Silhouette Project Fail or Success? Both?

Let me just start off with saying – I hate painting. I hate waiting for it to dry!
I hate that you have to do it in so many stages! I hate when it doesn’t turn out!

But I gave it another go! I really did try.
I’ve been doing a lot of painting and I still don’t like it.

But I’m going to show you. Not every project turns out perfect, however, there can be good things that do come out of it.

If you’ve followed me lately, then you know the Cameo Pro has been released and I’ve been testing it for several weeks prior to the release. With that brought on a whole new list of project possibilities! That part has been exciting. The design process, the cutting process, and some of the application process – but, not the painting part. Some of you will completely understand and others will give me crazy eyes. You may enjoy painting and that is great! That is what makes the Silhouette machines so great, is that it opens up new avenues for everyone. Some work for me and some work for you.

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So, I started with the same size wood sign from Hobby Lobby as my Maker sign found HERE.

And then I found a design I liked.
I am using the Thankful Grateful Blessed by Jillibean Soup – Design #326141.

I started out the same way with this project as the Maker sign and drew a rectangle using the Drawing tools on the left side, to the size of the area for the sign. Then I used the Transform Panel – Scale Tab on the right side to change the dimensions to my size needed.

As you can see in the photo above, I actually drew 2 rectangles and rotated one, just so I could see how the design would look on the sign in a different orientation.

I settled on the horizontal view.

This design opens up with a dimension of 9” x 10”.

My sign is much larger than that so I did some adjusting by grabbing the corner bounding box to scale it up proportionally. Then I grabbed the middle bounding box on the side and stretched it. Keep in mind that stretching a design by one dimension only may or may not work for a design. Each design you use will be different.

If you want to further adjust the word arrangement in this design, right click on it and choose Ungroup. This will ungroup all the pieces individually and then you can select each word and right click and group it back together, so they move as one object. Just like in the Makers sign post, each design may vary in what steps need to be done to alter a design. It all depends on how the designer created it.
Notice how when it is ungrouped, there are individual selection boxes around each piece.

Once the design is how you like, click on the Send tab. Choose the Material setting, adjust the cut settings, and do a test cut! The test cut is one of the most important steps, especially when cutting large decals.
Check out some other tips for cutting large decals in this blog post HERE.

When I’m working with a design and have several different options on the design area, once I am ready to cut, I will copy the full design and then paste it onto a new design mat to cut. And don’t forget to save your work! So, I will save a “working file” and then a “cutting file”.

Since I was painting this sign, I used Oramask 813 as my stencil and Oracal Transfer tape.

Here is a video of the Cameo 4 Pro cutting, weeding, and application process. A time table is below the video for each process, so you can jump to a particular part of interest.

Video Timeline
Oramask 813 cutting – Start
Weeding Oramask 813 – 2:26
Applying Transfer Tape – 4:45
Applying Stencil – 7:34
Painting sign – 10:34
Final photos – 13:06

Now, I did a lot of time lapses and recording on that video.
That 15-minute video process took hours.
And after all that work – Epic Fail or Success?
FAIL!!!!
Remember me saying I don’t like to paint?

Paint bled – sand it down and start over!!!

So on to the next part! To heck with painting. Let’s cut some vinyl and apply it!

The cutting process is the same and since I saved my design, I can just recut it with Oracal 651.

I love the finished project and it was much quicker than painting!
More time for other projects!

I hope this has sparked a little creative energy in you as you read and watched!

I have had a lot of fun creating larger sign decals, not so much the paint ones, but each user will find what they truly enjoy creating!

Can you do this same project on a Cameo 4, Cameo 3, 2, or Portrait? Yes, you can!
you would just need to break up the design into smaller sections and apply it to the sign in a few applications. But, it can be done!

I would love to see and hear about what you are creating on my Facebook group at 
Silhouette Secrets with EllyMae.

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Enjoy!

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