Hello and welcome to Craft with Sarah. In this video I'm going to show you how you can use my
free and paid layered cutting files in Silhouette Studio. If you have a Silhouette cutting machine,
this is how you can use my files.
The first thing you'll need to do is download the Silhouette Studio software
and if you've been using your machine for a while then you'll already have this on your computer.
Silhouette Studio comes in a couple of different versions. If you just download it from the website
for free then you've got what's called the Basic Edition which is the free edition of
Silhouette Studio and that's the version I'm going to be showing how to use in this video.
You can also choose to upgrade to one of three paid versions. If you've got
the paid version of Silhouette Studio then you can use the SVG files from my website,
so when you go to open the file make sure you choose the one which starts SVG in the file
name and those will open better than the other files and they'll be easier for you to work with.
However, if you'd prefer to keep working with the free Basic Edition of Silhouette Studio
that's absolutely fine and that's what this video is all about.
I'm going to head over to Silhouette Studio and show you how to load
the DXF version of my layered cutting files.
Here is Silhouette Studio and the first thing to do is download the files,
either the free files from my website craftwithsarah.com
or any of my paid files which are available at https://shop.craftwithsarah.com.
After downloading the file, the first thing you'll need to do is unzip the download folder
that it comes in. This varies a little bit based on what type of computer or device you're using
but for a Windows computer you just right-click on the folder
and press 'extract all' and then choose where to save it on your computer.
If you check the description of this video I've put some links in there
to written tutorials which go through how to unzip folders in more detail.
I'm going to assume you've already unzipped that folder, so let's open the DXF file. Go into 'file'
at the top and then 'open' and then choose your unzipped folder. You need the file which starts
DXF in the filename. These are the files that Silhouette Studio Basic Edition (the free
version) - these are the files that this can open so make sure you choose the one which starts DXF.
That will go ahead and load and sometimes it can take quite a long time to load and my top
tip is just after you've tried to open it, just when you've got that loading screen, don't touch
anything - just leave it to open. It might take a couple of minutes but just leave your computer
alone. If you try to click things or go to other programs whilst it's loading you might find that
Silhouette Studio crashes and then you'll have to close it and try and load it all again.
Now one thing I'm going to say at this point (which I probably should have said
at the beginning) is that I actually do not own a Silhouette cutting machine - I've got
a Cricut machine. I've done the research for you on how to convert my layered cutting files within
Silhouette Studio so that you can cut them but of course because I don't actually have the machine
I can't follow it all the way through and actually cut it out and test it
so please take these instructions with a little bit of a grain of salt.
Obviously you know your machine better than I know a machine that I don't own, however I am
fairly confident that these are the correct steps. If they're not and if anything in this
video is wrong, please leave me a comment below and tell me and I can make an updated version.
All right, so this is what the DXF file will look like when it's loaded in
and I've chosen to do my layered pumpkin truck. All of the different shapes are available on
the screen separately and they should just look like this little outline with no color.
Now the problem is this is going to cut really really small. This whole selection of everything
is just over 10 inches tall which means, if you think about it, my poor little layered
trunk is only going to be, what, two inches tall? That's going to be too small to cut effectively
and definitely too small to stick together, particularly on my more intricate designs. This
one's actually a fairly simple one but most of my layered designs have much smaller details in them.
We're going to need to make this a lot bigger but the problem is if we were just
to make this bigger by dragging it's going to go over the edge of your mat and also
we don't want to cut all this in the same color so we're going to need to
split out the different layers into each color that they're going to be.
To start, right-click on the design and press 'release compound path'. This breaks up all of
the little pieces so if I zoom in with the little zoom button on the top you can now see if I click
on something, rather than selecting everything it just selects that one shape that I've clicked.
I'm just going to undo that to put it back into position because what you'll notice happened
is that it didn't select all those little pieces inside - just the outside. We need
to tell our Silhouette machine that we want it to do these cuts inside the truck at the same time.
To do that, I'm going to scroll to the top so that I can start at the beginning.
This one doesn't have anything inside so that one's fine to be left as is. For this next one,
it's got the little circle and the bits in the window so I'm going to click and drag a box
around just this part of the truck and then right click and 'group'.
Now all of those bits move together when I click away so now it will know that I want those cuts to
always appear inside this outline of the truck. Now it knows that I always want these cutouts
to appear inside this outline of the truck and you'll need to do this for every single piece
so there's that one, right-click and 'group' and then this one.
