Silhouette Tutorial

Ever since I got my Silhouette last Christmas, I haven't been able to stop tinkering with it :) And anytime I get a chance to read tutorials, I'll try to absorb everything I can. Here is a tutorial for you so you can cut out shapes for your stamps. Ever stamp on paper and then spend forever trying to cut it out of the paper? Well, with this tutorial, you can skip that step. Here is how you can create your own shapes. Sorry if the pictures are small, you can click on each to see larger:
1. Either stamp your images in a dark (black) ink on white paper and scan it. Or if they are clear stamps, you can scan the transparency. Open your Silhouette program and go to File>Open>(open your scan). You should see something like this below:
2. Select the trace button (blue and yellow near the upper right side). Select the first box in the palette "Select trace area". Draw a box around the shapes you want to create. Sometimes you can select a group and sometimes you may have to do one at a time. Just play around to see what works for you. After you trace the box, it will highlight in yellow like this below:

3. With the box still highlighted, select the "trace outer edge" button. The yellow will turn red. See below:

4. Now drag your scanned image off the tray. I would also suggest you select the scan and delete it. If you have any stray red lines, you can highlight and delete or use the eraser tool on the left side of the board.

5. What you will have left is the outline of the actual stamp. But we want to make the cut just slightly larger so we have a small edge. right?

6. So to do that we select the cuts:

7. Now select the "offset" button (to the left of the trace button). Follow the steps in the arrows below from top to bottom. when you get to the third arrow, you are going to adjust the size of the "white edge". I like to use .1 but use whatever you choose. Select "apply" when done. 8. Now we have to delete the inner cuts. Just select each and delete. 9. Save your cuts to your library and you are ready to go. I title mine by the manufactuer and then the name of the stamp. I have done this to a large number of my stamps already and I'm just loving it. If you look at the previous post, there is a card where I used this method to create shapes for my letter stamps.

Remember, the more you tinker with it, the better you get. Hope this tutorial helps :)