Silhouette 4.0

Change is a good thing! Change is a good thing... Change is a good thing?

Maybe you're like me:

When I see a new software version update on my phone, I put it off a long as possible. I mean, like, a long time. Weeks, months...

I am so afraid that doing the update will stop other important things I use every day from working properly if they haven't been modified for the update.

Most recently, the on-screen keyboard on my android phone just plain quit after an update. I couldn't type anything at all on my phone or bring up the keyboard for voice-to-text.

I was finally able to get a supplemental keyboard installed and finally got my phone up and running again but it was a frustrating experience to say the least.

So, you'll understand my hesitation:

Silhouette America released the newest version of their software suite recently and today is the day I plan on switching over.  I have been following along with a few of my acquaintances on Facebook who were helping to beta test and a lot of the early adopters who have already started making tutorials to get the good, the bad, and the ugly about the upgrade.  Sometimes the easiest way to learn is to watch someone else do it, right?

The Good:

So Many New Features! The tutorials I am watching have excited me.

• With new features like text warping, you won't have to create your design in another program and import it. 
• A glyphs panel should make it a little easier I currently use Nexus Font) to take advantage of all of the extra swashes in some of the more decorative fonts a little more easily. 
• There is finally a cut-progress bar in some of the videos I have seen. 
• And, as I am starting to get into HTV a little more, a pop-up reminder before cutting to mirror your image so you don't end up wasting material.

The Bad (and why it's not so bad):

The number one horror story I am seeing regarding the software upgrade is people loosing their designs that are stored by silhouette. A more recent update introduced cloud storage and operation and many people lost their designs during that too. Thousands of hours and hundreds of dollars can be lost if someone has spend enough time designing and/or purchasing designs. I believe there there have been a number of successful recovery stories but I don't have any personal experience with those.

Fortunately for me, since day one with Silhouette, I have kept all of my fonts and designs in a DropBox folder. This means that no matter what the update throws at me, my designs, my fonts, and my files will still be there.

The Ugly:

Knowing that all of my previous work is not at risk of being lost forever is a huge confidence boost to push me to start trying to take advantage of all the new features. Unfortunately though, even that won't solve the #1 issue.
 

This is a pretty big change. The layout is similar but the buttons have all been shifted. Some icons are slightly different, and they've introduced separate panels that pop out instead of everything being controlled by fixed menus at the top and side.

The process of getting re-acquainted with how to do some of the more basic things that are so quick for me to do now is what has held me back so far. I hate the feeling of starting over.

*goes back to re-read the good things about the upgrade again*

But, today is the day. I am going to install. I am going to learn. I am going to create cool things. And, I am going to teach you to do it too! 

Going Forward:

Lunch is here. Time to install and re-start fresh :-) I'll put up a new post in a day or so to track progress. Feel free to follow along. It should be fun!

What about you guys?:

Have you had an experience (good or bad) with an update that you want to share?

If you're already working in 4.0, do you have any quick tips that could help me get up and running a little faster?

I look forward to hearing from you!

I look forward to hearing from you! Happy Crafting!

Product Application & Care Instructions

In this list, I will compile all of the application and care instructions for anything I make or share. I will sort by category and update as often as necessary. 

Whoops, I did it again!

Being consistently inconsistent is still consistency, right? 

So, January of 2016:

January of 2016 was my last post. I was excited to share the news of my new machine. I was excited to do more nail art. I was excited to start blogging again. I really was excited to start teaching and sharing again. But,I'm lazy I couldn't find the time. We DID end up moving, halfway across the country in fact. A one bedroom apartment in Florida was my new home. There wasn't a lot of room to really focus on some of the things I wanted to do. And, I worked in car sales and that can be a little time consuming too.

Car sales profile pic!

In January of this year, we moved to Texas. This has been a turning point in my crafting. I finally have a room (A whole room!) set up to work in. A place I can keep organized and have easy access to the things I need to get things done. And boy, have I done some things.

Stuff & Things:

That Silhouette machine and I have come a long long way since that January 2016 post. I had originally gotten it hoping to make some nail decals and stencils to bring you some more nail art tutorials but once I got into the software and started learning about the possibilities of the machine, I got into so much more.

