Hi gang, I'm a member of a few facebook groups for Silhouette users and they are amazingly friendly and helpful places to ask advice about suppliers, techniques and software. Today, there was a question about how to take one shape away from another and my friend mentioned that not many people know how to use the tools in the modify window.

I had a quick example which people found very useful, so figured I'd share here and also give you a pdf link in case you want to print it out. 
Click here for the Mastering Modify Tools PDF

In the example above, crop and intersect do the same thing, but if more than two shapes are selected then they behave differently.  Here's an example with three overlapping rectangles:

In case you're looking for it, the Modify button is just to the left of the Trace button.  You can also navigate to it from the Object menu at the very top.

I hope this helps, any questions just holler :)

I recently received an email from a lady called Susan who asked the following:

If I made the word BABY filled with a patchwork pattern then put blanket stitch round the edge which went over the edge of the letter slightly, do I just have to print this out then cut it out, on my Robo, or do I have to draw the stitches with a pen?

I think this is what Susan is looking to make:

This is very simple to do, just follow the steps from my earlier video, but change the last few steps.  Rather than cutting the word from fabric and the stitch shape from heat transfer vinyl, group both together and print (registration marks on).  We don't want to cut either of these shapes, so set the grouped shape to  'no cut'  in the cut settings.  The key to produce the cut line, is using the offset tool on the grouped shape that has just been printed.  Here's an infographic:

I hope this helps Susan and others.  Any questions or comments are very welcome :)

I created a dingbat font from scratch!!! Permit me to be a boring boasty-boaster pants for a moment please as I'm seriously chuffed with my wee self!

I'm a HUGE fan of the blog Clever Someday and found Kay's Border Bits font really changed how I used Silhouette Studio.  It allows you to curve cicles, hearts and more snazzy shapes such as fleur-de-lis around any Silhouette Studio shape.  This is not normally possible, but because it is a font, you can use the text-to-path functionality.  This frees you to to do way more with your own designs and I use it alot.

So, when making fabric appliques with HTV edging for my niece Emily, I thought it would be nice if I could do embroidery style edging.  I looked around but couldn't find anything, so with another tutorial from Kay, I took the plunge and made one myself.  I'm such a geek, I stayed up through the night one Friday to make it, I'm so rock and roll haha!

Here's my Silhouette UK blog post which has a free link to download and it shows you hints and tips for using.  Next week, I'll have another blog post which will show how to use it with htv to make some baby rompers.

I made a quick video tutorial on how to create a sound wave graphic image from an audio clip. The clip can be anything, such as a father's day message from some kids or your favourite song.  If you have a Silhouette, you can cut the design and apply to a anything you like such as a mug, wall decal or t-shirt.  Never fear if not though, it will still make a lovely card or print your design onto a poster or canvas.

The web app I used was to make the sound wave is http://mishaheesakkers.nl/waveformer/. 
I used https://www.unitag.io/qrcode for making my QR code.

If you would like to curve the sound wave around a circle to create a radial design, I recommend Inkscape which is a brilliant vector editing software that's free.

Here's some handy hints and tips that I've picked up to help making editing in Silhouette Studio faster.  If you are like me and love shortcut keys and sneaky tricks, then this is the video for you!

Making custom t-shirts, hoodies and onesies with the Silhouette Cameo is cheap, easy and really effective.  I love being able to make cute designs as gifts for kids to wear and they get so excited when I include their name :)  I make t-shirts for adults too,  normally simpler more graphic designs, except for my pal Emily who insisted that she too have a sparkly unicorn that I'd made for some 5 year olds!  

I actually had my Cameo for 8 months before I gave HTV a try, as it seemed quite intimidating, but really shouldn't have worried.  You've most likely seen HTV before, on t-shirts with company logos, cotton shopping bags, or even those stag and hen party t-shirts.  It's used on umbrellas, hats and I was surprised to find that it's also used on mugs.

Unlike regular vinyl which has a sticky reverse side and is applied cold, HTV has a fine layer of dry glue which is smooth to the touch.  It must be heated before the glue layer melts and bonds with the fabric.  After this, the clothes can be worn and laundered as normal. 

If you iron directly onto vinyl, it would melt, so HTV sheets come with two layers, a shiny transparent plastic top sheet and the vinyl itself.  The shiny top sheet performs two functions: 1 - it is slightly sticky so it holds the vinyl design in place for transferring to the t-shirt and 2 - it is heat resistant so protects the vinyl from the heat of the iron or press.  Once the design has been applied, the plastic top sheet is peeled off and discarded.

