Cameo Silhouette–My New Toy

cameo About two months ago, a co-worker brought small pumpkins into the office and gave us each one. What was different about these small pumpkins was that each of the pumpkins had a black vinyl sticker of a witch on it. How cool was that? What was even better is she told me she had made the stickers herself using this amazing tool called a “Silhouette Cameo”. I had never heard of a “Silhouette Cameo” before and after doing some research on it and its rival the “Cricut”, I made a somewhat hasty decision to purchase one. The Cameo comes with a choice of a “vinyl starter kit” and a “glass etching starter kit”. I chose the vinyl starter kit and within a couple days, I had my brand spankin’ new toy. I have to admit I was somewhat intimidated by it and left it sitting unopened in its box for a couple weeks. After watching a number of You Tube videos on using the cameo, I finally got the courage to open the box and set it up. Much to my delight, the learning curve on the software wasn’t difficult because it does use a lot of the same concepts that Adobe does in its software programs. And I was off and running. It wasn’t long before I decided I needed to have the etching cream for glass wear too.

Here are some of my first projects:

My first attempts at making a stencil and a vinyl transfer. I just used a couple pieces of board my son had cut from his deck. The one on the left is a stencil, the one on the right a vinyl transfer (meaning the letters themselves are actually vinyl whereas the stencil letters are painted).

Then I got braver and tried my etching cream. It definitely makes a difference what the glass surface is and the size and shape of the monograms. These “on the rocks” glasses came out very well using a round block lettered monogram. A cursive monogram on a wine glass did not turn out nearly as well. Try as I might, I could not keep the etching cream from leaching beneath the stencil.

Drink bottles for the grandkids, vinyl transfers.