2018 - Page 5 of 6 - Silhouette Secrets-Swift Creek Customs

Posted on March 29, 2018April 26, 2023 by silhouettesecretsplus — 1 Comment

Hot Mess with your Silhouette Cameo

While the title could mean many things, this week it’s in reference to Spring Break at my house. I thought it would be a fun idea to try out this “Hot Mess” technique with the kids for a crafting project on Spring Break….

Now, I don’t know if it was a good idea to do this on Day 1 of Spring Break or not – would it have been better on Day 5? Who knows…. but I’m going to show you our results.

First, what is a Hot Mess? On some days, that could be my title but today I’m talking about a new crafting project that has everyone rushing out to pick up canvas from the craft store.

How do you create these pieces of art?

Grab a canvas and the paints you want to use.
Paint any sort of pattern you so desire onto your canvas. Let it dry thoroughly.
Cut a stencil using your Silhouette machine and some vinyl – I used Oracal 631 and 651. As you can see, this is what you get when you let an 8, 6 and almost 5 year old pick out their own stencil.
Apply the stencil using transfer tape – I recommend Oracal transfer tape. You may need to help the vinyl stick to the canvas at first. Just be patient and go slow.
And now paint your top layer of paint. You can choose any color you’d like, but we stuck with white on top.
Let that dry for a bit and then carefully peel off the vinyl stencil. You don’t want it to be too wet when you peel it and you don’t want the vinyl to sit on the canvas too long either as it may start to cure to the canvas.
Let your works of art dry completely.

And there you have the “Hot Mess” technique.

I am so glad I did not start with the 12″ x 24″ canvas that jumped into my cart at Michael’s, as the kids were done after the first 30-40 minutes. And I can say it is a one and done crafting project for Spring Break 2018.

If you have any desire to use these same designs in your works of art, here is where I found them: – Enjoy this Moment by Kolette Hall Design #36196 from the Silhouette Design Store – Oh Poop! Quote by Sarah Hurley Design #209510 from the Silhouette Design Store – Cat by Basic Grey Design #65180 from the Silhouette Design Store – Other poo design created using tracing and point editing.

Next week we will be back to our “Let’s Explore v4” series, continuing through the different tools available to you in the Silhouette Studio v4 software.

In the meantime, check out the other posts in the Let’s Explore v4 Series HERE.

I would love to see what projects you create! Feel free to post on my Facebook group at Silhouette Secrets with EllyMae.

Enjoy !

THANK YOU for your support! How can you help? Click HERE & buy a coffee. Every little bit helps with the cost of running the site.

Looking for more in-depth, step-by-step classes, check out all of my online Silhouette classes on my Teachable site HERE.

Posted on March 20, 2018April 26, 2023 by silhouettesecretsplus — 7 Comments

Let’s Explore v4 – Text Style – Glyphs

Have you heard of Glyphs? These are special characters that some fonts have included with them. Glyphs can be flourishes, fancy letters, punctuation or characters with accents, shapes, etc.

With the software Silhouette Studio version of v4.1.197 and the Designer Edition software upgrade, came the option to unlock the glyphs feature in Silhouette Studio. This is amazing as I had such a hard time with the small Character map on my PC.

Access the Glyphs panel on the second tab of the Test Style Panel on the right side of Silhouette Studio v4.

Let’s Explore the glyphs tab in the Text Style Panel!

Text Search bar – Just like on Tab 1, the name of the font that is selected will appear in this box or you can highlight it and type a name in the box and it will select that font.
Glyphs – This area is where you will see the glyphs of the font that you are using show up. Note: sometimes not all the glyphs will show up here and you will need to access those through Character Map (PC) or Fontbook (Mac). It just depends on how the font was created.
Recently Used Glyphs – This handy feature shows the ones you have recently accessed.
Icon size – You can change the size of how the Icons appear in the glyphs panel. And when you hover over a glyph it magnifies it as well.

Now, there is still 1 more tab option in the Text Style Panel and it’s a good one.

Spellcheck

If you type out a word that is either not in the dictionary or is not spelled correctly, you will see a green squiggly line show up under it. Here I’ve typed my business name with no space. That is not in the dictionary, so it let’s me know that.

