Tag: home decor

Using the Silhouette Software to Help Design Home Décor

I always have my eye out for things that I can use in creating with my Silhouette machine. Target had these little wooden houses available in their Dollar section.

After debating with my inner self, I finally picked up a set.
I always have this inner dialog on – can I make that? Will I make that?
Yes, I can cut the wood, but when will I get it done?
Right now, in the process of moving, our wood shop is not set up, so I did it.
I bought wood shapes.

If you have access to a saw, you could create your own shapes. This tutorial is not limited to these little house shapes, but think about the supplies you have on hand and you can use this same technique for any blanks you use.

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Next, gather the rest of the supplies.
– Paint
– Foam brush
– Paint palette or small dish
– Sponge
– Painters Tape
– Adhesive Vinyl
– Transfer Tape
– Squeegee
– Weeding tool

Tape off any sections needed with the painters tape. In this case, each house has a metal chimney.

Paint the houses any color you want.
I chose to paint a solid color of gray, light blue, or dark gray as the first coat and then used the white chalk paint with the sponge on top of that to give it a distressed look.

Let the wood blanks dry completely.

Next, measure the space of each blank and write that down.

This is just a rough draft and does not have to be perfect or to scale.

Using the information from your measurements and drawing, draw shapes in the Silhouette software to design use as “design templates”.

For these houses I started by using a rectangle under the Drawing Tool on the left side and then used the Edit Points to pull up a point in the roof.

Check out this video tutorial showing the full process of drawing the shapes in Silhouette Studio.

Once you have the template shapes, then you can decide on the designs to fill those shapes. Some designs will work better in the shapes than others.

I used the following designs on my double sided houses:
– Home Sweet Home by Angele Camp – Design #233239
– Hello Fall by Lilium Pixel SVG – Design #300125
– Home Sweet Home by Diva Watts Designs – Design #346001
– Home Sweet Home by Diva Watts Designs – Design #347923
– Home Sweet Home by Design Hooked – Design #354446
– Fall Bouquet by Tanya Batrak – Design #159397

Once all the designs are sized how you want them to cut, move the designs around on the virtual mat to cut out each color vinyl you want them in.

Then send to the Silhouette machine to cut all the adhesive vinyl pieces. I cut everything from Oracal 651 adhesive vinyl.
I have been having an issue with the vinyl cutting too deep into the backing using the preset settings, so I am using the settings of:
Blade depth – 2
Force – 5
Speed – 5
With a Silhouette Autoblade and it is cutting, weeding, and transferring beautifully.

Cut settings depend on many variables and test cuts will be the way to find out what is going to work best with your material and blade. For more tips on cut settings check out this post – Perfect Cut Setting in Silhouette.

Carefully weed the excess vinyl from around the designs.

This takes practice and the cut settings can make a big difference in the ease of weeding.
Do not rip it off like a bandaid.

After all the weeding is done, apply vinyl to blanks

Here is a quick real time video of the application process on one of the wood blanks.

In the above video, I reference a recent tutorial on the Smart Snapping lines. This can be a very helpful tool as shown in the video.
Check out the Let’s Explore v4 – Smart Snapping post HERE

And now you have some seasonal or year round décor.

Double sided means that they can pull double duty in your seasonal decorations.

And if I were to ever want to change the designs out, I would just carefully remove the vinyl. Sand it if needed and repaint, then cut and place new vinyl designs on them.

Keep in mind that you can use these tips & techniques for any blanks you might have!

I’d love see what you create & how you use the tools in Silhouette Studio
Feel free to post on the
Silhouette Secrets+ Facebook Group.

Save this for future reference by pinning the image below.

Enjoy!

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