Silhouette “offset” Print ‘N’ Cut Tutorial | Psalm 16:11

I was so inspired by Tawni’s post about hiding a couple days ago about hiding from God and totally felt convicted because I do it all the time. Then when I saw the “Oh Happy Day!” printables with the hair bun hiding behind a bunch of flowers and the lettering from Psalm 16:11, I just knew it was exactly what I wanted to spend some time meditating on. While I normally love sitting down listening to some praise music and fussy cutting out all the printables, I decided for these intricate flowers, I was going to pull out and dust off my Silhouette Portrait cutting machine.

I know that Andrea already did an awesome post and video showing how to do a print and cut with the Silhouette cutting machine, so I’m not going to repeat it, but want to add on to it and show you how to do an “offset” cut. I really like the look of having the white along the outer edge like a sticker so that’s the look I wanted to show you.

SIDE NOTE: a little note about importing PDF files. In the regular version of Silhouette Software you have to convert the PDF to PNG prior, like Andrea did in her tutorial, but if you have the Designer Edition you can import the PDF as an image directly into the Silhouette Software like shown below:

This is just a personal preference: I like to center the image to the page and this is just a cool trick to perfectly center it… In the “Align” screen click on the image and then click on “Center to Page”

STEP ONE: Add Registration Marks

This is a very important step that you do not want to skip and Andrea also shares this step in her tutorial, but it’s so important that I wanted to make sure it was here too.

You MUST turn on registration marks according to whatever machine you have… and I like to move the sliders to the smallest number possible to take advantage of as much cutting space as possible. If you do not use registration marks your cuts could be off if you don’t align the paper to the mat correctly or feeding in the machine is off.

STEP TWO: Resize page to fit

In the software you can see the cutting boundary lines and some of the images go outside the boundary. So, to fix that, I just scale down by 95% or smaller until everything fits in the border.

STEP THREE: Trace images

Now we’re going to trace the areas we want to cut. First, you click on “select trace area”, the click and drag your mouse across from one corner to the opposite corner. Once you let go of the mouse you will see a yellow highlight around everything.

STEP FOUR: Continued Tracing

You want the whole of the images to be highlighted yellow. To do that you will turn off the “high pass filter” and move the threshhold towards 100% until everything is yellow except for the white areas. Then you will click “trace outer edge” and you’ll see a red outline around each image.

STEP FIVE: Release Compound Path

First, you want to move the image away from the cut lines by clicking and dragging it over. Then you will “release compound path” either by right clicking or in the drop down menu bar. This will separate all the image cut lines so we can work on each image individually rather than the whole page.

STEP SIX: Delete parts you don’t want to cut

Highlight and delete the sections you don’t want to cut. I wanted to handcut the word art so I deleted the cut lines around them as well Brianna’s name and the Illustrated Faith logo.

Now you see that I only have the three floral images and the hearts left for the machine to cut. Don’t worry, everything else will still print, they just won’t be cut out by the machine.

STEP SEVEN: Line up image with cut lines

Now is where you want to move the image back in it’s place. If you don’t, the offset step won’t work properly because it won’t realize you just want the outer offset.

STEP EIGHT: Create offset cut line

Open the “offset” screen, then click on the red cut line that you want to work on to highlight it. Click on “offset” and you’ll see a second cut line grow out of the original trace line.

STEP NINE: Adjust the offset size

You can change the thickness of the “offset”… I like .05in or .025in and click on “apply” to move the line closer.

STEP TEN: Delete original trace cut line

Click on the inner cut line, the original trace line and delete it.

Now you only have the one cut line around the image… repeat STEPS 8-10 for all the images you want to offset. I did not offset the bottom basket of flowers and the hearts because they were too close to the other images/other hearts to avoid cutting into the other images.

STEP ELEVEN: Print

Print out your page according to your printer’s specifications. For images like this, I like to use matte photo paper and set to the highest quality, but again, it’s totally your own preference.

STEP TWELVE: Cut

Go to the cut screen and choose the type of paper you’re using, then make sure the blade on your machine is set to the number specified in the software. Align your paper on the cutting mat and feed it into your machine. Once it’s ready and you’ve checked the blade, click “send to Silhouette” and let the magic begin.

I also did an offset print and cut on the other sheet. In order to get the heart to include the scripture reference, I highlighted both parts then right clicked and chose “group” to group the lines together before doing the offset.

Here is a closeup o them cut out so you can see the offset.

To create this tip-in, I hand cut out the scripture reference and trimmed down some scrapbook paper to 6″x8″. I then sent what I wanted to use through my sticker making machine and adhered them to the page. Using washi tape, I attached the tip in and then added additional stickers and made a tab using the tab punch

I then highlighted the scripture reference with my Faber Castell Big Brush marker and sent a couple die cuts through my sticker machine and added more stickers then ended with journaling a prayer.

ESV Single Column Journaling Bible | Illustrated Faith Print Pray Paste – Oh Happy Day featuring Brianna Showalter | Illustrated Faith by Bella Blvd She Blooms Collection | Illustrated Faith by Bella Blvd She Blooms Criss Cross Washi Tape | Illustrated Faith by Bella Blvd She Blooms Die Cut Prompts | Illustrated Faith by Bella Blvd Precision Pen | Illustrated Faith by Bella Blvd His Love Stickers | Illustrated Faith by Bella Blvd Word Art Stickers | Silhouette Portrait | We R Memory Keepers Tab Punch | Xyron | Faber Castell Big Brush Bright Magenta | Uni-Ball Signo White Gel Pen | Fiskars Paper Trimmer | CutterBee Scissors | Ranger Collage Glue