I have had a ton of questions about my use of the Silhouette sketch feature, especially which sketch pens I use. The answer is - None. This is all a print and cut. I transform the images I want into a "sketch" image and then use my printer to print them out and my Silhouette to cut out the shape. I put together a quick tutorial that I hope will help those of you who are anxious to give this feature a try.
First, I open the images I want to use on my mat. I also typed out "A cheerful hello." The font I used here is Book Antiqua.
Next, open the sketch style window. The button is highlighted for you below.
To achieve the effect you have seen on my cards I use the continuous sketch pen. It's circled on the right side of the screen.
The sketch feature also has a "fill" feature. You can fill any of your designs with any number of different sketchy type accents. Here I have filled the parade with the Scribble image. There are two parade images here - the top one doesn't have the scribbles, the bottom one does. This particular effect is subtle so I wanted to show you the before and after so you can really see the difference.
Next up - and this is very important if you are going to print and cut, you need to open the Line Style window and change the line thickness. Whenever you transform an image with the sketch feature, it will automatically default the line thickness to 0. Now those of us who print and cut know that a line thickness of 0 doesn't print, so I need to thicken these lines up. I generally change mine to either .50 or .75. That's enough for a good dark image without being too thick it's difficult to see or read.
After that I turn on the registration marks so that my Cameo will know where the images are.
You need to place your sketch images on top of another shape or layer. Here, I have drawn a simple rectangle box for the image to lay on top off. I have filled it with pink just so you can see it.
Then go to the Cut Style window, highlight the sketch image(s) and change the cut style to NO CUT. I can't stress to you how important this is. If you forget this step, your machine will try to cut out each one of these lines and it is a surefire way to gunk up your blade. How do I know? Because I did it. It was a brand new blade too!
Now you're ready to print and cut. That's really all there is to it. I hope this tutorial was helpful to you. If so, please leave me a comment below!
Thanks for stopping by!
I am on fire! I haven't felt this creative in months, and I'm actually have a fantastic time. Today I have a new card that I made for this week's CardPatterns challenge using one of the images my very good friend Kymberlee from The PaperMidWife sent me months ago. Alas, I am not a colorist, but having awesome friends who are definitely has its advantages. This is one of what have to be a million of the cutest colored images Kymberlee sent my way. I have challenged myself to use these as much as I can, they have been sitting too long! That said, I am still rocking the sketch feature from the Silhouette Designer software. I used it for the outside and inside sentiment. This card is a 100% print and cut. I wanted something patriotic for my Super Girl so I used one of my digital kids for all of the paper - J. Billingsley's Home of the Brave. Alright, you see the sketch - here is the card.
What do you guys think of mustaches? I have been watching the trend, and ever so slowly thinking that hey, these are kind of cute. I even downloaded a set from the Silhouette store a month or so ago and figured I would get around to using them one day. Well today is that day. Father's Day is coming up and I have two cards I need to make, one for my Dad, and one for my husband (from our boys). I knocked my Dad's card out today using the sketch from a new challenge blog - Retro Sketches. This is my first week with this challenge and I wanted to make something masculine, but fun. My friend Jackie is one of the creators/design team members and I absolutely adore her style. Every week she comes up with something fantastic, and she's also a Cameo girl so she's doing something right eh? Anyway, I truly love how this card turned out. I hope my Dad likes it too.
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