Using my Silhouette Cameo

Teeny Tiny Tip: Saving Vinyl

Very often when I craft I just want to use my Silhouette Cameo to cut one or two small things from a sheet of self adhesive vinyl.

I always draw a box around the item to be cut. I weed that first, which gives me a safe area to then weed the actual artwork. No big pieces of vinyl get caught up in my actual work.

If you keep all the artwork on the same sheet you can tell where the free vinyl is located

I then save the file the same name as the color of the sheet of vinyl (so, in this case, I’ve called it “Silver” because that’s the color I was working with).

cut settings window in silhouette studio

I turn the previous artwork’s cut lines to “No Cut” in the cut settings window.

This gives me a guide for a good location of new art on the sheet each time.

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Black Capped Chickadee Garland

Black Capped Chickadees become a wall hanging when cut using Silhouette Studio's print & cut feature.

For several years, we’ve been walking for exercise, and one of the many benefits is the bird watching.

We’re also lucky to live in an older neighborhood with established trees, which also brings in the birds.

Some time back, we bought a field guide for birds and used the illustrations to figure out what we were looking at. The inside cover has a couple of pages for recording when and where you’ve seen a bird, and we’ve noted quote a few. I’m sure there’s an app for that now, but we like to do this old school.

One bird that we could hear, but never quite see really interested us. We’d hear it in Spring mostly, early in the morning, and to us, it sounded like it was calling “Sue Za Zee” which is pretty close to “Suzy” which is what my family calls me. (Suzer is my work nickname). We’ve heard this bird for several years, while living in several states.

Naturally, we started calling it the Suzy Bird.

Recently, we finally saw the bird that was making that call, and it turns out he’s the Black Capped Chickadee. Oh sure, the bird scientists think he’s calling out “Chicadee”, but what do they know?

Of course, this calls for a craft!

I’ve made a print & cut project to create a garland of Black Capped Chickadees to adorn my wall. To make this one more nature-inspired, I used a dried day-lily stem to hang them from.

Click the arrow below to see how I made this. At the end of the post, I’ve also included the files as a free download if you’d like to make your own.

How SuzerSpace created this

 

Black Capped Chickadee Garland made using Silhouette Studio's print & cut feature

Aldi Quarter Keeper

Create a custom Aldi quarter keeper with a vinyl sticker and a slot for a quarter.

I am very late to the shopping at Aldi Party.

If somehow you haven’t heard about this, Aldi is a chain of discount grocery stores. They originated in Germany, and have brought their shopping strategy to the US. The stores are purposely small, with limited offerings in smaller categories than the big US chains. Most of the brands are their own private label. There are no frills – the stores are mostly warehouse style with items stacked in boxes or on basic metal racks. There are no staff roaming the aisles – they are all either at the cash registers or are unloading items. You bring your own bags, and bag your own items.

We’ve found Aldi a great way to stretch our food dollar. We had previously been doing that by couponing and leaving expensive treats (like good blue cheese, nuts and olives) off our list. But Aldi lets us have all that back, plus better pricing on many basic items.

If you google “what’s good at Aldi” you will be presented with pages and pages of bloggers views on what to buy there.

And of course I’m going to add in my top 5:

  1. Cheese. Sliced, block, shredded or specialty. All good.
  2. Flatbread. Better and cheaper than the name brand.
  3. Produce. Especially 50 cent avocados and the multi-color peppers
  4. Garlic Flatbread Pizza. It’s in the frozen section. And it rivals Papa Murphy’s Garlic Bread.
  5. Eggplant Parmesan. Also in the frozen section. Comes in single serve or family size portions.

The good thing about waiting so long to shop at Aldi is they used to not take credit cards. But now they do.

There is one big trick though – you have to bring a quarter. You use it to unlock a shopping cart at the front of the store. You get it back when you lock your cart back in.

I can’t be trusted to keep a quarter in my wallet. What if the Cheez-Its start calling me from the candy machine when I’m at work?

It’s better to craft a quarter keeper!

Click the arrow below to see how I made mine.

How SuzerSpace created this

Crafty Crab Water Level Marker

Removable vinyl creatures helps me find the right level of water for the coffee maker

This cute little guy makes coffee making a little easier in the morning.

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I didn’t have a real solid plan for using my Silhouette Cameo when I bought it. I knew it would be a helpful tool for all my paper crafting, and it would be great boost for holiday crafting (banners, garlands, gift tags, cards).

But I wasn’t sure about the off-season.

Turns out it is helpful around the house as well.

Continue reading…

I want to ride my bicycle

Silhouette Studio's print and cut feature is a great tool for making a bike garland.

I’ve mentioned that I didn’t realize the Silhouette Cameo could cut more than just silhouettes. I’ve posted a couple of projects that use the Print & Cut feature of the Silhouette Studio software, and I’m really hooked on the technique.

Suddenly last week I realized that the “printed” part of a print and cut could be anything, including photos. Why it too me so long, I’ll never know. But now it’s like another door of crafting just opened.

My first use of this trick is a garland for my back window. Mr. SuzerSpace and I ride bicycles outdoors for three seasons of the year (we don’t ride in Winter). I want Spring to come soon, so I’ve made a string of bicycles to dream.

Click the red arrow below to see how I made this.

How SuzerSpace created this