The Silhouette Sketch Feature - A Tutorial

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!

My New Cricut Expression 2 and Doilies. . . An Experiment

I've had a new Expression 2 sitting on my craft room floor for several months now.  To be honest I bought it while getting caught up in Black Friday frenzy.  So after much debate about whether or not to keep it, I  decided to take it out because I wanted to cut some doilies for the Card Patterns Sketch Challenge and I had read that it is better at cutting small, intricate shapes than the original expression.  Good idea?  Well yes and no.  The good news is that it does cut very well, in some ways better than my original E, but in others, not so good.  So let's get to it.

So you know, the two images I cut are doilies from the Paper Lace cartridge.    One is really just a flower so there isn't a lot of intricate cutting involved.  I was pretty pleased with the E2's ability to cut this doily and you can see the final project here - it ended up on my Card Patterns No. 148 post.  The second is truly an intricate doily and I was exited to see how the E2 would perform.   I had originally planned on submitting two cards, but well, that turned out to be just one.  Below you can see both cuts sitting on the mat - plus a bunch of my other crap in the background!  Sorry, it gets a bit messy when I'm  working on something.!

This the doily of concern.  Why?  Because the cuts around the edges are very small, and well, I haven't had great experience with my Expressions doing well by these so I wanted to see what my E2 could do.

A closer view:

And here is the doily lifted off of the mat.  Now truth be told, I am pretty happy with this. Why?  Because my original expressions would have had a hard time getting those small cuts around the edges cut out at all.  It would have torn the doily, halfway cut, or somehow otherwise made the doily unusable.  So this is looking pretty good relatively speaking.

But here you can see the defects.  I used a multiple cut - 2x to be exact and it's not a clean cut, I have some strings.

Not to mention the cuts at the edge of the circle - they are not quite right.  These are triangular shapes and none of these are uniform. Truth be told, this is really bothering me.  This is NOT the image I wanted to cut out.  And you can see even more strings.  Sigh.

But the picture below is probably the most disappointing - for the first time ever I am experiencing wonky circles!  The green mat you seen below was cut out with my Spellbinders circle die - it is truly a circle.  No ifs, and, or buts about it.  I put my newly cut doily against it and guess what - my doily isn't really a true circle!  It's a wonky circle!  Now if you don't know what I'm talking about Google "Cricut Expression Wonky Circles" and you will get a plethora of hits.  I can't tell you how disappointed I am.  I have owned three original expressions (two presently reside with me) and have never, until now, had the "wonky circle" problem. Truthfully I'm not sure what I'm going to do about it.  I am considering requesting a replacement for my machine and hoping for the best.  Ideas anyone?  I'm open to suggestions at this point.

Here are a few more pictures of the wonkiness!

I am debating on what to do with this machine.  Do I call and complain and hope its replacement with one that doesn't cut wonky circles?  Or do I suck it up and keep it realizing that I need to keep cuts bigger if I'm going to get more desirable results.  Or does that even matter when it comes to wonky circles.  Are they always wonky no mater what size?  Do I sell it?  Decisions, decisions, decisions . . .

So this is the results of my experiment.  For all those interested  I tried a variety of cut settings and here's what I found works the best - 1) this is Bazzil basics paper 2) pressure 5, blade depth 5, speed 2.  I tried a bunch of others and it wasn't pretty.  the image is also sized at 3.48" on the real size dial.  I didn't want to go any smaller than that given the small cuts around the edges.

Ultimately, I went with the flower doily for my project and just submitted one card for the challenge.  It turned out great.  I still love my Cricut products.  I own over 100 cartridges and currently 3 machines so I really, really want this to work out.  I just want them to do what they are supposed to do!  Okay - vent over!  I hope this was informative or helpful to those of you working through some of these same issues.  Let's all hope that Provo Craft gets it together sooner rather than later!

Thanks for stopping by!

How to Create Perforated Note card Pages with Silhouette Studio . . . And a Gift for Elise

This past Christmas, some crafty buddies of mine and I decided to do a Secret Santa gift exchange.  We kept the dollar limit low, and we had to create at least one hand crafted item in our gift.  Now for some reason I got stuck.  I could not think of anything to do, and by the time I really had a good idea of what I wanted to do, it was too late and I didn't get all of the information I needed.  I wanted to make my person (Elise) something personal, something in colors and with images that she really likes. Instead she got a general holiday journal which was pretty cute, but at the end of the day  it was not what I had in mind.  

