll and sheet (that will just be 1 if you attached it), using the same size as for the ovals.
   
5. Leave your perforations alone — they are fine as they are. The only thing you might need to do is remove one or shorten the line. You can see on my pic just above that my top one is overlapping the internal offset of the roll. You don’t want that. I deleted that one and respaced my perforations.
6. Remake the compound path or regroup, depending on what you did previously.

Okay, enough talk of toilet paper. How could you use these same concepts on other designs???