Cheat Sheet: Cut vs. Cut Edge

I have all kinds of powerful software to work in, but I can’t help exploring Silhouette Studio to try and find out why it behaves as it does. I began researching yet another double line problem and discovered some interesting facts about how SS operates. I figured out how to keep the double lines at bay, which also led me to a way to offset text and keep it editable, and a way to add a quick bleed zone to objects. You know I’m not one to keep the minutiae to myself Click here for a printable PDF.

Part 6 … Tracing Without Tears

For those of you who have been clamoring for a tutorial on tracing photos, I’m happy to announce the release of Tracing without Tears Part 6. I’ve learned so much along the way, and have become impressed at how much you really can do with just the limited capabilities in Silhouette Studio. I thought this would be the end of the series, but I’ve got a few extra tips and tricks that didn’t fit in the other videos so I guess there will be at least one more after this. Thanks again for all your kind comments and encouragement.

And in case you missed Part 1 (intro), you can find it here,Part 2 (threshold) is here, Part 3 (line art) is here , Part 4 (print and cut) is here, and Part 5 (filter tech) is here.

And there’s a playlist here.

CAS spinner card and template

In January, I took the Clean and Simple Cards 2 class at onlinecardclasses.com. I really enjoyed it, and am just now getting around to doing some of my homework cards. On of the big plusses of the class was getting to see what others in the class were making, and that’s how I found this great spinner card design from Stephanie at Pink Star Creations.

Stephanie’s card (shown above) uses the spinner card dies from Paper Trey Ink, but I created mine (top of page) with Silhouette Studio. (If you don’t have a Silhouette, you can still use the template with your PTI die and the free version of Silhouette Studio.)

As you can see, I lifted Stephanie’s design pretty much completely, except that I used a “real” paper airplane where she used a stamp, (which was our class assignment that day.) My template also includes a paper airplane digistamp if you’d rather use that. It will probably hold up better in an envelope, for instance.

If you aren’t familiar with spinner cards, they use a simple sandwich of some foam and 2 disks (often pennies) to travel through a slot and create a spinning element that really makes for a fun card.

What I love about this idea, and turning it into a Silh Studio template, is that you can so quickly change it up for a different theme. Bring in a new image, drag and drop a pattern, customize the sentiment and a new card is born.

My advice is to keep this template on your hard drive instead of in your SS library. When you want to use it, open it, immediately do a “Save As…” and rename it. That way the original is preserved, as well as all the placement on the mat, which you lose when you use the library. I’ve also included instructions in the margins of the files as shown in the screen capture below.

Download the Silhouette Studio template here.

Download the SVG template here.

Here are a couple more cards I made with the same template and artwork from Lettering Delights. The first one uses a bee from the Bugaboo set and a honeycomb image, from the Reindeer Games paper pack, oddly enough. (I did have to change the colors from reds to golden yellows.) For the monkey card I used an image and pattern from the Monkey Around collection.

 

All of my cards, and a few extra sentiments I included on the template, feature LD Cotton Candy font.

Special thanks to Stephanie for the great card and for giving me permission to share the template based on it!

Silhouette software comparison updated

It’s been over a year since I visited the details of each software package available to drive a Silhouette cutter. There’s still no clear winner for everyone, because so much depends on what you want to do, how much learning curve you are willing to endure and how much you want to spend, not to mention personal preference. I have made a radical update to my comparison chart to help you choose what’s right for you among Silhouette’s own software, Make the Cut or Sure Cuts a Lot. Funtime Pro is also an option now, but I’ve not had a copy to compare so the items on the chart in that column are provisional at best. Hoping for some input from Funtime users on this. I know many of you are like me, and already use more than one of these software packages. In that case, I hope this chart will help you find the best one for the task at hand.

In addition, I’ve added a detailed chart on file formats. Most of you can probably skip this, but if you are interested in being able to cut a particular file format (or a lot of them) then this may help you make a decision. This information may also be helpful to designers choosing which file formats to offer.

(Click each image to open/download the corresponding PDF)

Note: this chart was revised 3/24/13 to include new features in Make-the-Cut v4.6.0

Part 5 … Tracing Without Tears

Part 5 of the Tracing Without Tears series is done, and it answers all of you who’ve been wanting an explanation about the high pass, low pass and scaling controls. It’s a little technical and not that practical, but  is needed background before we move into more advanced tracing projects.

And in case you missed Part 1, you can find it here,Part 2 is here, Part 3 is here and Part 4 is here.

And there’s a playlist here.

Exporting vector content to SSDE with a Mac

Silhouette Studio Designer Edition is limited in terms of the vector file formats it can read, but by making use of an online converter, we can change popular formats such as EPS and PDF to SVG. We can also use this in conjunction with the Mac’s built in PDF generation to extract vector content from many online sources. Here’s a video to demonstrate the process.

Here are the written steps for starting with a vector PDF (this also works on a Windows machine as an alternate to “print to SVG”):

-Open or generate your printable *vector* content. (see list of suggested sources in this post)

We used Ideogram’s free online template maker for the video

-Enter your dimensions and click the Create button

-Press the Save button (disk icon). The PDF will save to your Downloads folder with the name “template”

-Go to the Misc2SVG file converter site.

-Click the Choose File button and select the PDF you just saved and click Open.

-Press the Senden button.

-Click the Download link.

-Control-click (or right click) the resultant SVG and select Save As or Save Page As.

-Enter a name and location for your file and click Save.

-From Silhouette Studio, open the SVG file you just saved.

-Click to select the SVG and then on the Cut Styles Pane click Cut. If no lines turn red, click the ungroup button one or more times and try again.

-Click the Scale button and enter 80% in the custom window. Click Apply. This will return templates from Ideogram to their exact size for cutting.

Here are the written steps for vector content that can be printed, such as from Wordle.net:

-Create your Wordle and press the Print button at the bottom of the page.

-Click the PDF button, it will pull down and then you can click Save as PDF.

-Name the file, give it a location and click the Save button.

-Go to the Misc2SVG file converter site.

-Click the Choose File button and select the PDF you just saved and click Open.

-Press the Senden button.

-Click the Download link.

-Command-click (or rightclick) the resultant SVG and select Save Page As.

-Enter a name and location for your file and click Save.

-From Silhouette Studio, open the SVG file you just saved .

-Select the SVG and on the Cut Styles Pane click Cut Edge. If no lines turn red, click the ungroup button one or more times and try again.

-Remove the background and make other edits as desired. Additional ungrouping may be necessary before you can do this.

In the video, we also drag the Wordle PDF to the mat to use for extracting colors. Select all the letters you want a certain color, then click the eye dropper and the color sample. Repeat for each color.

Part 4 … Tracing Without Tears

Today I’m posting Part 4 of the Tracing Without Tears series, which focuses on tracing for print and cut. I go through a half dozen representative examples including a cut file that has already been traced, a decoupage sheet, and several styles of clip art. I also unearth the mystery of the trace and detach button and show one use for the low pass filter. Thanks again for your enthusiastic response to this video series. Keep leaving your comments and keep spreading the word while I keep the videos coming!

And in case you missed Part 1, you can find it here ,Part 2 is here and Part 3 is here.

And there’s a playlist here.