So, this past week I set out to remedy that.  I created this really cute personal notebook for Elise to take notes with and I set out to make it as useful as possible. First I want to show you the book and the things that went into creating it, and then I have some pics I took of how to design a perforated page using the Silhouette Studio software.

All of the images you see - the note card book cover, the note card pages (these two come as a set) the heart flourish, and the title "daily notes" can be found in the Silhouette store.  The cardstock I used to cut the book from is actually Becky Higgins' Project Life cardstock. This is paper from the Cobalt collection and I adore it.  It also helps that it is really inexpensive too - 24 doubled sided papers for $8.99! And these Cobalt papers are WONDERFUL for boy related scrapbook pages.  My mind is already turning and formulating plans.  Okay, back to the project at hand.  I also used a bit of My Mind's Eye Lost & Found Two for the tags and a few embellishments.  The notepad paper itself is just basic white cardstock that I bought at Joann's.  

I used the Print & Cut feature from my Cameo to create the personalized "From The Desk of" sentiment at the bottom.  Elise likes pink, green, and flowers.  So, there you have it!  There are about 30 pieces of paper in this notebook and yes, I did have to spend a bit of time printing and cutting out each one of them.  After that it was easy, I used a tag from the Silhouette store, added some holes and then threaded the entire thing together (from back to end) with Baker's Twine.  I also added a cute little heart cut from more My Mind's Eye paper with a Spellbinders scallop heart die.  The heart bling is from my stash.  I am really happy with the way this turned out.  THIS is the gift I wanted to send in December and I am so very happy to be able to put this in the mail this week.

How to Create a Perforated Notecard Page using Silhouette Studio

One day I'm going to learn how to make a video!  In the meantime you guys are going to have to put up with my pictures.  Okay, so the way that this file comes when you open it, there is a notepad page with two holes in it and that's it.  I wanted this notepad to be a bit more convenient to use (in case she needed to jot down something and then take just the note with her) so I decided to make the pages perforated so she could tear them out.

This first picture is of the note card book file open in the Silhouette Studio (I apologize for the picture being so dark, my photography is suffering as of late).  You can see the book cover image over to the left and on the cutting mat is the note care itself after I had finished adding my personalized print & cut and also the perforation line.

A closer look at the note card by itself.

Okay, like I said, when the file is open and new there is no line there.  So what you need to do is go over to the left side and click on Draw A Line  - you can see the cursor pointed at it in the picture below.  

Start at the left side and drag the line across to the right side of the note card.  You will probably need to resize it - just make it the same width as the notecard, or just a smidgen shorter.  Once it's centered and where you want the perforated line to be you can move on the to the next step. 

Draw a box around the line to highlight it.

The go to the Open Cut Style Window (it's on the top right side) and click on it.

Select Perforate Edge

Once you do that you will be able to see the change to the style of your line.  Cut lines are delineated by a thick red line, perforated lines look like a dashed line.  So if it looks like this (picture below) then you know you have done it correctly.

And there you have it.  Close out the cut style window.  Draw a box around the entire notecard, group it, and you are ready to print and/or cut.  Here are a few more pictures of the perforated line in the finished project.

I hope that some of you new Cameo users found that useful.  I know I was giddy once I figured out how to do it.  I appreciate Pam giving me the opportunity to share this with you. If you have any additional questions - please email me at sabrioletdesigns.blogspot.com.  Have a wonderful Sunday!

Recipe:

Paper:  Becky Higgins' Project Life Cobalt Collection, My Mindy's Eye Lost & Found II

Silhouette:  Notecard book, heart flourish, title, tag

Spellbinders:  Scallop Hearts

Twine:  The Twinery

Misc:  Heart bling from my stash, ribbon

Thanks for stopping by!

Flower Shoppe Tutorial

Hey everyone.  I had such a tremendous response to the card I posted on the Cricut messageboard with a flower I made using Flower Shoppe that I decided to do a quick tutorial outlining a few of the things I've learned about using this cartridge.  Fair warning  -  This is going to be a picture heavy post so stick with me!  First - these are the three flowers I made this morning that I will walk you through.  I love the way they turned out and I love this cartridge so much.  There are so many possibilities.

