Cameo dust cover

When I ordered my Silhouette Cameo recently, I didn't buy a cover for it.  of course, after I hit 'purchase' I saw several owners recommending a dust cover be used. There's nowhere close to me that stocks Silhouette products, and I didn't want to wait until the next time I put in an online order somewhere, so I decided to make my own.

There are several free patterns available online - I used the one from Erin at Schlosser Designs which you can get here. They're pretty easy to make - you just need a rectangular piece of material and two end pieces. I managed to find some fabric in my stash.

Here are my pieces cut and ready.

And here's my finished cover.

It only took about 15 minutes and I saved myself a few dollars I can spend on something more exciting ;) So if you're short of a cover, give it a go!

Silhouette Cameo - cropping background shapes

I love the 12x12 cutting capabilities of my Cameo, but I mostly scrap A4 or 8 1/2 x 11 and was having a hard time finding background cutting files that would work well. Yes, there are a few available in the Silhouette Design Store, or from other sellers, but I also have a lot of 12x12 backgrounds and wasn't sure how to make them work.

Thanks to Vanessa's blog, I came across a great video tutorial on how to crop backgrounds in Silhouette Studio. The example involved making a PL card, but the technique is the same no matter what size you want to work with.

Check out the video here.

And here are a couple of screenshots of my crop in progress:

Wonders of the Cameo

I've just taken delivery of a new Silhouette Cameo. My old Cricut was on the way out, and when I saw the Cameo on sale on Amazon, I didn't hesitate!

I'm getting to grips with all the machine can do, and have been on the hunt for cut files. Here's a great circle file posted by Geralyn Sy a while ago - perfect for my travel album and a page about Italy:

And here's a close up of the cut which I backed with patterned paper:

You can find the cut file at the end of Gernlyn's blog post here.