If I want to add that word to my dictionary, I can right click on it and choose “Add ‘SilhouetteSecrets’ to Dictionary”.

Once it is added to the dictionary, the green line disappears.

So let’s explore the Spelling Panel.

If you type out several words which are misspelled (which is very hard for me to do on purpose), you will notice the green squiggly lines under those that are not in the dictionary.

Click on Replace and it will pop up a list of suggestions to replace it with. Choose the one you want, click on Replace again and it will change it.

If you know the word is spelled correctly, choose Add to Dictionary and the green line will disappear. This word has now been added to your Silhouette dictionary.

The Arrows at the top of the panel are the Undo and Redo buttons, in case you picked the wrong replacement word, you can simply Undo it.

And then you have some Advanced options.

Automatic Spellchecking – check it on or off.
Select Language – Select your default language.
Custom Dictionary – Any words you add to the dictionary will appear here.
Text box – Type in a new word to add it to your dictionary.

If you ever need to delete a word you have added to the Dictionary, click on the word and the delete option will show up.

And there you have all of the Text Style Panel. Keep in mind that the Glyphs panel is an option available to you when you upgrade the software to Designer Edition or higher.

Check out the other posts in the Let’s Explore v4 Series HERE.

Enjoy !

THANK YOU for your support! How can you help? Click HERE & buy a coffee. Every little bit helps with the cost of running the site.

Looking for more in-depth, step-by-step classes, check out all of my online Silhouette classes on my Teachable site HERE.

Posted on March 13, 2018April 26, 2023 by silhouettesecretsplus — 35 Comments

Let’s Explore v4 – Text Style Panel

Let’s talk about text – the Text Style Panel!

Silhouette Studio software will pull in any font that you have installed on your computer. Once it’s installed, a text style name should show up in the Text Style Panel.

Let’s take a look.

Text Search bar – The name of the font that is selected will appear in this box or you can highlight it and type a name in the box and it will select that font.
Text Size – Use the drop down box to change the text size smaller or larger here or highlight and type in a new number to change the pt size.
Text Style Panel – The first 2 sections to appear in the Panel are the “Frequently Used” and “Recently Used” sections. You may have other sections in the Panel because you’ve created folders in your Fonts folder in the Silhouette cloud library. When you choose a font style for your text, the font style name will be highlighted.
Text Properties – If a font has the options, choose Bold, Italic or Underlined here. Some text styles may have additional options available and the drop down box next to U will be available to select.
Text Alignment – Choose your text to be align left (default), align centered, align right or Full.
Horizontal/Vertical Text – Choose whether your text runs horizontally or vertically on your design mat.
Line Spacing – Increase or decrease the space between each line of text. This will affect text created in the same text box.
Character Spacing – Increase or decrease the spacing between each character. This can come in handy when you are trying to weld something and the letters do not overlap.
Kerning – This feature adjusts the spacing between letters to make them look better, such as AW or AV. Instead of having such a wide space between then, you can turn the Kern on and they move closer together.

Now, let’s talk a little about how to create with Text.

First click on the Text Tool on the left side of the Silhouette Software. Click on the design mat & type out the words. Click off of the words to deselect it and then click back on the text once to select it. Fill the text with color to make it easier to see & work with. Click on the Text Style Panel on the right side.

Now, click on a Font Style Name, the text will change to that font style. You can then either click on each font, use the text search bar if you know what you are looking for or use the arrow keys to scroll through the text list and as you do the words will change to each font – this is my favorite method if I don’t know what font I want.

You will notice that I have red lines still going through my letters. Because my letters are overlapping, I want to weld this before I cut so that it will cut anything part that overlaps as one piece. Right click on the design and choose Weld.

This will change the text from editable text to a vector image, so you might want to make a copy and pull it off your mat before welding. Once it’s welded, you will see that any piece that was not overlapping will have now become it’s own separate section with a bounding box around it.

To keep the pieces together, we want to Group. There are several ways to Group – right click & choose Group, Ctrl (Cmd) + G, Object tab at top & Group or use the QAT (Quick Access Toolbar) at the top and select the Group icon.

