Silhouette Cameo Project: Using the Trace feature

Many of you are coming from my Halloween Witch Silhouette project. I wanted to show how easy it is to use the Trace feature. Mastering this will allow you to make many of your own shapes, which can save you money! However, most images from the Silhouette Online Store are less than a dollar and they do indeed have witch silhouettes!

This tutorial is tailored to my Witch Silhouette project, however everything you need to know about tracing the outline of any saved picture is here.

1. Set page size to Letter

 2. Drag in your image. When you are tracing and the warning icon shows up you can ignore it most of the time. It is just informing you of low resolution, which might be a problem if we were printing.

 3. Go to the Trace tab and select "select trace area.

 4. Drag trace area over your image. When you let go of your mouse a yellow outline will appear.

5. Unclick High Pass Filter. Move your Threshold and Scale dials until the entire image is yellow and has a nice clean outline. 

6. Click Trace!

7. Click on your image and move it to the side or delete it.

8. Go to the Replicate tab and click Mirror Left. Only do this if you want your witch facing left.

9. Using the Ellipse tool make a 9"x6" oval.

10. On the Align tab you can center to page your oval. Size your witch to desired size. You can also align her center with the oval to see if she fits correctly. 

11. Cut your images on separate pages. BE SURE TO CUT THE IMAGES INDIVIDUALLY. You don't necessarily want a witch shape whole in your oval.  

11. If it is helpful you can use the fill page to color your shapes to get a better feel for what your project will look like!

Good luck!