How Add Custom Digital Patterns to 3D Silhouette Studio Designs

Did you know you can turn all those adorable boxes and 3D paper designs into Silhouette print & cut designs with a patterned fill? Think about the possibilities!

Kati from Houseful of Handmade is here today to share the secret to adding custom pattern fills in Silhouette Studio.


I just love adding cute seasonal patterns to turn a plain box into the best treat box ever. I wanted to turn these cute 3D mailboxes into spring mailboxes to deliver Easter treats. So I bought these beautiful spring prints and set to work.

To import your own design into Silhouette Studio you'll need Silhouette Studio Designer Edition. Then just open your library and the finder window with your repeatable patterned tile in in.

Click on the pattern file and drag it into the Patterns folder in your Library. You can add it to the local library or cloud library, which ever one you prefer to store it in.

Once the pattern is fully uploaded to your pattern library, you are ready to add it to your 3D cut file.

Open your 3D design in Silhouette Design Studio and ungroup all objects as needed. Because I like to create a border or bleed area around the print & cut designs, I am going to add an external offset to the designs.  This will ensure you do not end up with a white line around the edges of your print & cut design.

Select only the outside cut shapes of your design (make sure not to select the dotted fold lines). Then select the Offset icon to open the Offset tool.

Select Offset. The default offset is larger than necessary, I adjusted mine to 0.075 in. Then hit Apply.

Open the Fill tool in the sidebar and then click on the dotted box on the top for the patterned fills. Scroll all the way down to the bottom to see your custom patterns.

Make sure you are only selecting the new offset shapes and click on the pattern to add it to it. You can adjust the scale and angle in the advanced settings if you want.

If you see weird lines in your pattern like in the photo below, it is because you may have selected the dotted fold lines and added fill to them. This is creating two filled objects to be layered on top of each other and the pattern will not line up. Make sure to remove the fill from all but the new larger offset object. 

To make sure the cut lines do not print on your 3D object, you can easily change the line width of all the lines to 0.00 in. You can still see the lines in Silhouette Design studio, but they will not print out.

Be careful that you do not change any dotted fold lines to solid lines while doing this. I had to change the dotted lines separate from the cut lines so they did not all become cut lines. 

Add your registration marks and you are ready to print. I had to resize the 3D object slightly to make it fit within my registration marks. Click here for tips on resizing 3D cut files.

I love my HP Officejet Pro 8615 printer for making print & cut projects (it is the older version of this printer). But the best part is the HP Instant Ink program where you only pay a few dollars a month and never run out of ink. It is so worth it if you print lots of full color pages like I do. When you go to cut out your design, make sure all the lines are set to cut except the outside lines of the Offset object. 

Now you can add beautiful designs to all your 3D objects. I love creating fun designs for every season. If you sell at craft fairs, seasonal treat boxes sell so well and you can change up your favorite files to match the holiday with a variety of fun patterns.

And don't forget to stop by Houseful of Handmade and say hi! I love sharing lots of fun DIY Crafts tutorials.


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