3 Things To Pay Attention To When Using Your Silhouette Cameo

With Chinese New Year coming on January 31, I thought I'd make some cards for my kids using Make The Cut (MTC) and the Chinese Zodiac Cut It Set from Lettering Delights.  That would mean making four cards, with each of their zodiac signs on the front.  Because of my lack of a fully functioning brain due to being sick for the past five days, I encountered three "technical difficulties" and only succeeded at making one card.  I thought I'd share these difficulties and what I learned here, in case you encounter them.  My first problem was easy to solve.  I noticed while my Cameo was cutting the square card mats I'd created, the shapes inside the mats were way too small to cut well.  I wasted an entire sheet of cardstock, ugh!    Lesson learned, make sure to do a test cut when cutting small shapes!  I also noticed the squares had cut farther to the right on the cutting mat than they should, problem number two.  I had no idea why that was.  The only card that seemed salvageable was the snake, so I decided to press on.  I cut the top layer of the snake in vinyl, and that's when the third problem revealed itself.  The shapes weren't closed, they looked like this:

This shape didn't finish being cut!

I racked my brain over this for a while, and then it dawned on me.  While I was test cutting trying to figure out what was wrong, I had the cut window open and I noticed some unchecked boxes, which if memory served me right, had always been checked when I cut.

This could be the problem!

I then clicked on that question mark to the right of settings and discovered this little tidbit of info:

Bingo!

Shapes not closing, exactly what one of my problems was!  And, since the "using carrier mat" option was unchecked the shapes cut farther to the right on the mat.  Try checking and unchecking that box some time and see the difference, the picture will change.  I hope sharing my mistakes will prevent this from happening to you!  Now, last but not least, here is the card I managed to create:

It's far from perfect, as you can see the rough edges from where the shapes didn't cut well.  To make the red mat have only the openings of the snake I used MTC and broke apart the snake, removed the solid portion that remained and joined the inner pieces to the square.  I was then able to put the actual snake shape cut from vinyl on top.  The one success I had was writing on the card using a thin font and a Silhouette sketch pen, it turned out perfect!

No, I'm not a snake!

This is one advantage of having Make The Cut, as this is something Silhouette Studio can't do.  If you use these fonts in Silhouette Studio it must be the true type version which is a double line, and personally I don't think it looks as good.  The red layer is popped up with foam tape for dimension, here's another view:

Ssssssss!

Of course I'm not really calling my 12 year old son a snake!  He was born in the year of the snake, 2001.  Here's the inside of the card:

Doesn't really sound like a snake!

I did a little reading to find that info in a book called The Secrets of Chinese Astrology by Derek Walters.  I found the Chinese character for snake by doing a simple Google search, clipping it, and tracing it in Make The Cut.  Making this card turned out to be a learning experience for me.  I now know to pay more attention to things like unchecked boxes and the appropriate size for cutting shapes!  Have you ever had a crafting experience like this?  I mean, for a while there it felt like someone didn't want me to finish!  I feel better now that I have one card.  I plan to make larger versions of the others tomorrow.  Here's what I used to make this card:
Lots of PATIENCE!
Silhouette Cameo
Make The Cut Software
Chinese Zodiac Cut It Simple Shapes
LDThin Font Light Sans
LDB Christine's Hand (inside of card)
Black Silhouette Sketch Pen
Core'dinations Cardstock (red)
DCWV Textures & Finishes Stack (gold)
Vinyl

Hope you enjoyed this post, and Have a Crafty Day!

(I am an affiliate for Make The Cut)

Christmas Tree Card with Lettering Delights

One of my favorite things to do is use Silhouette Studio Designer Edition (SSDE) to apply textures to card bases and shapes.  It's the only reason I decided to buy a Silhouette Cameo since I already had a cutting machine.  So here's a card I made using an image and digital paper from Lettering Delights.  It's very simple to create and if you don't want to go through the print and cut process it's easy enough to cut the card base on a paper trimmer.

For this card I created a 4.25x11 rectangle for the base.  For a shape to apply the paper to I created another 4.25x5.5 rectangle.  I made sure this rectangle was set to no cut since I only wanted to print the shape.  I filled this shape with patterned paper from the Claus Applause paper pack and put it above the card base. I love doing this because it not only saves ink by leaving the back side of the card blank, but I think it looks more professional.  I then created the smaller rectangle (3.925x.810) for the sentiment and colored it white and placed it above the card base.  I selected the type tool and typed in Merry Christmas, sized and colored it.  The brown frame was created by yet another rectangle 4x5.25 and sizing two smaller rectangles on the inside.  To make the open space I went to Object, Modify, Subtract.  This frame was cut twice and glued together to add a little dimension.  Next I cut the tree in colored cardstock at the imported size which is 4".  I wanted a little dimension for the tree so I made a .20 inset of the base layer and cut this from cereal box.  If I had made the inset any larger it would have made the shape two pieces because of the narrow distance where the tree meets the star.  I would have liked the inset shape a bit smaller, but you can hardly notice it and this method is much easier than using foam tape to pop it up.  To cut the card base I did use the print and cut method because I just like doing it!  There you have it, a very simple Christmas card!  Thanks for looking, and don't forget to let me know what you think! 

Items used for this card:
Silhouette Studio DE
Silhouette Cameo
Core'dinations Cardstock (green,blue green, red)
American Crafts Cardstock (white card base for printing)
Bazzill Cardstock(brown frame)
Claus Applause Cutset  (on sale until 12/22/13)
Claus Applause Paper Pack (on sale until 12/22/13)
SNF Cheer Squad (font) (on sale for $1!)
(I am not an affiliate for LD or ScrapNFonts)

Santa Stamp Card Print and Cut

I have to say I love the Little Ho-Ho-Ho-ligans Accents cutset Lettering Delights came out with last year.  I haven't used it too much until now.  I made the stamp from the cut file and turned it into a card using Silhouette Studio (SS).  At the time I made this card I did not have the designer edition so I had to create a PNG file in Photoshop using the pdf included with the set before importing it into the program and tracing.  Check it out:

While I had the image in Photoshop I decided to play around with the background and changed it to one of the papers in the Little Ho-Ho-Ho-ligans paper pack.  It is very simple to do using the magic wand tool and cut via copy to create separate elements from the image.  Then you can recolor them however you want!!  Fun, fun, fun!  I also added the Merry Christmas sentiment there.  After importing into SS I added the 5 and the cent symbol using a tutorial from Under A Cherry Tree.  I then print and cut the stamp image.  For the base of the card I print and cut as well and as you'll see in the next pictures I added some images and a sentiment to the inside of the card.  This was also easy to do using the center to page feature in SS.  Because there are no layers in the software, you must have two separate files open for the front and inside of the card. The center to page feature allows you to line everything up on both sides when you print.

Of course using center to page is not the most efficient use of paper (unless you can fit more than one card), but when you want to put something on the inside it is the best way to do it in this program.  To put the card together I adhered a piece of white craft foam under the stamp image to pop it up a bit and it was done!  The card measures approximately 5"x6.25". Well, that wraps it up!  A simple and quick card using a cute santa stamp!  Let me know what you think and thanks for stopping by!  Just keep crafting until next time!  Here's what I used to make the card:
Silhouette Studio Software
Silhouette Cameo Cutting Machine
White American Crafts Cardstock (very good for printing on if you like texture on your prints)
Little Ho-Ho-Ho-ligans Accents Cut It Set
Holiday Hugs Garland Cut It Set (lights)
Little Ho-Ho-Ho-ligans paper pack
LD Charming Bold (font-sentiments)
LD Funky Chunky (font-5 and cent symbol)