Several months back I bought a PixScan mat and googled and read and googled and read and googled and read how to do cut out stamped images with my Silhouette. I thought..."what great technology"....I need that knowledge. Well, I got the knowledge and then as I said previously....*whoosh*...it was gone. It might be laying around somewhere but it certainly couldn't be found in my brain!
So I had some time the other day to try to find the knowledge again (which I did) and I thought..."now how am I going to remember it?" It certainly won't stay in my brain as there is no room to hold onto newfound knowledge. My brain is already overflowing with more important things like "did I turn the coffee pot off", "is today trash day?", "where is my (fill in the blank)?", etc.
I thought to myself that if I wrote myself a tutorial on my very own blog I can access what worked for me in the future (and, of course 'future' means anytime after this particular second!
I know you all know what I'm talking about!
(Now, if you do not have a Silhouette or have absolutely NO interest in this technology you can just skip on down to the end and see a couple of cards I made. And thanks for looking!)
Here is my tutorial:
1. Your Silhouette software must be calibrated to the source that captured your original image. In my case, it is my iPhone and I have already done that. But if it gets out of calibration then look HERE for how to calibrate. Once your phone is calibrated you shouldn't have to do it again. Shouldn't have to....but then again, who knows? Anyway, mine was still calibrated just fine after the previous attempt.
2. Stamp your images on your paper in whatever ink you desire to use, keeping in mind what you will use to color them (watercolor pencils or brushes, Copics, etc). Of course, you can go ahead and color prior to cutting if you wish but I hate the idea of spending a lot of time coloring to have my cuts not be quite right.
4. Next you go to your handy dandy computer and pull up your Silhouette software (I use Designer Edition but any will do).
5. Go to File in the top left....click on it and then find Open PixScan Image and click on it.
9. Then on the main part of the working surface of the software your image will show up....like this:
11. I wanted to trace everything of course so highlighted the whole kit and caboodle!
12. Select the part of the image you want to trace. In my case I wanted the Trace Outer Edge option.
13. Now you will have cut lines right on the edges of your images. I wanted to cut with a white edge so I needed to add in another step. I think cutting with an offset is probably a little more forgiving but I will make a note to myself to try to cut on the image at some point!
14. So now I go back to the top of the screen and click on the Offset Window.
16. You will then have red cut lines around your image. You will need to use the slider bar or arrows above to increase or decrease the amount of the offset. I found that for me 0.040 worked perfectly for me.
17. Here is my totally cleaned up image ready for cut (the original cut lines have been moved off the screen....you just can't see them here.)
19. This is what I ended up with:
So what does one do after cutting out 427 pieces? Why make 50 2 cards, of course!
Here is the first one colored with a variety of water color pencils.
This one was colored with Zig Clean Color Real Brushes.
You can see how nicely the PixScan technology worked!
