silhouette Archives - Studio Katie

Tips for Cutting your own Stencil Masks

Hey everyone, Today I am up on the Hazel and Ruby blog sharing my settings and tips for using their “cut your own stencil” material on die cut machines. I decided to share them with you guys here, as well in case you are curious about what settings to use!

I love using Hazel and Ruby’s stencil masks on my projects and while there are a good variety of shapes and fonts already available you can also purchase the stencil mask material to cut your own stencils!

Silhouette Portrait

Settings:

Blade: 4
Speed: 5
Thickness: 15
Double Cut

At a thickness of 15, the silhouette cuts through the mask material, but not the backing. Which I like so that I can easily place my mask back on the backing sheet after I’m done using it.

Brother ScanNCut

Settings:

Blade: 4
Speed: 5
Pressure: 2

I did these settings so that the machine cuts through only the mask material and not the backing, just like on my Silhouette.

Spellbinders Artisan X-Plorer

To cut my material in my manual die cutter (the Artisan X-Plorer) This is how I stacked my plates/dies:

Base Plate
Die
Mask Material
Cut Plate

My best tip is to always do a test cut if you’re not sure of the settings. On both the Brother and the Silhouette you have the option of doing a “test cut” and you can just use a tiny die on a manual machine to test out the settings.

This was you know for sure if they’ll work without having to cut your whole design. It’s disappointing when you unload the mat and find that it hasn’t cut all the way through.

I hope you find these settings and tricks helpful! The other design team members have been sharing their tips this week as well so be sure to look back at the previous posts!

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Tips for Cutting Fabric on Die Cut Machines

Hey guys, I announced this here on the blog last week- My Mom and I are part of the new Love My Fabrics design team! We’re a mother/daughter team so we’re coming up with projects and blogging them together, which should be lots of fun. My mom is an amazing quilter.

Today I am up on the Love My Fabrics blog and I wanted to share with you my post here as well. I shared a couple of my favorite tips for die cutting fabric on electronic cutting machines as well as what settings I use.

I have 2 die cut machines, the Silhouette Portrait and the Brother Scan N Cut and it has taken a bit (lots of cutting fails) of practice to figure out what works and what doesn’t when it comes to cutting fabric.

Here are the settings I use for the Silhouette:

Blade: 4, Speed: 5, Thickness: 33

Here are the settings I use for the Brother Scan N Cut:

Blade: 6, Speed: 3, Pressure: 0

I’ve found that I have to have either really stiff fabric or have something like heat n bond on the back of the fabric to cut it. I recently found a product called Terial Magic. It’s a spray you can use to stiffen your fabric and it works wonderfully with die cutting. Here’s a bit about it from the website:

“Terial Magic allows you to play with single ply fabric in a whole new way. It replaces stabilizers and fusibles for quilters and embroiderers, keeps fraying in check for scrapbookers and crafters and gives the fabric a firmer hand for holding shapes and folds for all fabric projects. It is quickly becoming a household product suitable for any quilter, sewer, crafter, embroiderer or other DIY’er’s toolbox! Treat your fabric in 3 simple steps… spray, air dry and iron! Terial Magic™ lasts, but is water soluble and can be washed out if desired. “

It’s definitely helpful for cutting fabric on die cut machines but I can’t wait to try it for other projects as well.

Another tip I have is that you always have a separate cutting blade for fabric. Just like scissors, paper will dull your blade, so be sure to have 1 blade for paper and one blade for fabric.

What are your favorite tips? Have you cut fabric out on a diecut machine?

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Silhouette Portrait Review

I first posted this review on Craft Gossip, but I wanted to share it here too in case you guys were curious about the Silhouette Portrait. I received this Silhouette Portrait for review I’ve been spending a little bit of time playing around with it!

First, what is it? A Silhouette Portrait is one of the many electronic die cutting machines currently available. It’s made by Silhouette, who also make a larger version called the Cameo.

The Silhouette Portrait is great for scrapbookers and card makers but it’s also great for all around crafters- you can actually cut so much with it- paper, vinyl, washi, foil, fabric, etc. I’ve only used it with paper and foil paper so far, but it cut beautifully on what I have cut. The paper didn’t move or tear which is always a good sign!

One of the items I received with the Portrait was the new PixScan Mat that Silhouette recently released. What’s that? PixScan™ technology is a new feature in the Silhouette cutting system that allows makers to cut precisely around a printed design or to position cut lines in a specific location on your material using a scanner or camera.

Sounds cool, right? I also have a Brother ScanNCut machine and this sounds a little bit like what the scanncut does, only you take a picture instead of the machine scanning it.

I tried it out on a Mocking Jay symbol (for my Halloween costume) as well as a little camping tent I downloaded from the Silhouette store.

I actually had a little trouble with my first attempt at using the pix scan mat (the mocking jay), it was having trouble recognizing the outline of the symbol. I think it was just because I’d printed it on gold foil, so it was shiny and there was a glare in the photo. I got it to cut it out after a couple of tries though.

My second attempt (the tent) did work much better, as you can see below. It cut right around the shape. This can also be used to scan and then cut around the outline of stamped images, which I think is neat.

Overall, it’s a pretty nice machine. It only weighs about 3 pounds, which is lighter than my other diecut machine (The ScanNCut) and would be fantastic to take to crops! You can purchase the Portrait for $179.99 here.