You could also I believe right-click and 'make compound path'
and it should do the same thing. I'm scrolling down and I just need to do all of these. So so
a message to all you Silhouette users out there, is there a preference about whether
you should group them or make compound path? Which one works better? Please let me know!
I'm just doing these as compound path. Those I'm going to do together because they'll be
cut from the same color and the same thing with those and then my pumpkins. These are
all fine to be left separate because they'll be cut from different colors.
Okay so now I've done all of these so now when I pick up any of these
layers you see it's got all the middle bits inside.
Now we need to work on the size of the truck so let's zoom out with the little arrow at the top
click on the very bottom layer of whatever design you're using, so that'll be the biggest layer
that's got the most filled in, right-click and press 'duplicate' and then move that copy over
to the edge, drag a box around everything else on the screen, right-click and then 'group'.
With the one that you copied over here, this is the one we're going to use to size with.
Click on it and then change your width and height boxes. I'm going to make mine nine inches wide.
We can then click on our group over here and I'm going to move this over. I need to
zoom out a bit more and then use the little arrows in the corners to drag this big group
until that top layer is the same size as the one we've just resized. The reason we're doing this
is because it's going to change all the other layers in proportion at the same time so we
know that everything will still be lined up and will still work and be stuck together correctly.
Okay so that's pretty much spot on now. You see they line up almost exactly so that means I can
then click on that one that we copied and delete it and now I've got all of my layers and they're
correctly sized ready to go in my shadow box. But they won't all fit on the screen at the moment
and we've still got the problem that they would all be cut from the same color.
Right-click on the group and then press 'ungroup' again
and we're going to color each of these so we know what we're going to be cutting it out from and
that will make it easier for the next step. To find out what color everything should be,
go back to your download folder and open the file called 'Assembly Guide.pdf'.
This is a printable guide I include with all of my layered files and it shows you the order in
which to stick the layers and also the color that each one should be cut from
so I'm going to use this as a guide to color the graphics in Silhouette Studio.
Our bottom layer is going to be a gray and if you look the wheels are also that same color so let's
head back to Silhouette Studio and then click that bottom layer, click the color palette over
on the right hand side and then choose a gray and then for the wheels I'm going to use this
color picker to make sure it's the same gray and I might even just move them up next to it for.
Now the next layer will be black so I'll click it and then color it black and don't worry if
some of your cut lines disappear. I think it should still cut them, it's just you can't see
it because it's filled them in. They are still there. If you make it a slightly lighter color,
so a dark gray maybe instead of a black, you can see that those lines are still there.
This one will be a light red so let's fill that one in
and then these two will be that same color so let's color pick it into there.
The front of the track will be a darker red and now I have the pumpkin layers. This one will be a
fairly light green, the next one is yellow and the final one is orange.
Scrolling down this is the wood on the side of the track so that needs to be brown and then I
have the colored pumpkins on top which is going to be a darker version of each of these colors.
This is the yellow one so let's go a darker yellow,
this one is the orange and then this one is the green. These are all slightly darker
than the originals. Next we're going to move everything off of the edge
and also put together things that are the same color, so you see I put those two together.
The gray I'm going to put on my mat because that's
what will be cut first but everything else I'm just putting around the edge.
Then those three.
Once you get to this point, I would save your file because you don't want
to have to do all of this work again if you decide to cut the same file in the future,
so file > save as and then save to hard drive. Then you'll save it as a studio file.
This is now ready to start sending to the cutting machine. This is the little part
that I'm not 100% sure on because as I said, I don't actually have a Silhouette machine but I
believe what you'll need to do is go through each color individually, make sure it's on your mat
and then press 'send' at the top and then that will just send these to your Silhouette machine.
So when you cut it out, it would just cut out these bits which you'll do from a gray when it's
finished you'll need to come back to this screen and then either move the gray bits off of the edge
or you could delete them so that you don't accidentally cut them again.
Then move the next color onto the mat and do the same process again to get it cut out,
only this time you'll use that different color of card.
You'll need to repeat that for every single color.
I hope this video was helpful to show you how to use DXF
layered files on the free basic edition version of Silhouette Studio.
As I said, I have been kind of putting this video together without ever having actually
used a Silhouette machine so if any part of it is wrong please do leave me a comment.
To get all of my free files go to craftwithsarah.com/free-svgs
Thank you for watching and please subscribe if you enjoyed this video!