Zac’s event was once again Tie Dying which somehow leads to many, many more photos than Isaac or Taylor’s events.  Here’s a bit of us working with Zac to make our shirts and the unveiling process!

Some concerts from Jamaica – Isaac, Taylor and Zac solo shows, 3 Hanson shows and a Matt Wertz and Paul McDonald set as well…

March is The Sing Off and Demi Lovato.  A basic Cameo title for The Sing Off, but a little bit different for the Demi page – I was able to trace and cut out her signature into a die cut.  That combined with confetti (my favorite thing to scrap!) and I like this layout a lot!

February we have a canceled show, a Kris Allen show and the Harlem Globetrotters.  The rule is to do at least 1 cut out from the Cameo per event… I couldn’t come up with anything for (aka forgot all about) the Globetrotters… the canceled show doesn’t count, and I am lucky I found some extra snowflake stickers… and Kris Allen has a title cut out.  (I make up the rules here so I weasel out of them whenever I can!)

SVGs are Scalable Vector Graphics which can be used with the Silhouette Studio Designer Edition. (This is an upgrade you need to purchase and doesn’t come with the Silhouette Studio download. I’ve heard of people getting their version from anywhere from $4.99 to about $50 – shop around you can probably find it in the $30 range)

You can make your own SVGs using the “Trace” tool in the Silhouette Studio software or you can use Inkscape (I made a tutorial a few years back on how to make custom shapes using Inkscape)  Alternately there are a lot of places on the internet where you can buy SVGs or if you find the right place, maybe even find some for free.

This post I am only showing files that I have purchased from PPBN Designs which is personally my favorite spot to get SVGs from – but I do use several other sites as well and am dabbling in creating more complicated designs myself. (Look for some posts of me explaining how I did them in the new year – provided it works out!)

Since my next big trip to scrap is Disney – that has been the items I have focused on, but with my membership to PPBN I am developing quite the collection of cute designs – just have  to find the right time to use them!

To cut them, I sort out all the pieces by color and then find a matching (or close to it) color from my paper stash.  One day I cut out 30 different Disney related images and then sorted out all the tiny pieces on the big reading chair in my room and then over the next few days pieced them all together (those are the ones featured in the photo album below).  Sometimes I will cut out just 1 character though I find it is best to do it in multiples (or cut out multiples of the same character for cards, etc.) so that you don’t have as much paper waste.

I have been using the Xyron Sticker Maker to put them together, but recently got a Zig pen to help out with any smaller pieces. Look for a post on that and the pros and cons soon 🙂

There will be a LOT more January to come, but I was waiting on supplies to come in the mail so I did the 2 pages in this travel kit for my tickets and will have to get back to the rest at a later date! January will be full of Jamaica fun, sun and concerts! Keep an eye out for future posts.

One of the features of the Silhouette Cameo is that you can do “Print and Cut” which is exactly what it sounds like.  You import photos (in my case, I imported elements from digital scrapbook kits) and can then print them out using your printer and then cut out around the outline using the Cameo.

What you need to do when you open your new page in the studio software is to go to the registration marks icon (It is a page with marks in each corner, 4th from the right on my setup) and turn the registration marks ON. (If you are using the Cameo or Portrait be sure to select Type 1 – I didn’t my first time and had cuts that were not where they should be)

You can kind of see that the cut marks are nowhere near where they should be because I had the wrong registration marks cut! If using the Cameo, one of the corners should be a black box.

You can’t put anything over the dark marks/square in the corners. I’m not sure if you can put anything in the crisscrossed lines. I’ve seen in tutorials people having items placed there but I’ve yet to try it for myself to know for sure.

Send it to your printer and then load it into your Cameo. (Or give it a bit for the ink to dry if you’re paranoid.)

When you send it to the Silhouette it will look for the registration marks.  If it fails on the first try – add more light.  Open your blinds, turn on an overhead light or shine a flashlight right on to the carriage.  If the machine can’t find the registration marks, it won’t be able to match up and know what to cut.  (Also you may need to use the “Trace” feature in order to get the outline of your images to cut out instead of just a square around them.)

Overall this is a nice feature to have, but I’d much rather paper piece than just print and cut out around things. (It seems silly to buy a machine to use this feature when you can do pretty much the same with a printer and an exacto knife!)

This was the last layout I did for the Vegas pages. Amazing how great pics look with just a mat. I hardly ever mat my pics but these came out so cool I may just have to do it more often.  Bellagio cut out from letters made by PPBN designs using the Silhouette Cameo. (Look for many more cut outs coming in 2014!)

Some more Vegas pages… A little bit of everything on these!

Some more Vegas! Here are the 4 Recycled Percussion show pages and 1 Jeff Civillico for good measure. The background on the meet and greet page is made up of confetti that I collected at a couple of the RP shows. Confetti will make an appearance on a couple more pages too because I had so many!