And now your font is ready to cut.

I hope that helps to explain the different parts of the Text Style Panel and how to create text designs.

If you want to learn even more about text and how to get accurate text sizes, check out my guest post on Silhouette School’s blog about Forcing Accurate Text Size.

Check out the other posts in the Let’s Explore v4 Series HERE.

Enjoy !

THANK YOU for your support! How can you help? Click HERE & buy a coffee. Every little bit helps with the cost of running the site.

Looking for more in-depth, step-by-step classes, check out all of my online Silhouette classes on my Teachable site HERE.

Posted on March 6, 2018April 26, 2023 by silhouettesecretsplus — 3 Comments

Let’s Explore v4 – Pixscan Panel

Now you may have noticed I skipped an icon as we were going down the right side of the Silhouette software. I wanted to get through the Tracing panel before we explored the Pixscan, since we will be using that feature here.

The Pixscan Panel can be very useful if you are scanning an object such as a stamped image or design off of a piece of scrapbook paper.

Here is how the Pixscan works:

Gather your images you want to scan and place them on your Pixscan mat inside of the rectangle border.
Take a photo of your Pixscan mat or use your Scanner to gather your image.
Click on the Pixscan icon in the top right corner of the software.
Then you will choose Import PixScan Image from File and select your photo from where you have saved it. My software gave me the notice that “No Calibration Profile could be found….” and I tried to create a calibration file, but was unable to. I have an iphone 6s and it was not recognizing that, but I’ve still been able to get successful cuts even with this notice. This may not work for everyone.
Click on Continue without Calibration and then be patient as it loads up the image onto your software mat.
Next, trace or draw shapes around the images on the design mat.
Once there are cut lines, either by tracing or drawing shapes, click on the Send tab and set the cut settings by choosing your material. You will notice above, there is one image on my mat that has no cut lines. When I did the trace on the monkey, while he is cute, he was not a very good image to trace around as he had edges that were not closed. He could still be used, however, would require a bit of extra manipulation of edit points in order to do so.
Now, load the mat. Make sure that your rollers are on the edges of the mat and you have lined up the left edge with the blue line on the left.
Now, cross your fingers and Click on the Send button. The Cameo will begin by reading the registration marks on the mat with the Optical eye, this is how it can line up the design and cut lines. And….. Success!!! I see a few things are a bit off such as the Toscana Vigneto circle is not quite centered and the coffee stamps are a tad off….. but, all the others cut exactly how they showed on my screen.

Now, what I would suggest is practice. Is every one going to turn out perfect? No, probably not. But, with practice you will get the hang of what works and what does not.

Check out the “Let’s Explore v4” series HERE or at the top of the blog.

Check out my Silhouette Instructions and Events tab for more information on Personalized Silhouette Instruction.

Enjoy !

THANK YOU for your support! How can you help? Click HERE & buy a coffee. Every little bit helps with the cost of running the site.

Looking for more in-depth, step-by-step classes, check out all of my online Silhouette classes on my Teachable site HERE.

Posted on February 27, 2018April 26, 2023 by silhouettesecretsplus — 22 Comments

Let’s Explore v4 – Magnet Trace

We are finishing up the Trace panel today by exploring the options of Magnet Trace. The Magnet trace is a feature that is unlocked when you have the Designer Edition upgrade to the software.

You will find this feature on the 3rd tab of the Tracing Panel, that is found on the right side of v4.

While there are not many options on this Panel, it still has so much potential. Let’s take a look.

Magnet Trace – Select your object to trace & then “Magnet Trace” is available. Click on it and you will get a red circle with a red dot in it. This is your trace tool.
Size – Change the size of your Magnet Trace tool by using the slider bar, the arrow up or down keys or highlighting the numbers and typing new numbers in.
Trace – After your Magnet trace is complete, click here to create your cut lines. You can see the red cut lines around my flower below. Note: this photo is on the Send tab, to get the bold red cut lines to show up.
Trace & Detach – Choose this option if you want your design to be detached from the background. This works great if you are wanting to do a Print and Cut project with your design.

