New Silhouette Portrait Set Up & My First Project
For over a year now, I have been drooling over the Silhouette machines and everything everyone so beautifully creates with them. I had asked for one for Christmas or my birthday but alas my husband didn’t really know what I was talking about when I said I would like a craft cutting machine. So after completing my last sticker set for my Heidi Swapp Memory Planner and being frustrated with my paper cutter and not getting the cut exactly how I would like it, I finally ordered my own Silhouette Portrait.
I decided to get the portrait because it is my first machine, I was a bit intimated by the bigger Cameo and I was able to get a Silhouette America Starter Bundle Portrait Cutting Tool for Scrapbooking
After it arrived, hmm, I think I should name my machine instead of calling it, it. So I have affectionately now call her Polly. Now back to setting up Polly so we can create beautiful things together. I did experience a bit of hiccup with setting her up as the Silhouette Software disc could not be read by my external CD drive for my Mac. And at first I thought it was just my drive or a Mac issue, but no, my husband tried the CD in his laptop and it didn’t work there either. Without the software on the computer, you can’t do nada! Cue me freaking out, ok maybe not freaking out but definitely not happy. I wanted to get started right away! So to satisfy myself until I got the software thing figured out I began watching the Instructional video that also came as a part of the bundle. Here is how I set up my New Silhouette Portrait machine and then created my first project right away: 
STEP 4: Created my account, registered my machine and started creating. I don’t have much experience with the portrait and I was able to get started easily enough by watching the instructional video and a few awesome tutorials on Youtube. I watched a video by Mary Koegelenberg Here is the link to her Youtube video and a video by Carissa Wiley here is the link to her video. Between the instructional video and these 2 videos, I felt confident enough to give it a go. I was pretty pleased that I was able to design these stickers in a few hours. Now the next thing was to set up the Silhouette for cutting the sheet. 
PREPARING TO CUT SHEET OUT STEP 1: Printed out designs onto my sticker sheet on my printer. I just used a piece of Avery sticker project paper as this is all I had on me at the time. STEP 2: Lined up my sticker paper sheet on the cutting mat as per the instructions in the instructional video. STEP 3: Set the cut settings in the Silhouette app. You will want to make sure you click on the advanced settings and then click the lines you would want to cut. This is a good time to check if all of the lines you want to cut are all the same colour. I stayed in red and so I wanted to make sure only the red lines were going to be cut. MAKE SURE ALL YOUR CUT LINES ARE THE SAME COLOUR 
Next, I picked the white sticker paper and when I did that the ratchet blade settings appeared. I wanted to try to create a ‘kiss’ cut which means the cut doesn’t go all the way through the paper, I would be able to just peel the stickers from the sheet. I set my blade to 2 the first time I tried and I kept the speed and thickness the same because I need to know how Polly (my machine – remember) would respond. Call it a baseline for me to work from. 
STEP 4: Time to make sure the ratchet blade in the machine is set to 2 as well. Then loaded it into Polly and turned the blue knob to secure. STEP 5: Turned Polly on (oh boy, that sounds a bit kinky) and lined up my cut mat that had my sticker paper on it centred in-between the white rollers. STEP 6: Press the load button to load the cut mat. STEP 7: Back into the Silhouette app I clicked send to Silhouette. 
Crossed my fingers in anticipation while Polly went to work. It was truly amazing as I watched it only cut those lines I a set to cut. Amazing! RESULT: Polly cut perfectly only the 2 setting did in fact cut all the way through the sheet but that was ok I used the spatula that came as a part of the package to carefully remove the stickers from the cutting mat. And now I can use these beauties in my Heidi Swapp Memory Planner. I’m going to run my next sheet through at a 1 setting or looking up whether to change the speed and thickness settings. The thickness setting might be the way to go. Learn as I go. Here are some shots of the stickers in my planner: 
Here is the Youtube video of the
I will be creating a video over on Youtube so if you don’t want to miss it consider subscribing to my Youtube Channel. I’m very new to Youtube videos but I plan to post about my learning how to use my silhouette as well as the renovations and decluttering/organizing of my house over there. Do have a silhouette machine? Any tips or tricks for a newbie? Love to hear it in the comments. Interested in the Print and Cut Silhouette files I might create consider subscribing to my
Cheers and happy creating, 
Bonnie Dani Educator, Writer, Blogger, Mom Contact Me: bonniedani@adalinc.org
