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!

  

Book Themed Birthday Party!

Kelly loves to read books, so much so that we read hours a week. I knew her first birthday party should reflect her sweet little passion.

My color and pattern choice was "Charming Country." I used mainly red, white, blue and yellow. When going for this look adding yellow significantly changes the color scheme from "4th of July" to "Charming Country."

I used some antique books as decoration as well as Ikea milk jugs.

 The party favor was a little bookmark I made from library cards. I was able to buy a blank 50 piece stack from Amazon. I used a date stamp (from amazon) to put the date of her 1st birthday. I also added a quote by Charles Eliot, ribbon and old fashioned postage stamp, from Michael's. 

  

I loved this quote so so much that I framed it. After the party I hung it in Kelly's room, not only to give to her as a lasting keepsake from the party, but so she can grow to believe these words herself.

Books were an inspiration of the food served. 

I made deviled eggs based off Green Eggs and Ham. I decided to add green food coloring to just a few of the eggs because I know many people find food coloring unpleasant. Not pictured was a Ham, cheese and crackers plate to get the HAM from the book.

Picture garland with micro clothes pins and wallet size photos clipped to bakers string. The circle garland was made from old book pages (cant see the words well in this picture) that I punched holes in and chain sewed together. The final rosette garland was made from coordinated scrapbook paper.

There was a daring bunting banner that didn't get photographed.. Along with another circle punched paper garland :/ However we did snap some pictures of Kelly with her parents and grandparents. Notice: Sam, Kelly and I purposely dressed to match the party color scheme. My dad.... haha! I guess he did to!

Mason Jar Pin Cushion

I am in love with this!! It takes about five minutes to make and you can use the lid with or without the jar. I store sewing notions in the jar.

You Need:

Fabric

Stuffing

Mason Jar Lid

Felt

HotGlue Gun

Scissors

Pen

1. Cut your fabric, I cut it a 4x4 inch square.

2. Trace the inner lid. Cut. Set aside. You will come back to this piece:

3. Make a sandwich with the ring on the lid on the table, the fabric (wrong side up) the stuffing, and then the lid, wrong side up. Press the lid so it is closed tight. You may need to adjust the fabric and stuffing so it has a nice round shape:

4. Pull the edges of the fabric tight and hot glue down:

5. Hot glue the felt to the underside of the lid, over the fabric edges:

6. Flip over and stick with pins.

Use alone or with a jar! Enjoy and happy sewing!