This is a really neat feature and it took me a bit to think of what I would do with it. You can see that the edges of my design are not perfect and I would do some clean up on this image. So let’s do a little bit of point editing to clean it up.

First, check out these edit points, double click on the image to bring up the Point Editing window. All those little dots, those are edit points. Now, edit points can be intimidating but they can also be fun to play with. If we were to cut this as it is, it will sound funny as it cuts because the Silhouette machine has to hit every single one of those edit points when it cuts.

Let’s zoom in and check out the edges.

As you can see there are some edges that can be cleaned up.

You are able to move and delete edit points to your desired effect. I can say that this cleanup took only a few minutes. The more you play with the edit points, the better you will understand what they do. Just by moving the edit points in towards the flower, I eliminated the excess background that the trace grabbed.

You can select multiple edit points by holding down the Shift key and dragging your mouse over the ones you want to highlight and then you can move them all at once or delete them all at once.

What a difference a little edit point clean up makes.

Now here are all the edit points after I’ve cleaned it up. Since this is a flower with lots of curves, it will still have many edit points so you can keep the realistic look of the flower.

But, it has a lot less than the original trace.

Now, I’m sure as you read this you have asked yourself, what would you do with this? I’ll be honest, I did the same when I started looking into it because I have never played with this before. And now ideas are hitting me about all the possibilities.

If you do not have Photoshop or access to photo editing software, you can use the Silhouette software and this is one way to grab something from a photo.

Or you could use your own photos that you’ve taken and make Print and Cut stickers. These are photos of flowers I took at a friend’s poolside last summer. I think they would make gorgeous stickers that you could add to your planner or calendar to enjoy everyday.

To learn more on how to set up a Print and Cut check out the Page Setup Panel – Registration Marks post.

You can find all of the Let’s Explore v4 post HERE.

I hope you enjoyed exploring the Magnet Trace feature in the Silhouette Studio v4 software. This program is amazing and I learn new things every day!

Enjoy !

THANK YOU for your support! How can you help? Click HERE & buy a coffee. Every little bit helps with the cost of running the site.

Looking for more in-depth, step-by-step classes, check out all of my online Silhouette classes on my Teachable site HERE.

Posted on February 20, 2018April 26, 2023 by silhouettesecretsplus — 14 Comments

Let’s Explore v4 – Trace by Color

Last week, we started with the Trace Panel – Tab 1 which covers the Basic Tracing options. Now, we are moving on to Trace Panel – Tab 2: Trace by Color. This option is available if you have the Designer Edition upgrade (DE+ or BE).

While the Silhouette Studio Basic software is available for free, I do feel the Designer Edition upgrade is a great investment and will save you so much time in the long run. Silhouette America has provided a chart that lists out what features are unlocked with each upgrade and you can find it HERE.

Some of the biggest features for me that Designer Edition unlocks are: opening svg & pdf files, rulers, trace by color, rhinestone conversion and glyph access. Even if you do not know what all of those do at this time, you will learn more as you utilize the software.

Now, let’s explore the Trace by Color Panel.

First, open a design to be traced such as a png or jpeg file. For this example, I am using a png file from Scout and Rose Design Co called Too Cute to Pinch.

Trace by color – Click on Trace by color and then choose the color you want to trace. I clicked on the pink color and it highlighted all the pink of the design in yellow. This is what it will trace.
Solid Fill vs Outline fill – Solid Fill is shown in the photo above. Outline fill is shown below. This is a matter of personal preference on how you want it to show.
Single Area or All Areas – In my original photo in #1, All Areas was chosen and that highlights all of the pink areas of the design. Single Area will allow you to pick & choose a certain area, such as individual letters, that you want to trace.
Tolerance – This can be adjusted to increase or decrease the area that is picked up in a trace color. In my example, when I click on the light green, it picks up the dark green as well in my trace.Here you can see that the Trace picks up all shades of green with a 50% tolerance. And when the tolerance is lowered to 6% it deselects the dark green shamrock and only picks up the light green color in the trace. You would trace the shamrock and change the tolerance to get it to trace as well.
Trace – After you have the design highlighted that you want to trace, click on trace and it will change to red cut lines around the object selected. You can then move the cut lines off the design and I fill with color to see the design better.
Trace & Detach – This will trace & detach the image from the background. If you are using a jpeg, this is a great feature.

