A lot of people don’t realize how much you can do in Silhouette Studio®. It’s a powerful program that can do more than just send your cut files to you Silhouette machine. For example, did you know that you can design your own Print & Cut projects? Today I’ll show you how I designed this wedding announcement, which was a piece of cake with designs from the Silhouette Design Store and the capabilities of Silhouette Studio®.

Choose your basic layout

I’m a big fan of AngieMakes and used her designs for this announcement. I chose one corner of the “hand painted floral cross (Design ID #190132),” used the knife tool to separate it, and then deleted the rest of the design. I found a floral design that matched well (Design ID #188653) to put at the top. I chose the font “Ladyfinger” (Design ID #190735) and arranged the names at the top.

Add information

After typing out all the necessary information, I chose a nice looking serifed font that complimented the rest of the design. I chose to increase the character spacing to 155% to give it a less cramped look. Next, I made sure that my text boxes were centered on the page by selecting them and going to Object > Align > Center.

Add patterned background

I wanted to add a patterned background to give some more visual interest, but first I had to remove the white background from the floral elements. I’ve found that the easiest way to do this is to use the trace tool. Select the trace area and play around with the threshold toggle until the design is completely covered in yellow. Then, choose “trace and detach,” separate the background from the flower, and delete the white part. I used this method for both floral elements, and it worked great!

I found a pattern I thought would work well (Design ID #130922) and sent it to the back by selecting it, right clicking, and choosing “send to back.” I liked how it looked, but the color of the pattern didn’t quite match how I wanted it to look. I went to Panels > Image Effects and brought up the “grey shade” slider until the color was where I wanted it. There are more tabs within this panel that you can mess with to change the colors of an image. They’re pretty fun to play around with!

Print & Cut

Prepare to Print & Cut by setting your paper size to letter (8.5 in x 11 in) and turning on registration marks. I was able to fit two invites to a page. Then, simply print however many you need, load them on to your cutting mat, and let your Silhouette machine do its thing!

If you’re a visual learner like I am, here is a time-lapse video of me designing the invite. It will give you a quick walkthrough of the entire process.

 

Have you ever designed from scratch in Silhouette Studio®?