At current count, I have a sandblasting rig, a heat press, and I even bought a tiny little sewing machine to play with. The best part is, I'm going to share it all with you. Everything is linked together and it all ties back to that little Silhouette machine. Even though I haven't been posting everything, I have been taking pictures all along the way so I can share it all with you.

The software is the easier part since it doesn't require any "real world" setup. I started a series of YouTube videos called DIY On Demand where I address common questions I see in the Facebook groups. My goal with these videos is to directly answer the question while providing helpful tips along the way without all the extra story-telling fluff. I like direct and to-the-point when I am trying to get something done so all of my videos are less than 5 minutes long. Take a minute to check them out. I'll wait.

Where do we go from here:

This proves to be the hardest part. As I mentioned above, all of the pieces are linked to each other so it's kind of difficult to get into one without also having covered the other. There is some great news though:

1) Just about everything I am doing has already been done by somewhere sometime. Most of what I do is not 100% original. I just try my best to condense all of that information down into one easy to understand, 5 minute chunk.

2) Sometimes, people don't want to watch a video and would rather have written directions. That's what this blog is intended to do. This will be the text-heavy portion of my projects and I'll direct you here whenever you want more information on something if I have made a partner post to a video.

3) I am working on setting up shop! If you like what I do and don't want to do it yourself, I am working on opening a small store for simple orders. As of right now, I am only making any of my work available locally. This is the part of the whole process I am still learning about. Eventually, I will offer affiliate links in my videos and here and I would appreciate any feedback or advise you guys may have for me in this realm as it's all new to me.

What about you guys?:

I've mentioned sandblasting, my heat press, and my teeny tiny sewing machine. Are there any projects you guys are interested in learning more about first? Anything you want me to place a priority on?

How often would you be interested in seeing new posts? Would you like longer, more detailed posts a few times a month, or shorter posts with more variety a little more often?

I am excited to get started! Looking forward to hearing from you guys soon!

Happy Crafting!

A whole new (crafting) world!

It all started (as it often does) with a YouTube video wandering session...

The Beginning:

I have always had a passion for pretty nail art. The idea that you could have tiny pops of art/color/design literally at the tips of your fingers makes me smile inside. It is both subtle and dramatic at the same time and I love the juxtaposition of it.

My downfall is that I'm usually to lazy to do most of it myself and sometimes it can be a little costly to get all of the different types of supplies for a all of the different techniques that I am always wanting to test out so I will often just live vicariously through YouTube. I often pick a subject that's caught my interest that day and start to wander through videos to learn what other people are saying/doing about it and more often than not, it's art related for me. I had already wandered through acrylic painting ( I love Robin Moses) and nail art stamping (too many to list) and even liked water marbling so much I created my own tutorial (on this blog).

Enter: Nail Art Vinyls!

This time, while looking for something new, I found nail vinyls. My nail vinyl hero is Cristine from SimplyNailogical. This seemed easier than free hand painting, less costly and time consuming than stamping and far less messy than water marbling and still produced some really amazing results.

Crafty Brain:

Here's where I went a little overboard. I wouldn't be satisfied with ordering generic designs and waiting on shipping, I had to figure out how to do them on my own. I wanted custom designs, immediate gratification, and, of course, the sense of accomplishment that comes with finishing DIY projects (right...finishing a project...).

I started learning about how nail vinyls were made and learned about at home plotter/cutter machines that would use computer software to guide a small blade to cut the designs for you. I researched the different styles available in my budget and decided, after another YouTube wandering session to purchase a Silhouette Cameo.

Levels on Levels:

The Silhouette software has it's own learning curve but with the help of YouTube and some amazing facebook groups, I am getting the hang of it and have already created some cool designs. More recently, this pretty look I did for fall:

The more I learned about what this machine and the software could do, the more I learned that I had opened up a new level of crafting. Something that made projects like custom etched mirrors and one of a kind gifts totally doable. Heck, it even inspired me to jump back on here and write this up for you guys to tell you all how excited I am!

Going Forward:

Hopefully, I'll take the time to write up a few more of the fun projects I've been working on. 

Hopefully, I'll be moving into a new house soon where I plan to have a craft room with studio space so I can start doing more fun "show and tell" and sharing more of the tips and tricks I'm learning along the way. 

Hopefully, I'll have the time and resources to always keep learning and sharing with you guys. 