Now, I have my final pieces that I’ve filled with color and can move them around on my mat to cut them and then place them on to my project.

And now you can go play with the Trace by Color Panel. This can be a great option if you only have the graphic file for a design.

Check out all the other posts in the Let’s Explore v4 series HERE.

Enjoy !

THANK YOU for your support! How can you help? Click HERE & buy a coffee. Every little bit helps with the cost of running the site.

Looking for more in-depth, step-by-step classes, check out all of my online Silhouette classes on my Teachable site HERE.

Posted on February 13, 2018April 26, 2023 by silhouettesecretsplus — 19 Comments

Let’s Explore v4 – Tracing Panel

If you are just joining in, we have explored our way through several of the icons on the v4 Silhouette software – you can find all of those HERE – starting with the Page Setup Panel.

And our next step in the Let’s Explore v4 series is the Tracing Panel – Tab 1.

This is a very popular Panel and there is so much that you can do with it from tracing an image to tracing a photo. But, I will say right from the get-go, it is not a one size fits all Panel. Each image you trace is going to require you to adjust it differently than the last one. So while the concepts can be taught, the technique varies some each time a trace is done.

You will find the Trace Panel on the right side of the v4 software and it resembles a butterfly or a piece of bread.

Now, let’s take a look at the Trace Panel. Tutorial written in version 4.1.441 Updated 6/8/21 – trace panel has not changed since original post

Select Trace Area – Click on Select Trace Area and then draw a rectangle around the image you want to trace. A gray box shows up around the image and you should see some yellow show for your trace. For a good trace, you want as much yellow and as crisp, clear lines as possible.
Trace Preview – Choose between Solid Fill (as shown above) or Outline fill. I prefer to use the Solid Fill so I know exactly where it will trace.
Threshold – Determines how the trace filters are applied to your image.
Despeckle Threshold – Eliminates noise in your trace. *
High Pass Filter – Trace lines begin from the outside and work to the center of your image. *
Scale – Scale the trace up or down to get the look you want ** Each image will be different in how it traces and you will need to adjust the Threshold & filters to what works best for you particular image.
Trace – Click on this when you want to trace around all the yellow of the design. This is the most common Trace and the one that I use the most often. After clicking trace, move your design away and the cut lines will be there around the area traced.
Trace Outer – This traces the outside edge of a design on your screen. If you stamped an image and wanted to trace around the outside edge of it, this is the option you choose. Then your cut lines will only generate on the outside of the image and as you can see below, it did not trace the 2 circles on the inside of my image.
Trace and Detach – This will trace the image and then detach it from the background. It works great if you have a jpeg image. For instance, if I wanted to use this little guy for a Print and Cut Valentine.

For a basic trace, black traces the absolute best. The resolution of your image also plays a big factor in your trace. If the file you are tracing is very pixelated, then it will trace all of those pixels. This results in a very choppy cut line and a lot of edit points.

And there you have your Trace Panel – Tab 1. It is a fun option to play around with and I suggest practicing with it and seeing what works best for you. A lot of it is moving the filters and finding out what works best for the image you are working with.

Affiliate links may be present in the following blog post and as an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

For my information on the filters, I consulted the Silhouette Handbook that is available in the Silhouette store.

Make sure to check out all the other sections of Let’s Explore v4 and learn more about what you can do in the software.

The images used in this post can be found here: CoffeeMondays by Scout and Rose Designs Stinkin Cute by Scout and Rose Designs Love Frog by MissKateCuttables

We would love to see what you are working on! Feel free post on the Silhouette Secrets+ Facebook Group.

Save this for future reference by pinning the image below.

**This has been updated on 4-12-18 to reflect the changes released with the v4.1.441 software version.** *Updated 6/8/21 – the Trace panel has not changed since the original post was written.

Enjoy !

THANK YOU for your support! How can you help? Click HERE & buy a coffee. Every little bit helps with the cost of running the site.

Looking for more in-depth, step-by-step classes, check out all of my online Silhouette classes on my Teachable site HERE.

