Designing in Silhouette Studio: Creating Layered Striped States

One of the latest crazes going around the Silhouette crafting world is the striped state decals.  Whenever there are viral Silhouette crafts like this, we get a lot of questions - especially from beginners - about how it's done!

This week Silhouette School weekly contributor Becky Dykes is here to break down this Silhouette Studio design tutorial into easy to follow steps!

The first step is to make a cut file of your state. I used a state shape dingbat font as an easy resource for my Florida shape.  It may take some trial and error to find your shape, or you can utilize your Character Map like you would when working with glyphs.  I cheated a little and typed through the alphabet until I found Florida.

Next, create your stripe design using the RECTANGLE drawing tool. Remember, you can easily duplicate a shape by using the shortcut (Ctrl + Down Arrow).  I filled my shapes with the Fill Color tool to help me visually, but that's an optional step.

Line up your state shape and your stripe design so the state shape is on top.  Use BRING TO FRONT on the shortcut menu if you need to by selecting the state shape and right-clicking on your mouse.  Then access the MODIFY menu and select CROP.

Using the CROP feature will crop your state shape out of the stripe design.  The only downfall is that each stripe will be separated into individual pieces.

Go ahead and select all the pieces of a stripe and then either GROUP or MAKE COMPOUND PATH. This can be a little time consuming depending on your shape.  Don't forget you can hold down the SHIFT key to select multiple pieces at the same time.

After grouping the stripe pieces together, you can FILL the shape again to make sure you included all the pieces.  This next part will be personal preference, but I chose to keep my black stripes and white stripes separate. When I layer vinyl, I like to do it without the bulk of overlapping layers.

Now you can add the designing features, such as the flower accent and the home word art.  I created the flower accent using another dingbat font, Janda Flower Doodles, another free download.  I again typed out the alphabet and then chose which flowers I wanted to use.

I added the heart accent to indicate where in the state we live, but all of that is optional and the placement is personal preference.

Now you're probably wondering how to layer the multi-color vinyl design so it's perfect! You'll want to use the registration mark layering method explained in step by step detail here.

The final step after adding the registration marks is to cut each layer on the correct color vinyl and then layer the different color vinyl pieces to form the decal.

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!  

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