It’s time for a new free Michaels/Silhouette class! We’re going beginner-friendly with applying vinyl to make a custom graduation tumbler for the grad in your life! The class was live (online) for registered attendees on Thursday, May 15, 2025 at 11:00 am MT (12pm CT).

Missed the class or want to watch it again? Here you go! (Check below the video for the class description, supply list, and written instructions.)

Class Recorded Video:

Class Description:

Celebrate your grad with a personalized tumbler using Silhouette Studio and the fonts on your computer! Join Kelly as she shares expert tips and tricks for customizing your design to make your graduate feel special. Choose 1-2 colors of permanent adhesive vinyl in their school colors to bring your creation to life. In class, Kelly will demonstrate using the Silhouette Cameo 5, but these techniques and the project can be done with any Silhouette machine. Plus, you’ll gain skills that can be used for future custom vinyl projects!

Class Supplies:

• Tumbler, 40 oz. (can be any size tumbler with straight sides)
• Silhouette Cameo 5 (or any Silhouette cutter)
• 1-2 colors permanent adhesive vinyl (in school colors)
• Transfer tape
• Weeding tool
• Vinyl scraper tool
• Ruler
• Scissors or paper trimmer
• Fonts on your computer (in the class I’ll use Design ID #253507 “Stars and Stripes” and #1251209 “Mustard”)
• Silhouette Studio Software installed on your computer
• Use my affiliate code TIME2 for 5% off any purchase on SilhouetteAmerica.com or SilhouetteDesignStore.com

Instructions:

Software:

1. Draw box as guide for usable space on tumbler (measure) [4”x5”]
2. Text tool – type 2025
3. Move into box and resize larger (fill only 4” of box to leave room for name)
4. Text-edit mode: drag bar left to split 20/25 onto two lines
5. Fill font with colors (black fill, no outline)
6. Font Panel:

• • Reduce line spacing
  • Choose font (I used Stars & Stripes)
  • Continue to adjust spacing, size, etc. to fill 4” of drawn box (leave room for name)
  • 180 pt, Line spacing 55 %
  • Add new text – type “class of”

7. Fill with gold color, no outline
8. Experiment with bold script fonts (I used Mustard)
9. Resize larger, but don’t overpower numbers (105 pt)
10. New text: (any name)
11. Use same font and color as “class of” but keep small enough to fit in box
12. Adjust all to fit inside box
13. Make copy to the side of all text pieces
14. Black numbers – ungroup/regroup to see actual size
15. Gold – weld + group
16. Align all Center
17. Select “class of” and create offset (0.030 in.)
18. While Offset is selected, open MODIFY Panel
19. Shift to add black numbers to selection – choose Subtract
20. Group black numbers
21. Place only pieces you want to cut on virtual mat (adjust Page Setup Panel for no mat)

SEND Panel:

1. Material = Vinyl, Glossy
2. Automatic Cross Cut (check “enabled” if want to use – personal preference)
3. Test Cut
4. My settings: (Glossy = Blade 2/Force 10/Speed 5; Glitter = 4/14/5 x2 passes; Textured gold = 2/12/10)

Assembly:

1. Weed
2. 2 types of transfer tape, if using Silhouette Glitter vinyl
3. Apply black first
4. Use offset/cutout as guide to place gold next
5. Add name or other details like high school name, etc.

Find more of my Michaels classes here.

This post contains affiliate links. Your price is the same, but I may receive a small commission when you use my links. Thanks for your support!

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It’s time for another Silhouette Craft Along video! Make a grad explosion box for the graduate in your life! This is a fun 3D paper craft to give away — full of treats or cash or gift cards or whatever!

When you lift the lid, the sides “explode” to expose four fill-able boxes and a message to the graduate.

Want to make one? It’s easy! Here’s the instructional video. (You’ll find links to the design and supplies below the video.)

Craft Along: Grad Explosion Box

Supplies/Tools:

• Design ID #436886 (Part of the school & graduation sale at the Silhouette Design Store from May 9-16, 2023.)
• Cardstock:
  • Black – 12×12″ (x1)
  • White – Letter size (x1)
  • School color, main – Letter size (x3)
  • School color, secondary – 12×12″ (x1)
• Scraper tool
• Tape runner adhesive
• Liquid craft glue
• Tassel (pre-made, or see my video at the end of the post to make your own)
• Large (10mm) black brad
• Silhouette Cameo
• 12” cutting mat + Autoblade

Sale Time!

By the way, there are some great Silhouette sales going on for a few more days.

• Mother’s Day Sale on SilhouetteAmerica.com: Discounts on select machines, and enjoy 50% off supplies and software! Ends May 15th.
• School & Graduation Sale in the Silhouette Design Store: 25% off all designs in the School & Education and Graduation categories. Ends May 16th.
• Mother’s Day Sale in the Silhouette Design Store: up to 50% off all design in the Mother’s Day, Mom, and Grandma categories. Ends May 14th.