Posted on February 8, 2018April 26, 2023 by silhouettesecretsplus — 6 Comments

Layering vinyl with Silhouette

Well, this week has been such a crazy week. Snow days, 2 hour delays and just life has gotten in the mix – I am sure I’m not the only one out there who has these weeks.

I will have the Let’s Explore v4 – Tracing Panel post out next week, make sure to check out the previous posts in the Let’s Explore series.

I thought I would pop in here today and show you the projects we used last night on a webinar that I co-hosted.

The first one we created was a 2 layer decal.

So how did I create this?

Type out the text and weld. I used the Mystical Wood Smooth Script font found at SoFontsy – you get 4 fonts all in one file when you purchase this.
Create an Offset. The size of the offset is a matter of personal preference – I used the default of 0.125.
Create the registration marks. Draw a rectangle, make a copy & move it to the right. Align the marks and group together.
Click on the Send tab in top right corner, choose Cut by Fill Color, checking the boxes next to each color to select it to cut & uncheck the colors you do not want to cut.
Line up the registration marks to layer the decal. Always start with the top layer of a decal.

Here is my finished decal & I loved where Barbara placed her’s so I copied her and placed it on my Iris tote that holds my Oracal 651 sheets.

Next, we created a 3 color vinyl decal.

To create this design:

Start by drawing a large circle using the Circle tool from the left side of v4.
Download the circle heart frame HERE.
Open the heart circle frame and resize to fit inside the circle you drew.
Purchase the It’s Ok to Wine a Little by Dawn Nicole Designs – Design #227534 from the Silhouette Store. Open the design from your Silhouette library by double clicking the design.
Choose the Fill Color Panel and fill the design with black.
Resize the Wine a Little design to fit in the center of the white circle.
Right click on the Wine a Little design and choose Ungroup. While holding down the Shift key, click on the 3 hearts – this will deselect them. Then right click and choose Group. Now your text is all Grouped back together.
Hold the Shift key down and click on the 3 hearts. When they are all selected, right click and Group.
Choose the Fill Color Panel on the right and fill the hearts with the same red that the heart circle frame is.
Select all the layers and choose the center Align tool. Right click and Group those layers together.
Create the registration marks. Draw a rectangle, make a copy & move it to the right. Align the marks and group together.
Click on the Send tab in the top right corner, then Cut by Fill Color, checking the boxes next to each color to select it to cut & uncheck the colors you do not want to cut.
Line up the registration marks to layer the decal. Always start with the top layer of a decal.

And there you go, a 3 color vinyl decal that is aligned perfectly.

And all those little hearts will work perfect as nail decals, just in time for Valentine’s Day!

I also wanted to note that I used an Autoblade on my Cameo 3 to cut this out and as you can see, it has some pretty thin details. It cut beautifully!

I hope you enjoyed seeing how I create a layered vinyl decal.

I would love to see what projects you create! Feel free to post on my Facebook group at Silhouette Secrets with EllyMae.

Enjoy !

THANK YOU for your support! How can you help? Click HERE & buy a coffee. Every little bit helps with the cost of running the site.

Looking for more in-depth, step-by-step classes, check out all of my online Silhouette classes on my Teachable site HERE.

Posted on January 30, 2018April 26, 2023 by silhouettesecretsplus — 39 Comments

Let’s Explore v4 – Line Style Panel

Did you know you can change the line style of your designs in the Silhouette Studio? Today we are going to Explore the Line Style Panel which you can find on the right side of your v4 Silhouette Software program.

First, I want to mention that you can change the default that your software Outlines in under the Preferences Panel. Preferences can be found by clicking on the gear icon in the bottom right corner of the Design Tab or in the top left corner under the Edit tab.

Open the Preferences Panel and Click on the Default tab at the top. You can then change whether the Default Fill Style is ‘Solid Fill’ or ‘Outline only’ and whether the line color is Black or Red.

My program is set for outline only and red meaning that when I draw a shape it will show a red outline of my shape. This is a personal preference and you can change it at any time.

