Decal All the Things!!!

Psst… There’s a giveaway for my most pinned decal!

It’s been a whirlwind of celebrations at our house (we call the period of mid-December through mid-January birthday/Christmas/birthday since its literally non-stop) and I had to wave the white flag on mommy/blog time for a bit to catch my breath.  I have a ton of projects to finish and photograph that will be popping up in the coming days and weeks, but in the meantime, I wanted to let you know about one of my distractions.

This is me right now…

And if you were lucky enough to come into a Silhouette machine over the holidays, you’re probably right there with me.  I recently got the Silhouette Cameo and it… is… awesome.  I don’t know how it took me so long to get one.  I first heard about these last spring and wrote them off as another Cricut machine.  I can’t stand devices that stifle your creativity be only being able to use their designs.  The Silhouette Cameo & Portrait are a crafter’s dream come true, and no one is paying me to say this.  I’m addicted already (and completely distracted from the birthday party at our house in just a few days).

Here’s a link to the Cameo on Amazon, additional links are below:

• Silhouette Portrait
• Silhouette Cameo
• Silhouette Vinyl Starter’s Kit

I got the vinyl starter’s kit and quickly got to work putting decals everywhere I could think of.  I sat down to make a few “SOLD” markers for a sign at a subdivision I have listed and suddenly I was making things for all over the house.  It is super easy and super addicting.

I’ll be posting more projects on this once I recover from “Birthday/Christmas/Birthday”, but I wanted to go ahead and share some quicky projects and the basics you need to know since part of my reservation was just not knowing what bundles & accessories I needed.

There are always different bundles on both the Silhouette Cameo & Portrait models on Amazon.  The one I got included the vinyl starter kit and I also purchased this pack of assorted colors of vinyl.

To make decals, you need:

1. The Cameo or Portrait (the Cameo is larger and can handle larger mediums).
2. Vinyl, go ahead and stock up because you’ll be cranking out decals left and right.
3. Vinyl transfer paper (included in the Silhouette Vinyl Starter Kit).
4. Hook tool (also included in Silhouette Vinyl Starter Kit).
5. Scraper (also included in Silhouette Vinyl Starter Kit).

Both the Cameo & Portrait models come with a mat.  You don’t need the mat for cutting vinyl, but it is handy for getting the most out of scraps of vinyl.  There is an official tutorial, although I was impatient and quickly read the how-to from Silhouette’s website and got to work.  It was fairly self-explanatory, although I have watched sign-shops make my signs so I wasn’t completely new at this.  You really can use your own fonts & designs + the Silhouette library of designs is vast and actually very useful.  Here is the video if you’re super excited to get started (like me) and don’t want to spend time hunting for it:

And here’s what I cranked out at my first sitting:

Psst… There’s a giveaway for my most pinned decal, you can win this!

This was a design from the Silhouette library.  My bundle included download cards and this is one of the designs I downloaded.

Chloe LOVES her doctor kit.  It’s a combination of a doctors kit that Santa brought her and a vet set that her grandmother gave her for Christmas.  She loves that it now says “Doctor Chloe”.  She picked out the blue and I did the stethoscope in pink to match items in her kit.  The stethoscope design was a download from Silhouette and the font is one from my own collection of free fonts on my computer.

I just loved this design, but didn’t know what to put it.  It fit perfectly on the left-over vinyl from Chloe’s doctor kit so I put this on the outside of the garage door for a happy little message on the way in.

I can’t wait to crank out more crafts with this machine.  It can do so many things, the possibilities are really endless and it should bring me years and years of enjoyment.

Way to go, Silhouette.  You really know the way to a gal’s heart.