Bonus Video – How to Make a Tassel

I’ve also created a short video on my YouTube channel that shows exactly how to make this cute tassel!

I hope you enjoy this grad explosion box project! You can customize the colors for any school. Check out my other Craft Along classes at the end of this post.

This post contains affiliate links. Your price is the same, but I may receive a small commission when you use my links. Thanks for your support!

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Need some valentine inspiration for the kiddos?  Check out my tutorial on the Silhouette Blog for a step-by-step tutorial for creating these easy Print & Cut valentine stickers from scratch!

And if you need a matching valentine collection box, try this cute fish tank! Here’s my Craft Along video:

The post Print & Cut Fish Valentines to Share appeared first on Finding Time To Create.

I’ve got a fun back-to-school project to share with you! Well, really you can use this Silhouette tutorial to customize any T-shirt with a dingbat font. Check it out on the Silhouette 101 Blog here.

The post Use a Dingbat Font to Customize T-shirts appeared first on Finding Time To Create.

I’ve discovered that yard signs are quite easy and inexpensive to make with vinyl! I’ve got a tutorial for using the Cameo Pro to make this graduation yard sign over on the Silhouette 101 blog. Read the step-by-step Cameo Pro tutorial HERE.

You can find blank plastic corrugated signs for only about $5 at Michaels, and Home Depot sells the H brackets that are used to stand the sign up in your yard. While the whole sign is completely reusable if you use removable matte vinyl (here’s the 24″ wide roll I love!), you could also save the sign just for graduations and replace only the year. Mix it up by using your grad’s school colors just for the corner stars, or add their name in a fun font! So many possibilities!

I hope you enjoy this project!

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This adorable design is #49875 by Carina Gardner. My instructions use the Silhouette Rotary Blade where no interfacing is used, but the original design was created before the rotary blade existed, so you can absolutely do this project with a fabric blade and sewable fabric interfacing. I’ve linked Carina Gardner’s instructions in the how-to post linked above.

I hope you enjoy this project!

This post contains affiliate links. Your price is the same, but I may receive a small commission when you use my links. Thanks for your support!

The post Fabric Pencil Case with the Silhouette Rotary Blade appeared first on Finding Time To Create.

Ready for my next free live Silhouette Zoom class through Michaels? This class aired live at 11 a.m. MDT on Friday, May 14. Here’s the replay in case you missed it or if you want to watch it again.

Description:

Learn how to use Silhouette shrink plastic with me while designing and cutting this graduate gift keychain. I will use the Silhouette Cameo® 4 in class, but any Cameo or Portrait model can cut this shrink plastic. I’ll share my tips and tricks for using Silhouette shrink plastic and will throw in other Silhouette inspiration for how to use this free “Class of 2021” design.

You Will Need:

• Silhouette clear shrink plastic
• Keychain parts
• Heat tool (or oven at 325 deg. F)
• Inkjet printer
• Gold paint pen (optional)
• Heat proof surface
• Needle nose pliers
• Silhouette Cameo® or Portrait® and cutting mat
• Autoblade or favorite manual blade
• Design ID #344948 (free until 5/17/21)

I hope you enjoy this class!

In the class, I also showed some other examples of how you could use this design. All of them are pretty quick, if you need a last-minute gift for your grad!

I used Silhouette metallic vinyl in gold and red for this mug.

I used Siser Sparkleberry EasyPatterns heat transfer vinyl in Cheetah Pop for this t-shirt.

I sent all these keychains with my daughter to give to her senior friends.

This post contains affiliate links. Your price is the same, but I may receive a small commission when you use my links. Thanks for your support!

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One of my favorite uses for my Silhouette machines over the years has been the opportunity to be creative with my children’s school projects. I’m willing to help them figure out their math and proofread their papers, but if it’s a project or presentation, then I get a little excited!

My daughter has been taking a dance class and needed something to represent a robot costume for her dance-group trio’s final dance presentation. We brainstormed some ideas considering plastic or cardboard helmets, but her dad found these cute printable robot masks here and we jumped on this idea.

These were a great start, and could have been easily traced to create a Print & Cut with the colors shown. However, when I saw the coloring-page version, I realized how easy it would be to cut this in layers to assemble with whatever colors I chose.

Metallic vinyl was a fun choice! The process just requires a little magic manipulation in Silhouette Studio®, which is what I’m going to show you now.

You will need:

• Silhouette Cameo® 4 or other Silhouette cutting machine
• Silhouette Studio® (any version 4.1 or higher, any edition)
• Black cardstock
• Silhouette metallic vinyl in silver, gold, and teal
• Hook tool for weeding
• 1/8 in. wide elastic

Video Tutorial:

Basic Steps:

(See the video tutorial above for more detailed explanations.)