Now, let’s take a look at the Line Style Panel. Tutorial written in version 4.1.206

Style – Choose from a variety of dashed lines.Keep in mind that changing the line style also changes how it will cut. If you have a dashed line, that is exactly what it will cut. This works good if you are trying to make a score line for a card or template, but it doesn’t work well to cut a design out.
Thickness – Line thickness is defaulted to 0. That means if you were to print this design on your printer right now, it would not actually print anything because there is no line thickness. If you want to print the outline of a design, then you need to increase the line thickness.
Corner – When using the line thickness, this determines if the corners of the design are round, flat or sharp.
End caps – This option has flat, adds a square on the ends or rounds off the ends of your line.
Position – When using thick lines, you can choose to have the outline in front of the design or behind the design.The photo above has the Line Style Position in front of the design. And this photo shows the Line Style Position behind the design.
Line Options – Print Lines of Selected Shapes – When your design is selected and you check this box, your Line will print with a line weight. Keep in mind, it will print in whatever color you have set up on the design screen. I changed mine to black for this example. Here is my design: And here is my printed page: This is an awesome feature as you don’t have to change the line thickness to get a design to print unless that is the look you want.
Line Style Panel – Tab 2: Line Color – change the line color to any of those in the Color Palette, change the transparency of the line color or click on the Advanced Options and open up a lot more color options.

And that is the Line Style Panel! This can be very useful when you are printing designs, sending images to people, saving your designs as .jpegs (Business Edition feature) and so many more reasons. Take some time and play around with the Line Style options, you never know what you will learn!
For this tutorial I used a file from the Silhouette Design store called Mom’s Fidget Spinner by Sweet Afron #202772 – find it HERE.
Check out the entire “Let’s Explore v4” series HERE.

Check out my Silhouette Instructions and Events tab for more information on Personalized Silhouette Instruction.

Enjoy !

THANK YOU for your support! How can you help? Click HERE & buy a coffee. Every little bit helps with the cost of running the site.

Looking for more in-depth, step-by-step classes, check out all of my online Silhouette classes on my Teachable site HERE.

**This post may contain affiliate links. What that means is that I may receive compensation if you purchase through the links I have provided. The price you pay for the product

Posted on January 23, 2018April 26, 2023 by silhouettesecretsplus — 47 Comments

Let’s Explore v4 – Fill Color Panel

Today we are going to explore the Fill Color Panel located on the right side of Silhouette Studio v4.

I use this feature a lot when I design in the Silhouette software for many reasons. Now, understand that by filling a design with color, it does not cut in that color. The color you fill it with will be a visual reference only, unless you are making a Print and Cut project. If you are creating a Print and Cut project, then the colors will be a representation of what colors will print on your printer.

I fill my designs and fonts with color so I can visualize the design better. Typically, I just fill it with black, but if I’m creating a multi-color image, I can then choose the colors that will best match my design. Another reason to fill it with color is to be able to select the design or font easier. When an image is transparent, you have to click on the red outline of the image to select it, which can sometimes be difficult. However, if you fill it with a color, you can click anywhere on that color to select the object.

For today’s example, I am using a font from the new SoFontsy site called Wine Not and will be creating my own design.

You can see in my photo above that when I use the Text tool and type in my font, that it comes in transparent. Also, notice that the font name has a few extra letters in front of it, this is the Designer’s signature and something to keep in mind when you download fonts. You may need to pay close attention to the full font name to find it in your Text Style list.

Something else to point out here is the extra space around the font, as you can see my text selection box is 2.218″ in height but if you look at the grid spaces, the font is really less than 2″ in height. Check out this guest post I wrote at the Silhouette School blog on Forcing Accurate Text Sizes for more information on that.

So, how do you fill something with color? First, make sure your object is selected. You will see the selection box around it when it is selected. Then, you can click on the Fill Color Panel on the right side of your Silhouette software or it can also be found in the top left corner of the QAT (Quick Access Toolbar).

Now let’s Explore the Fill Color Panel.

