Silhouette Studio Word Art Tutorial

I've been asked more than a few times how to make word art in Silhouette Studio.   Text to Path is the easiest way to make word art - but it's pretty basic.  You can go around a shape like here and here.   Then you can make things like these circle monograms by adjusting edit points and stretching.  But what if you want to make more involved word art? Well, I  have a little hack for you today.

The first thing you want to do is open up Powerpoint. Yes, the program for presentations.  If you don't have Powerpoint on your computer, you can get a free one month trial here.

Using the text tool type out your text.

Now click on toolbox so you get the formatting window (you must have your word selected to get the tool box to open).  About half way down you'll see 'Quick Styles and Effects." Click on that..and then click on the 'abc' tab.  (I hope I didn't lose you!)

Now just pick an effect. All of the effects can be made more dramatic by dragging the little purple dot that appears on the word art word.

Once you're happy with the word art you want to save it.  From the top tool bar FILE > SAVE AS.  Don't save as a powerpoint file though...pick the 'JPEG' option from the 'Format' drop down menu.

As you can see I saved as 'Word Art' and what it does is it creates a folder called 'Word Art' and then puts each slide in the Powerpoint presentation (we only have 1) inside the folder under the names "Slide 1", "Slide 2" etc.

You can now close out Powerpoint.

At this point you want to open up Silhouette Studio.  Now using your computer's search function look for 'Slide 1' or Word Art (and then open the folder to Word Art to view Slide 1").  Just like you would with any jpeg, drag and drop the jpeg image of your word art into Silhouette Studio.   If you need a refresher for bringing jpegs into Silhouette Studio click here.

After you resize your ridiculously large image, you should have something that looks like this.

Can you guess where I'm going with this? Yes, you need to use the trace tool.   So click on the 'Trace' icon > Select Trace Area > Use your mouse to select all the word art > Uncheck High Pass Filter > Slide threshold bar over to about 80 or so until all you get solid yellow > Trace.

And now, once you move your original Powerpoint slide out of the way (and delete it) you're left with this...

SIDE NOTE: If you have several words, like I do in this example, and you traced it all as one big design, you'll have to separate them by ungrouping.  I would suggest you ungroup and then go through each word individually and 'Make Compound Path'.  If you don't - all the letter counters (like the middle part of the e, a...) will not be grouped with the letters.

Now you can just cut your word art like you would any other design.  Don't forget if you're using world art with HTV, you'll need to flip it. 

That's all there is to making word art in Silhouette Studio!

I know some of you may be looking for more complex word art like turning a group of words into a shape...that I am still working on and am hoping to have a tutorial soon.

Note: This post may contain affiliate links. By clicking on them and purchasing products through my links, I received a small commission. That's what helps fund Silhouette School so I can keep buying new Silhouette-related products to show you how to get the most out of your machine! 

Thanks for coming to class today at Silhouette School.  If you like what you see, I'd love for you to pin it!