1. Open the coloring-page design in Silhouette Studio, resize it, and Trace it.
2. Open the Modify Panel and Release the Compound Path to separate the design into multiple layers.
3. Working in logical groups, make copies of the pieces that need holes and use the Subtract function to cut holes in lower layers with the appropriate upper layers.
4. The design in this example needs the following pieces altered:

• Main background cardstock piece
• Largest main colored layer
• Rings around eyes

Note: Each new design you work with will be different. You’ll have to decide which pieces are needed to cut holes in other pieces to get the look you want. That’s why I work from copies and leave the original intact.

5. Once the design is complete, cut the various pieces from cardstock, vinyl, or your preferred medium with your Silhouette machine.

Tip 1: My preferred settings for cutting Silhouette metallic vinyl are as follows:

• Blade = 2
• Force = 11
• Speed = 7
• Passes = 2
• Line Overcut = On
• Remember to test a sample cut first and adjust as necessary. I find the metallic vinyl cuts and behaves slightly differently from traditional adhesive vinyl.

Tip 2: With a design like this it’s easy to cut more than one piece of vinyl at a time. That’s why I had you turn on your grid in the video.

Assembly of Robot Mask:

1. Weed your vinyl to prepare it for application to the cardstock base.

2. Apply the vinyl to the cardstock base. You can simply treat the vinyl like stickers and don’t worry about transfer tape.

3. Trim a piece of narrow elastic to fit the wearer’s head and attach each end to the back of the black-cardstock mask piece with tape or other strong adhesive.

Tip 3: I found that hot glue was too hot for the metallic vinyl and it discolored the vinyl on front. You could probably get away with attaching the hot glue first before applying the vinyl layers, but then it won’t lay as flat during assembly.

I hope this tutorial helps you know how to use the Subtract tool in Silhouette Studio® to manipulate more designs for clever projects like this robot mask! Single layer designs can be manipulated in lots of ways. You might want to check out this post on using dingbat fonts in a similar way.

Think outside the box!

This post may contain affiliate links. Your price is the same, but I may receive a small commission when you use my links. Thanks for your support!

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I’ve got a tutorial for a kids’ puzzle kit on the Silhouette 101 Blog using the new Puzzle Generator in Silhouette Studio v 4.2 Designer Edition Plus. Go check it out HERE.

To learn about all the new features in Silhouette Studio v 4.2, go to this post.

The post Silhouette Puzzle Generator for Kids’ Puzzle Kits appeared first on Finding Time To Create.

In the following videos, you’ll learn all about using Silhouette ModelMaker, which is an educational software tool for creating 3D shapes and converting them into 2-dimentional images that can be cut out and assembled.

You can download ModelMaker from Silhouette America here. The initial download without purchasing the license key allows you to try it for free, 15 minutes at a time, to see if you like it. If you want to activate the full version, you can purchase a (usually discounted) license key here.

Watch the videos linked below to find out how to use it if you already own the software, or to see if you think it’s a software you’d like. (Read the end of this post for my personal opinion on ModelMaker in its current state.) There are too many videos to embed in a single post, but each title below links to a YouTube video I created for Silhouette America, and shows the video’s length in minutes.

How-To Videos for Silhouette ModelMaker:

• Silhouette ModelMaker Tour (2:46)
• Explore the Edit Window in Silhouette ModelMaker (1:33)
• Creating Shapes in Silhouette ModelMaker (6:01)
• Drawing in 3D in Silhouette ModelMaker (3:31)
• Drawing in Front, Side, Top, and Bottom Views in ModelMaker (2:57)
• Shape Creation Wizard in ModelMaker (2:09)
• QuickShapes in ModelMaker (1:31)
• Manipulating Shapes in ModelMaker (7:13)
• Applying Colors & Textures to Shapes in ModelMaker (2:40)
• ModelMaker Camera Views (3:30)
• Output Window and Nets in ModelMaker (4:35)
• Printing and Cutting in ModelMaker (5:07)
• Changing Preferences in ModelMaker (4:54)
• Viewing Properties of Shapes in ModelMaker (1:59)

I’ve also got a blog post covering the basics here.

My Opinion on ModelMaker:

In my personal opinion, I wouldn’t rush out and buy it immediately. I think it’s a good, but not amazing, software (yet) like Silhouette Studio®. Plenty of people love it, and I’ve used it many times to make custom boxes and shapes in exactly the size I need. My kids like it, too.

ModelMaker is still a bit clunky in comparison to the current version of Silhouette Studio®, and hasn’t received the improvements over the past several years like Silhouette Studio® has. That being said, if you purchase the software now, these videos will help you navigate it. Any future updates to improve ModelMaker will almost certainly be free, as is Silhouette’s tradition.

I’m confident the improvements coming down the pipeline to bring it up to Silhouette Studio®’s level will make this a fun tool in your crafting toolbelt, whereas at the moment it’s a “nice to have” tool that still has some bugs to work around. I hope these videos all about using Silhouette ModelMaker help you!

Don’t forget you can give it a try for free here. The software without a license key will close your document workspace every 15 minutes, but you can continue to re-open a new document workspace and continue to try it out indefinitely. The trial also prevents saving or opening files.

Questions? Let me know in the comments!

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