Color Palette Selection – In this area click on one of the blocks of color and the design selected will change to that color.
Eyedropper color selection – Click on this and then click on another color on your design mat to pick up that color and use it.
Color Selection – This is the color that is currently chosen as the Fill color with the Eyedropper tool.
Transparency – This changes the transparency of the Fill color chosen. In the above photo, the design at the top has my website placed over the top as you would place a watermark and the Transparency is decreased to 71% versus the design on the bottom that is still at 100%.
Advanced Options – Opens up a panel where you can move the color selection around manually or under the color graph you can input the specific numbers for a certain color that you would like.
Fill Gradient – Here you have many options to change the color and the gradient fill and change the properties of how the design looks. You can also decrease the transparency of the gradient, adjust the color even more, and change the angle of the gradient.
Fill Pattern – Here there are many patterns for you choose from or you can add new patterns into the library and those will show up here. You also have the ability to change the Transparency of the pattern and under Advanced Options can choose to mirror, change the aspect ratio, rotate, change the angle, scale, and pan the pattern.

In the photos above, on the left, you can see I just clicked on the Fill Pattern option and chose a polka dot pattern, I did not change anything else. On the right, I changed the mirror, angle of the pattern, increased the scale, and panned the pattern so that it was a bit different.

As you can see, you have many options available when you are designing and using the Fill Color Panel. Keep in mind, that while you can change the color, gradient and pattern fills on the screen, the Cameo will still cut the color that you place on your mat. If you want the design to be how you have filled it on the screen, you need to look at creating a Print & Cut project. Check out more information here on last weeks exploration of Registration Marks for Print and Cut projects.

For our project today, I have used a font called Wine Not by Design Shark available on the new SoFontsy site. All the designs on the site come with a 100% Commercial Use license and are cuttable files.

And I’ve included the design used in the post as a freebie!

You can download this free Studio cut file HERE. Personal Use Only.

The graphics I used also came from the font file and I accessed them through the Glyphs Panel in my Silhouette Studio software. The Glyphs Panel is available in the Silhouette software for those who have the Designer Edition upgrade and higher than v4.1.197 of the Silhouette software. You can find great prices on the software upgrades at Swing Design if you need to purchase it. I highly recommend upgrading to at least the Designer Edition upgrade.

I hope you learned a bit about the Fill Color Panel and how useful it can be when you are creating in your Silhouette software.

Check out the entire “Let’s Explore v4” series HERE.

Check out my Silhouette Instructions and Events tab for more information on Personalized Silhouette Instruction.

Enjoy !

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Looking for more in-depth, step-by-step classes, check out all of my online Silhouette classes on my Teachable site HERE.

Enjoy !

THANK YOU for your support! How can you help? Click HERE & buy a coffee. Every little bit helps with the cost of running the site.

Looking for more in-depth, step-by-step classes, check out all of my online Silhouette classes on my Teachable site HERE.

**This post may contain affiliate links. What that means is that I may receive compensation if you purchase through the links I have provided. The price you pay for the product or service is not higher but I may get compensated for sharing.

**This post may contain affiliate links. What that means is that I may receive compensation if you purchase through the links I have provided. The price you pay for the product or service is not higher but I may get compensated for sharing.

**This post may contain affiliate links. What that means is that I may receive compensation if you purchase through the links I have provided. The price you pay for the product or service is not higher but I may get compensated for sharing.

**This post may contain affiliate links. What that means is that I may receive compensation if you purchase through the links I have provided. The price you pay for the product or service is not higher but I may get compensated for sharing.

**This post may contain affiliate links. What that means is that I may receive compensation if you purchase through the links I have provided. The price you pay for the product or service is not higher but I may get compensated for sharing.

**This post may contain affiliate links. What that means is that I may receive compensation if you purchase through the links I have provided. The price you pay for the product or service is not higher but I may get compensated for sharing.

**This post may contain affiliate links. What that means is that I may receive compensation if you purchase through the links I have provided. The price you pay for the product or service is not higher but I may get compensated for sharing.

**This post may contain affiliate links. What that means is that I may receive compensation if you purchase through the links I have provided. The price you pay for the product or service is not higher but I may get compensated for sharing.

**This post may contain affiliate links. What that means is that I may receive compensation if you purchase through the links I have provided. The price you pay for the product

**This post may contain affiliate links. What that means is that I may receive compensation if you purchase through the links I have provided. The price you pay for the product