Big new toy, big new learning curve.

Last week my niece graduated from high school, and I made a banner for her celebration. Piece of cake, right?

Well, my Slice Elite fought me tooth and nail through all the letters I wanted to cut. This electronic cutting machine is supposed to be easy, and I guess it is when it works. Don't look too closely because the starting points were not the same as the ending points and somebody had to go back in with scissors and fix them.

The other thing that is limiting is the 4" maximum cut size. It kind of reminds me of my old embroidery machine. But not as flexible.

So when I was watching a video on Youtube showing a stamp company with really great stamps but no dies to cut the stamped image. But what they DO offer now is cut files, so the images can be pre-cut, then stamped and colored. Very nice. I watched a few more videos, and a few more, and more still, and convinced myself I need a Silhouette Cameo so I can do lots of cuts and bigger cuts.

Did I mention that cutting around stamped images leaves the image slightly bent? Or in my case, more than slightly.

Here are the first few images I printed and cut. Yes, I already own the stamps, I just didn't stamp these.

I cut one of the hippos without printing it first, to see how difficult it would be to stamp. It was easy to stamp it, and tricky to color. The snakes were colored between printing them and cutting them. They were much easier.

I'll report back after I upgrade my software to the designer edition. As soon as my "code" comes in the mail.