The Align Tool

This post will be a short discussion covering the align tool and some examples of when you can use this to your advantage.

First, the basics. This is the icon for the align tool:

My standard tiny icon.

And these are the various options:

Aligning options.

The offset tool and some of its uses.

This is going to be a rather short blog post about the wonderful tool that is the offset. This post is going to be half tutorial and half project post because, well... I'm feelin' it. 

I use the offset on almost every single project. If the project involves printing and cutting I will create an offset 99.9% of the time (example here). I also like to use the offset to make fast shapes for things like envelope stickers. So, enough of this boring chit chat, let's get the tutorial/project started already.

The offset tool has an itty bitty icon that looks like this:

I would make it larger,
but then it just gets fuzzy.

And these are the options that you can mess around with for your offset: Internal vs external, distance, and style. Don't get too excited now.

Too many options to count. Or...  well.. 3. There are three options.

Line colors and Line Styles

It's that time again! Time for me to make a kinda boring post about lines and stuff 1into something FUN and EXCITING!!!! Are the exclamation marks doing it for ya? Yeah, me either. In this post I will be covering the Line Colors and Line Styles tools. They look like this:

I think I really enjoy using tiny icons ...
not really sure why though.

Anyway, the first thing to cover is the Line Colors tool. This tool is almost exactly the same as the a Fill Color tool except that it colors the outlines of shapes as opposed to the middle of shapes. So, to make this tutorial a better length I am just going to link my Fill Color tutorial as they look and act the same. However, for sticking with me so far you get this super awesome picture of lines that had the color changed!!! Aren't you glad you stuck with me. This is a life line altering experience. :)

OOoooo colorful lines! So exciting.

So, enough with that line coloring stuff, lets discuss Line Style. Line style is a bit more interesting and useful as a tool. It can be used for creating fold lines, making fancy borders, adding design elements to shapes and images, cutting different portions of a project, and more. I will touch on some of these as we progress though this tutorial and others will be covered in various tutorials and projects. The tool has five different sections which will be covered below.

The tools we will be covering this tutorial.

1. Line Style: This option allows your line to be something other than a solid line.  You can make your line short dashed, long dashed, morse code dash, etc. I use this option mainly for creating fold lines in cards as seen in step 1 of my Acorn Card project.

Useful for making accurate fold lines, ghetto rhinestones, and more!

2. Line thickness: This option is just what it says. It allows you to vary the thickness of your line. I have used this tool before when I didn't have the rhinestone tool available to me. By using a short dash and wide line thickness you can create circles (like the orange line below). This tool is also important if you want a line to show up when you print out your design. In the image below, the only thing that changed between this picture and the previous one was the varying line thicknesses.

Thin lines, thick lines, we got 'em all.

3. Corner Style: This tool is used to change the corners of your shapes. It only displays when you change the thickness of your line. I like to use this tool when creating frames for scrapbooking. The three choices are corner, beveled, and rounded as shown below.

The three corner styles available to you.

4. End Cap Style: This tool changes the way the end of a line is displayed. The line thickness must be changed for this tool and you can pick flat, square, or rounded end caps. In the image below, the line with the flat label was the starting length for all three lines. The difference between flat and square is subtle, but the square end cap actually lengthens the overall length of your line. You can see that square and rounded end caps both add extra length.

I honestly have never used this tool... perhaps one day.

5. Position: This tool lets you move the line in front of or behind your shape. This is best explained in pictures, like the ones below, I have no idea the use for this tool... I'm working on finding out the uses for it, and when I do, you all will be the second person to know.

Both of these shapes were the same, the only difference is the position option. I'm not sure how this is different from changing the line thickness.

Finally, there is a check box that looks like this: [] print lines of selected shape. This just alloys you to select shapes that do not have the line thickness changed and it will print that border. I have never really utilized this option, but I can see it being used for adding a bit of color to a print and cut shape. The example below shows what I am trying to explain. The bottom row of squares all have the option checked to print the border line.

It's pretty hard to see, but the bottom row has outlines that will print to paper. In the case above I took a screenshot of a PDF.

Well, that covers everything about line color and line style. I hope you learned something. If you know of any uses for positioning the line in front vs behind the shape please let me know in the comments. Thanks for reading.

The official "I LOVE patterns" post!

I LOVE PATTERNS! Well, not all the patterns, but patterns that I can import. If you haven't seen some of my examples of patterns just check out any one of my project posts such as Planner Stickers or Halloween Card. I use the patterns almost exclusively instead of using the paint bucket. My reasoning might be lame... but I think it looks prettier. I also think it helps visualize what a final project might look like because the patterns I use look like actual paper.

With digital scrapbooking becoming increasingly popular, finding patterns to use has never been easier. Just google digital scrapbooking backgrounds and check out the images to see the wide variety of things people have to offer. You can find loads of them on etsy, but there are many blogs out there offering free downloads too. Just look around!

Here are just a couple random patterns I found.

Fill Color Tool

I just wanted to make a quick post about the Fill Color tool. This is a fairly easy to use tool and knowing how to use it can really make your projects pop! The tool is in the upper right tool box of the Silhouette Studio program and it looks like this:

It really is this small.

The first portion of the tool are the basic options:

I love color!!!

Text 101

This will be a 101 course for using the text tool for Silhouette Studio. I have numerous other courses planned for continuing education in the text field of study but that is for future Christina to write.

There are two main things you can do with text. The first is your normal printing it on paper. This would be for something like a print and cut project where you don't want to hand place cut out letters. For example, I use the sticker below when I send out planner stickers from my Etsy store.

Shapes Two!

This tutorial post might be a bit dry, but I wanted to be sure I covered all aspects of the Silhouette Studio Designer Edition software, not just the fun parts. So, thanks for sticking with me.

This tutorial will be focusing on polygons, curved shapes, freehand shapes, and the arc. Below is a picture of the tools that we will be covering in this post.  All of these tools are located on the left hand toolbar.

Shapes!

This post is going to be really basic, but I really want to make this blog a comprehensive tool for everyone with a Silhouette cutting machine, not just the more advanced users.

We are going to start with the line, then move to the oval, rectangle, circle, and square. Then just for good measure a rounded rectangle and square.  After these basic shapes we will do triangles, and half circles.