Cameo/Cricut beginners help

[sandandsea]

My Cameo 4 arrived and I played with it a bit this weekend! I spent all day Saturday playing with it and figuring it out. Thank goodness for YouTube!! I made a couple of cards (cardstock) and a coaster (vinyl) with some basic text and the free designs/tutorials. I told DH that I’m excited for it but the learning curve is huge. With that I have a couple of questions.

I have an idea of something I want to make and was wondering where besides the silhouette store so you get your free designs for your library? I don’t want to spend a ton on designs but want more hobby specific designs than what is available in the store.

Also I found that the auto setting isn’t cutting deep enough so I did the calibration and made sure the blade was tight but the only thing that seemed to help was increasing the force manually in the set up. Is this common and okay to do? Do you always do this or is the auto setting usually right?

[schrodinger]

I got a Cricut for Christmas, so I'm kind of in the same boat. I haven't had a ton of luck finding a huge library of svg files, but can usually google "free svg (whatever I'm looking for)" and wade through a few blogs to get what I need. I made some vinyl "Happy New Year" stickers for our glasses and found that a lot of bloggers post one or two free "teaser" files and then 5-10 premium ones that you have to pay for.

I was actually thinking about this over the weekend. In 3D printing, there are tons of free files online in a library (Thingiverse) that is sort of the go-to for source codes. Why doesn't something like this exist for svg files?

[cmeon]

If you need something really niche (either in subject or use), you'll probably need to make it yourself. Sometimes, converting a JPG to an SVG is possible- there are freebie sites that specialize in that (it generally takes less than a minute or two). The Silhouette software is actually fairly robust, and you may be able to get what you need done there once you're more familiar with it. But, if you want to do anything outside the realm of 80lb cardstock and sticky vinyl, you'll probably want to use a vector art program. I personally am most comfortable with Inkscape, but, Illustrator or any of the online pop-ups will work, too! There are tons of tutorials for Inkscape and Illustrator, and you don't need to really deep dive to make SVGs for cutting, thankfully.

3D printing is pretty unique in the dedication to keeping it open source and free. I think laser cutting has a chance of going the same way, and they use a lot of SVGs- but, there's not a good online library for files yet (which is probably why you sometimes see files on Thingiverse- but, there's some crossover there with some machines). Provocraft/Cricut, in particular, has been the opposite of open source friendly- and they are litigious- so it sort of put a damper on the ability for the craft to develop in that way.

[schrodinger]

Adding, one of my favorite game designers released all of his artwork in pdf format, so I spent some time looking up pdf to svg conversion. I found this site to work the best:

convertio.co/pdf-svg/

Each file has to contain only one page or else it only does the first page so it was a bit tedious to split all the separate icons into different files, but once I did the conversion was easy. The svg file then cuts it into all of the different little components. In Cricut I had to "weld" all the bits together, but that also would have let me make multiple colors if I had wanted to. The program also has options to convert other file types into svg, but I haven't used those yet.

Just wanted to point out that files besides svgs might easily be converted.

[cmeon]

Jan 11, 2021 14:27:58 GMT -5 schrodinger said:

Adding, one of my favorite game designers released all of his artwork in pdf format, so I spent some time looking up pdf to svg conversion. I found this site to work the best:

convertio.co/pdf-svg/

Each file has to contain only one page or else it only does the first page so it was a bit tedious to split all the separate icons into different files, but once I did the conversion was easy. The svg file then cuts it into all of the different little components. In Cricut I had to "weld" all the bits together, but that also would have let me make multiple colors if I had wanted to. The program also has options to convert other file types into svg, but I haven't used those yet.

Just wanted to point out that files besides svgs might easily be converted.

Yep- Convertio is great (there are older sites that function just as well, but, this one is so much prettier)!

This comes in handy with 3D print modeling, too!

[shortcake2675]

I have business edition, so I can open svgs and whatnot. Or even pdfs and trace them. I bought business edition for some reason, but it escapes me at this point why. I look for designs on etsy, Craft Genesis, Thread & Grain (its been a while, but they have cute stuff). I design some of my own too.

As far as the blade stuff goes, I'd go check out Silhouette School Blog. My Cameo 3 and I are on pretty good terms, but the 4 is different enough that she would be a good resource.

[ssmjlm]

I usually google and then trace designs. I don't sell anything, so I'm ok with personal use.

I will say, I spent the money to upgrade and it's been worth it for importing designs. I got it during a swing design sale I think.

I really like Silhouette School tutorials. Also, join a couple FB groups as well. They are helpful.