As the front of the vinyl is protected by the shiny plastic top sheet, the design must be cut on the reverse side.  This means that the design must be mirrored when cutting with the Silhouette Cameo.  It doesn't matter for pictures normally, but for text it's crucial.

I've forgotten to do this frustratingly many times and there's nothing worse than thinking everything is fine, then realising at the ironing board that the text is backwards!  I've even seen crafters putting a sign on the Cameo lid saying 'Remember to Mirror'.

The mirror option in the Silhouette Studio software is found in the Replicate window.

Each HTV variety will need a different cut setting and it's a bit of trail and error, so test out on a small piece.  I use a mat, though you don't have to as it has the protective sheet.

A top tip is to check the cut before you unload the HTV.   That way, if the cut wasn't deep enough, you can do another pass with the vinyl in the same alignment.

In my Sew Fabulous paper cut project, I peeled the paper off the mat and my design was ready.   I then quickly cleaned the mat of the cut out pieces using a car ice scrapper.  Unfortunately, it's not so easy for HTV, you have to 'weed'.  This term means removing all the vinyl that isn't needed on the design.  In the Spiderman design above, it's anything white, so the outside background, internal triangle in the A of JAMIE and also all the rectangles within the mask.  Weeding vinyl is much like weeding in the garden, kind of satisfying unless there's loads of it!

Most vinyls, such as the hologram one used for the Spiderman design are easy to weed as the cut lines are very obvious.  Glitter vinyl on the other hand, is hellish.  In the photograph below, details have been cut out on the fairy's wings, but the lines are almost impossible to see.  I've researched tips and the easiest trick that I've found is to gently roll the design between two fingers.  Other recommendations include shining light from below, using a sharpie on sketch pen mode before cutting, or rubbing some powder such as talc or chalk.

 Once the design has been weeded, it can be pressed onto the fabric.  I use a quilting ruler to check that the design is straight and centred.  Pressing a centre fold vertically on the t-shirt and also horizontally underneath the arms is another way to make sure the design is aligned. 

Then it's just the slightly nerve-wracking task of pressing the vinyl in place.  I use an iron, with no steam, at a click below the cotton setting.  Sometimes the top sheet can buckle a little or the vinyl looks like it's warping.  It pretty much always comes good if you just keep calm and keep the iron moving in smoothing circles :)

If the HTV is a hot-peel variety, you can remove the top sheet immediately.  Other wise, it needs to cool first.  Once the top sheet has been removed, I normally always place my bargain Poundshop teflon sheet over the design and press again quickly for good measure.

Here's how the t-shirts featured in this tutorial turned out:

The Spiderman design is from Freepik and the font used is Ariel Rounded.  I used  Black Sparkle Cool Flex Vinyl (0052052) from MDP Supplies.  The red long sleeve t-shirt is by Fruit of the Loom and I bought it from Universal Textiles.

The moon fairy design is from the Silhouette Design Store and the font is Twinkle-Fairy.  The vinyl is Silver Glitz (GTZF00200) from MDP Supplies and the t-shirt is the Fruit of the Loom Girls Valueweight from Universal Textiles.

The Robot design is from the design is from the Silhouette Design Store and the font is Bauhaus 93.  The vinyl is Silver Glitz (GTZF00200) from MDP and the t-shirt is the Fruit of the Loom Kids Unisex Valueweight from Universal Textiles.

HTV comes in every colour imaginable and lots of different finishes.  My ever growing stash includes matte, glitter,  metallic, glow in the dark, reflective, flock and iridescent.  The best and by far most reasonable place I've found to buy it is MDP Supplies, who have a handful of stores (one in Grangemouth near me) and a good on-line shop.  A sheet that is 33cm wide and 50cm long is £2-3 depending on finish.  I normally get up to 10 designs from one sheet, although adult t-shirts and hoodies take up more space.  It's worth noting that MDP is  aimed at businesses, so prices are quoted without VAT.

MDP also sell t-shirts and hoodies at a good price (my favourite is Fruit of The Loom).  I normally go to Universal Textiles for my garments though as they have a bigger range, in particular for girls fit t-shirts and ladies hoodies.  MDP and Universal are selling kids t-shirts for about £1.50 at the moment.  I find H&M are also good for boys and girls t-shirts or onesies and normally have a 3 for 2 offer.

