My 1st Silhouette Project

My new Silhouette was delivered last night! {It was a lucky St. Patty's day for me!} I was so excited to see that beautiful box in my house. 

Owen was excited to play with the box------>

I installed the software on my Mac (which took about 2 minutes) then started exploring my options.  The Silhouette comes with about 100 designs that are great, plus there is an online store with thousands of options for purchase.  And, they're all about $0.99.  I love having so many pictures to choose from---I'll be perusing their website and blog A LOT!

As I looked at all the designs, I was inspired to make a label for our cat food bin. But, I wasn't any good at choosing between all the options. So, I decided to try making a template of my own. How hard can it be?  Turns out, it's not hard at all! The program is easy to work. It's like using the Paint program with a little bit of Microsoft Word mixed in.

I chose a font that I liked and then started drawing lines to make the whiskers, ears, mouth, and nose. Here's a picture of the screen------>

Once I'd finished sketching the label, I decided to make my first cut..... I was so nervous and excited!

Inserting the blade was really simple. I used the blue blade tip---the one for cutting vinyl. 

The machine comes with a sticky paper that holds the vinyl in place while being cut.  I cut a portion of vinyl from the roll and then stuck it to the sheet.

Now, I loaded it into the machine and pressed "cut." I watched in amazement as it cut the picture out of the vinyl sheet.  It works like a printer, but uses a blade instead of ink to create the image.

It was perfect! The next step is to peel off the excess vinyl. (I made a small mistake here--- you should just quickly rip off the excess vinyl and leave the white backing in place. I thought it was supposed to come off too and wasted a lot of time trying rip it off)

This is what it looked like with all the excess pulled away------>

This is the transfer paper that keeps the pieces in place while moving it. Just cut a piece, peel the backing off, and stick it to the vinyl ----->

The transfer paper worked like a charm!

Now, the moment of truth---adhering the vinyl label. :O) This is the cat food container. (Boring)

I didn't buy the Silhouette toolkit, so I used one of my kitchen spoons.  It worked perfectly to press the image onto the plastic bin.

I peeled back the transfer paper------>

TA DA!!!!!!!!!!!!

I'M IN LOVE!!!!!!! (So are the cats)