Goodbye Fussy Cut: Cutting Stamped Images with Silhouette CAMEO and Pixscan

Say goodbye to fussy cuts! If you're not familiar with what a fussy cut is it's when you have to break out the scissors to cut around a shape printed or stamped shape, for example, all the way while trying to keep the shape centered.

Of course, Silhouette crafters would much prefer to use their cutter rather than fussy cut.  That's where the Silhouette Pixscan mat comes in.

Michele Wright from The Cow Whisperer's Creative Cards and a longtime Silhouette user is here today to share her secrets of avoiding fussy cutting.

I love my Cameo, and use it for everything craft related.  That being said my true passion has always been paper crafting and it didn't take me long to figure out how I could use Silhouette Studio to help me with a dreaded (in my opinion) paper crafting task of "fussy cutting."

You might ask why I don't just Print & Cut, well actually I do and I love it.  But I will tell you in card making there's nothing like the beauty of a stamped image.  Sometimes a stamped image is fine as it is but other times you need to cut it out.  This is where cutting the image out by hand (fussy cutting) comes into play.  Unfortunately there are times that I stamp an image and it doesn't have a coordinating die set or punch.  This is when my Silhouette Pixscan mat becomes super helpful.

If you haven't used your Pixscan in place of fussy cutting, let me see if I can help you just a bit.  As Silhouette users we all know it all starts with the best image possible, therefore it's crucial that you have a good stamped image.

When I receive a new stamp set that has images I know I will want to cut out, I grab myself a quality piece of card stock and stamp the image or images multiple times making sure to fill the page.

I then place my card stock on the Pixscan mat and follow this beginner Silhouette Pixscan tutorial to capture my image and bring it into the Silhouette Program.

Here's the tricky part, as we know not all stamped images are created equal.  But with a little practice you will learn how to trace your images to get a great cut.  I highly recommend this Silhouette Studio tracing tutorial to master your skills.

Once you have performed your trace, I would recommend you select everything on your mat and set them to NO CUT.  Remember we don't want to lose part of our stamped image so a slight offset is need.

Now select all of your images and click offset, you can learn more about how to use the Silhouette Studio offset tool in this tutorial.  Adjust the offset to .030 and click "Apply". In my experience any smaller, you run the chance of losing some of your image and any larger, the white boarder is too large.

Wooohooo, see you've done it.  Now you are ready to load your Pixscan mat in your Silhouette cutting machine and cut your stamped images.  My recommended settings for Stampin' UP! card stock are Coverstock with the blade at 7 speed at 3 and thickness at 33.

Now you're ready to load the Silhouette Pixscan mat into the Silhouette cutting machine and send it to cut.  You should end up with a sheet full of cut out stamps!

Then just pull back the paper and remove the stamps from the cutting mat.

As with any tasks the more you do it, the faster you get.  Trust me you will be cutting out your stamped images like a pro before you know it.  Here's a little tip I always cut out multiples and place them in the coordinating stamp case for future use.

I really enjoyed sharing today and would love for you to hop over to this farm girls blog by CLICKING HERE, for more inspirations and tips.  HAPPY CRAFTING!!!

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