Cutting Sugar Sheets with Silhouette (Including Cut Settings)

I'm well aware that today's tutorial on how to cut sugar sheets or icing decorations with Silhouette is going to be a controversial one.   So for all the haters who are gonna tell me it's not food safe, it's gonna gunk up the machine, it just ain't gonna work - you certainly have a point.  There are risks involved here...more so than cutting paper or vinyl or cardstock or cereal boxes...so carry on at your own risk.

With that said - let's have some fun!  First of all sugar sheets are very thin icing-like sheets that can be used to decorate cookies, cakes or cupcakes.  They are actually thin enough to be cut with the Silhouette machines and the machine does a nice job.

Because you will potentially be eating the design, you want to be very aware of what the sugar sheets are coming in contact with.  I used a brand new blade and covered the one exposed side of the sugar sheets.

Throughout this tutorial you're gonna be looking at some of my photos being like, "Isn't that what she said NOT to do?" Yes...and that's because this was a lot of trial and error...but what I learned a long the way about what WILL work is what I'm passing along to you so you can not waste an entire sheet trying to figure it out because while it worked out for me, this process was clunky.

Here's what I can tell you did not work. I put the carrier sheet down onto my mat and covered the top side of the sugar sheet with wax paper, taping it down around the edges of the mat.  The blade cut through the wax paper and created the design on the sugar sheet BUT the wax paper got all torn up.

So...what I would suggest instead is to actually covering your mat with a carrier sheet or wax paper (taped down very well) and then lay the sugar sheet down with the carrier side up.   Also, you want to make sure that the sugar sheet is not actually going under the roller. You want to trim it so goes on the inside side of the rollers. This is to help prevent it from sugar-ifying your machine and making a sticky gunky mess.

Now that you have your mat and sheet already you want to create your design.  My suggestion would be to keep it simple.  I put monograms inside pumpkins and while it cut beautifully, as you can imagine "weeding" this stuff isn't the easiest thing to do.  The outline of the pumpkin or just a single monogram without the circle probably would have been 10x easier than picking out all those tiny pieces with a knife.

After your design is all ready, you want to mirror it - just like you would with  HTV which also uses a carrier sheet.   By mirroring the image, after you are done cutting it, you can flip it onto your cupcakes or cookies and peel off the carrier sheet and avoid having to try lift the delicate design off the carrier sheet. Take it from me...

When you're ready to start cutting, adjust the cut settings following the default settings in Studio for card stock adjusting the thickness to about a 23.  Don't forget to pop your new blade into the machine.  You need to make sure the blade cuts through the carrier sheet and the sugar sheet so go ahead and do a test cut.  

If all goes well you can continue on by cutting your entire design.



If you need to weed out any details, use a sharp paring knife.

Then, since you mirrored your design (unlike me who was forced to try to pick up each pumpkin by hand, therefore breaking some of them) flip your sugar sheet design right into place on your cake, cupcake or cookie and then peel away the plastic carrier sheet.

NOTE: Because of the hiccups I ran into - specifically the top sheet ripping and exposing the sugar sheets - I actually told the kids to remove the sugar sheets before they ate their cookies.  But they certainly looked cute!

Note: This post may contain affiliate links. By clicking on them and purchasing products through my links, I receive 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!