Allright, first things first - starting with the blue flower.  I am particularlly partial to dimension so this is a dimensional flower.  What I did was cut three dimensional flowers in graduated sizes, and I cut two of the inside flowers as well in different sizes as I wasn't sure which one I wanted to use.

The largest flower was cut at 3.75", the second one at 3.25" and the smallest one at 3.0".  The larger inside flower was cut as 3.25" and the smaller one at 2.75".  (ignore the white cut out you see on the right! - my camera skills need improvement!)

Putting the flowers together is very easy.  First you need to fold up all of your dimensional flowers using the adhesive of your choice.  I am sticking with my hot glue gun for the moment, although as my blisters increase in frequency I realize that might have to change.  Here are a few pictures after I have glued the layer together.

The next step is making the middle flower.  If you are unfamiliar with quilling it is really easy.  In fact, these flowers are the only thing I know how to quill!!  What you do is start at the outside, put the edge of the paper inside the quilling tool (with the design facing up) and begin wrapping either clockwise or counterclockwise depending on what color you want to show. Since this is double sided solid paper it didn't make a difference and I just have a natural inclination to wrap clockwise so that's what I did.

I apologize for the fuzziness of the photos.  For some reason I can't get the Macro on my camera to work correctly lately. Something else to do!  Sigh.  Here is a shot that I took right after I started wrapping.

Something that is important when you are doing this is keeping the bottom of the flower at the same level.  It's okay if the top looks like it is at different heights - the bottom is what you are worried about because that's where it's going to get glued down.  It doesn't take terribly long to do this, but if you go slowly and just make sure you keep adjusting to keep it all level at the bottom then when you are done this is what you should have:

This flower is wrapped pretty tight and I think that's the way you should always start - getting it as tight as you can and once you are done and have removed it from your quilling tool you can sort of let it go and let it open up.  You can actually adjust it a bit and make it bigger if you want to, but you don't want to unravel it too much, the base needs something to stick too.  The flower you see is the larger of the two center flowers I cut out.  I cut this at 3.25" and you can see that ultimately, its not that big.  We all know that our machines aren't the best at small intricate cuts, so while you can go smaller, keep in mind, the smaller you go, the more difficulty you might have in actually getting a clean cut that you can use.

Here are all of the pieces unassembled.  I put it together starting with the largest piece first, and then adding the smaller sizes until I was complete.  Once again I prefer hot glue for this type of project because I like things to be *set* and I don't have the patience for the other liquid adhesives to dry.

The last thing I did was curl the edges of the leaves.  You can use any tool you have handy to do this.  I prefer using an old stylus, but I've seen people do with it pens.  Just take the edge of the pedal and wrap it around the tool to give it a little curl.  It's super simple, and only takes a moment.  Here is the finished product.

Next up is the brown flower.  I really like this one.  Here are my base cuts:

The largest pedal is cut at 4", the next size down is 3.5" and the brown flower is cut at 3".  The inside flower was cut at 3.75".

You see two flowers in the above picture and that's because I realized I made a mistake during the final flower assembly.   If you are making a dimensional flower, then you need to make make sure all of your cuts are the dimensional flowers, even if they are different style flowers.  I was trying to mix up the shapes a bit and I initally cut the inside brown flower as the full flower.  It just didn't fit in the card, so I went back and cut out the same flower but using the dimensional cut.

Here are the flowers put together (you are still seeing the incorrect middle brown flower here - I didn't replace it until after I took these photos).

 More quilling showing how I am keeping the bottom even.

And here is the final product:

Last but not least I decided to make a regular non-dimensional flower that just had a lot of layers.  This is the mum flower shape.  I cut six of these at 2.64", one at 2.09" and the smallest one is 1.53".

I just mixed up the papers and added a brad to come up with this.

I think that's it.  Easy peasy right?!  I hope this tutorial was helpful to you.  I am a flower nut and this cartridge is right up my alley.  A great thing about this cartridge is how it lends itself to using scraps.  All of the flowers you see I made using paper I pulled from my scrap drawer!  Here are a few additional pictures of all the finished flowers together.

Please, please let me know if you have any questions!  As always, thanks for stopping by!!