Hopefully, I'll always have awesome readers like you to keep giving me someone to share this info with.

Happy Crafting!

  

Can I get back into this?

Hello all!

Just a quick pop in to see how things have been going in blog-land. I've never really been very good at these things but I like to do them and that's something right?

My original aim in the creation of the CraftHow blog was to give me an outlet to share cool things I've learned about with you and even though I haven't added any real new content in over a year, I'm still getting the occasional visitor. I'm not being flooded but it's awesome to know that some of my work has been cool enough to pique your interest and get you to click through into my humble little site.

I've been through a lot in the last few months. And I'm still working through a lot of things including a move to the opposite coast from where I grew up. Once I get settled in here, I hope to jump back into the DIY frame of mind and bring you all up to speed with things I've been learning.

Hold me accountable! If you like what I do, ask for more of it! I love seeing new subscribers on my YouTube channel and seeing new hits on my blog page. I even have a twitter account. Yeah, me, on twitter. How weird is that! On a side note, can someone teach me how this Twitter thing works?

Keep crafting and share your ideas. Hope to re-join you all soon!

-Pam

It's been over a year!

O-My-Gosh everyone!

It has been over a year since I've posted to this blog but I promise you I've been thinking about you!

I can't believe how much activity my poor neglected page has had. Granted, I'm not topping any charts as far as viewership is concerned but I am impressed by the traffic I have gotten.

I have gone through a lot of changes in the last 2 years. I left a job I'd been at for almost 5 years in October of 2011 and spent 6 months working for a local company doing contract work for phone systems. That wasn't a great fit for me and I transitioned into my first ever commission sales job in July of 2012. One year later and I am happy to report that still happy and hard working in that position. Unfortunately, it hasn't left a lot of time for tutorials.

We were also hurled into another impromptu renovation when our washer and hot water heater decided to give out within the same week. This led to many-a-night after work spent pulling up the old flooring, scraping down to bare concrete, installing a new hot water heater (with lots of help from Bobby L Greene Plumbing who did an amazing job!) trimming tile, re-painting, and our first experience doing an epoxy floor. The before and after video is below.

The good news is that, now that all that is out of the way, I am almost done renovating my spare bedroom. I have my walls all painted, some furniture pieces re-finished and my wall to wall storage cabinets are on their way. The last thing left to do is to re-finish the floor to match the other two rooms we completed in our earlier re-modeling projects. This room is going to be my tutorial room/craft room/guest room/quiet place. I am super excited!

Sorry to be so lengthy but hopefully, it's the beginning of my return to the blogging/DIY scene. If there is anything that you guys want to see, give me a shout out and I'll try my hand at it!

DIY Topsy Tail Styling Tool Tutorial

I've been growing my hair out for almost a year and it's starting to get long enough to actually try to style now.

One of the first things I wanted was a styling tool called a Topsy Tail or a Style Weaver. This is a simple tool that can help make a variety of hair styles. I looked at a few of the local stores that would carry something like that and I couldn't find one.

YouTube had a few videos showing how people used a metal hangar and tape to create theirs and I did try that. It worked alright but it was stiff and hard to use. My second attempt was made with some heavy gauge trimmer line and masking tape and it worked a little better than the original but I still had to deal with the sticky tape and my hair is too thin and fine for me to risk much of it breaking off.

My third attempt was with a much thinner gauge trimmer line and a piece of heat shrink tubing for a handle. This created a smooth handle and a flexible tool that worked perfectly for my hair. This method is a bit more expensive than the coat hanger method but I am MUCH more satisfied with the result and I still only used materials that I already had on hand.

I made a video showing the process in more detail (below) but it is pretty simple:

Materials:

1. Scissors.
2. Heat source (I used a candle but you can use a heat gun or something similar).
3. Trimmer Line.
4. Heat Shrink Tubing. 

Steps:

1. Cut a piece of trimmer line approximately 12" long.
2. Select a piece of heat shrink tubing large enough to fit both ends of the piece of trimmer line snugly. 
3. Insert the two ends of the trimmer line into the heat shrink tubing making sure to stagger the ends slightly so that you have a finer point on the end of the tool for styling. 
4. Gently heat the heat shrink tubing by passing it over the flame so that it shrinks down and holds both ends of the trimmer line. 
5. Enjoy your finished piece!

Enjoy!