Borders, Replicating and the Pesky X and Y Axis Questions

Yesterday someone on the Silhouette group posted a question about making a border from a graphic. I posted a rather simplistic answer saying to replicate and weld.  A very knowledgeable and talented lady, Meadelie, posted a much more detailed answer referencing replicating using the x and y axis tools to control the objects. I got two emails from people saying they didn't understand that and wanted me to make a video explaining it...so that is what I did this morning. Oh and I also removed the Cricut "Expression" as one of the things represented on my blog header and replaced it with the word "Zing" which is a new cutter I hope to get soon.

Anyway, here is a short video on how to replicate and control it using the x and y axis choices. A quick way to get a border from almost anything (in this case it is a pumpkin from Lettering Delights).

Welding Purchased Graphic Files

Yes, more on welding. I had tried to explain this in a Yahoo group post but it is so hard to explain things and SO much easier to just show them. This is how you incorporate purchased graphic files into your own print and cut projects quickly and easily.

Welding and Compound Path Issues

Another very quick and very basic video on welding to address some problems people encountered that are on our Silhouette Yahoo Group. Hope this helps. If not, let me know and I'll see if I can figure out what you are having a problem with...or maybe I can't. As always, I am absolutely no expert at this and there are much more knowledgeable people on the Yahoo group but I just look for a quick way to do what I need to do.

Bleed Zones

Sounds like a good subject right before Halloween. Had a request to show how to make a bleed zone around a traced image. This is so you have a "halo" of color or whatever (called a bleed) around your object so that if your cutter is not cutting exactly on the cutlines...you can get a nice cut without the white showing. I hope this is what someone wanted to see...if not, email me and let me know what I missed and I'll try again.

Making Letters Fatter in Silhouette Studio

Hi everyone...another day, another video. This one is for someone on the Yahoo group that wanted more information about making letters fatter in Silhouette Studio. As always, this is the way I do it. It doesn't mean there aren't better or easier ways to do it. I'm certainly no expert but I do dink around a lot and figure out how to do what I want to do. It's fun to change the look of your letters and sometimes you need something bolder so here's one way to do that.

Tiling and Saving to a PDF file from Silhouette Studio

Yes, time for another video. There is no actual "tiling" command in Silhouette Studio but you can easily take an image and split it into parts, enlarge the parts, and then print and cut the pieces to put together a large image. Also I had posted on the Silhouette Yahoo Group that I was saving my files in Silhouette Studio as a PDF. That way I can open them in Illustrator (and maybe in Inkscape although I didn't try it) and then export/save them as any format I want that is supported by Illustrator. That way I can cut my .studio images with another cutter.

Not a fabulous video...but a quick one to show how to do something that several people were interested in doing.

More on Tracing Graphics Directly in Silhouette Studio

One of the Silhouette Yahoo group members asked me for a video on how to make a 3D graphic usable. One look at the graphic told me it would be pretty much impossible to trace directly in Silhouette Studio because it had primarily light areas on the edges. You can, of course, take a graphic into Photoshop and make a blackout of it and other things but I realize most people do not have the program and/or don't know how to do this.

The only real option is to learn to trace directly in Silhouette Studio. It really is not hard to do. It does take time though and you have to have some patience...but it opens up the opportunity to use a lot of files available on the internet for free and for a very reasonable cost. I have personally used a lot I have purchased from CraftsUPrint which has fabulous files for the 3D layered look on cards. To the right is a card I did a few days ago from a graphic purchased from them. It is sort of hard to see the layers but the cross and message are raised on popdots and then the butterflies and the bow on the message are raised another layer.

Anyway the graphics are opened in Silhouette Studio and the first thing you need to do is to cut the multiple images apart using the knife tool. You can also trim off the excess "white" space at this time. Then you just have to start tracing around an object. I usually go in VERY close to do this and just start clicking and placing nodes. I am not really all that careful when I do it. One reason I'm not that careful is that I know I can't do a great job as my hand shakes sometimes and I know I'm going to have to go clear around it and adjust the nodes when I finish...so I might as well just click around quickly and then spend the time adjusting the nodes up to the edges of the graphic.

This is a case of "how badly do I want to use this graphic." If you want to use it then you have to spend the time to make it work. The detail the Silhouette is able to cut makes it oh so worthwhile...at least to me.

Below is the video showing how to get started on a project. Be sure to watch it on YouTube if you want to see it on a larger screen.