Plain white cotton onesies are available from all the supermarkets normally in a 3 or 5 pack costing less than £1 an item.  I'm told Sainsbury's ones keep their shape better than Asda.  John Lewis and H&M do nice coloured bodysuits, they work out a bit more expensive at about £2.60 each.  

Here's a wee geeky post today, a 101 tutorial  introducing the software for Silhouette cutting machines.

Silhouette Studio is the free software for use with the Silhouette Cameo and Portraits.  It is vector based, which means that the graphics are lines or curves which can be scaled to any dimension without losing accuracy. This is different from a bitmap pixel based program for images such as photographs which will look blurry if an image is enlarged too much.

The software comes with all the basic functionality you'd expect.  A good example project, in which I use a fair few of the basic tools to good effect, is the 'Sew Fabulous' paper cut that I completed recently.

I must get my crafty genes from my Granny Dilys who is a wonderful seamstress, baker and crocheter.  For her birthday, I made a paper cut saying 'Dilys Is Sew Fabulous' centred around a vintage sewing machine, similar to the old Singer treadle she taught my mum and I on.  I created a border of bobbins, buttons, scissors and other sewing paraphernalia.

I first started with a simple rectangular frame.  Basic shapes such as rectangles, circles, straight and curved lines are available on the left side of the software screen.  I drew a rectangle roughly and then used the Scale window to resize it to match the dimensions of an A4 page exactly, making sure to untick the Lock Aspect box.

I wanted a 1 cm frame, so a couple of options were available to me. I decided to use the Offset tool, but equally I could have copied the rectangle and resized the new one to be 2 cm smaller in both width and height and then centred the two rectangles.  The Offset option achieved the same goal a bit quicker. This tool allows you to draw a line inside or outside of a shape by a given margin.  I selected an Internal Offset, set to 1 cm and I was done :)

Now that I had two concentric rectangles, I filled them purple to help me visualise the final design.  As the rectangles were two separate shapes, they both filled completely with colour, but I needed just a frame.  The way to achieve this is to combine both shapes, into a 'Compound Path'.  This sounds scary but isn't really, the embedded shapes are just considered holes, or negative space and can be 'released' later if needed.

I already had a couple of of sewing related designs from the Silhouette Design Store so I clicked on 'Show Library', the book icon near the bottom of the left side menu.  I searched for the term 'sewing' and double clicked the designs to load them into my project.

Once the designs are loaded, then can be resized by dragging the corner in and out and rotated by dragging the green handle-bar, as is common in most image software. A Rotate window exists to rotate by fixed 45 degree increments or a specified amount if more precision is needed.  I also mirrored and duplicated some of the designs using the  Replicate window so that I could use them again elsewhere in the border. 

All fonts that are installed on your computer can be used when inserting text. Some neat features exist including curving the text along a shape, although this wasn't needed for this project.  The geek in me is pleased with details such as being able to control kerning (pairs of letters which would have large spaces between then such as AV).  I used the website Wordmark as mentioned in my Font Addict post to select the Edwardian Script ITC font. This font was already installed as it comes free with MS Office.

I used the Offset tool to make the lettering slightly bolder and therefore stronger in the paper cut design.  Just a 0.02cm Offset can make all the difference.  The Offset tool also welds together the letters into a which is handy.

For this project to work, the paper must remain in a single piece.  This means the Weld tool is incredibly important.  This tool joins any overlapping shapes into a single continuous shape and is particularly useful with text.   In the picture below, six individual shapes were placed together to make the continuous word 'Fabulous'.  Without using the weld tool, the Silhouette Cameo will but out each shape, regardless of overlap, leaving lots of small pieces.  If all the pieces are selected, and the Weld button is applied, we get a single merged shape as shown in the grey after position.

Unlike the Make tool, once Welded, the shape can only be reversed back to the individual components using the Undo button.  For that reason, if I recommend that they are just grouped (Ctrl + G or right click> Group) until near the end of the project, or a copy is taken before Welding.

 I used some purple iridescent paper from Anne Marie Designs.  It's one of my favourite papers and cuts brilliantly.  When the cutting was completed, I simply peeled it off the mat and it was ready!  I sandwiched the paper cut between some cardboard and popped it into the post.  My mum kindly framed it in a white Ikea Ribba frame.

Ta Dah!!!