Silhouette Cameo Craft Cutter

The Silhouette Cameo is a digital craft cutting tool. It cuts designs from cardstock, vinyl and other materials. You can buy digital designs to use with the Silhouette Cameo or you can create your own. 

The Silhouette Cameo was released in November 2011 and I've already got mine. It's my Christmas gift, but I got it early to do some Christmas crafting. 

When choosing a craft cutter it's important to work out which features will be most important to. Here are what I consider to be the key features of the Silhouette Cameo:

• The Silhouette Cameo can cut designs up to 12" wide and 10 feet long. I haven't tried to cut anything 10 feet long, but it might come in handy on day. Being able to cut 12" square cardstock is very useful though. (Earlier Silhouette cutting machines were narrower.)
• The Silhouette Cameo connects to a computer via a USB cable - then you can just use it pretty much like a printer. 
• There is also an SD card slot on the machine. This is great if you want to take your craft cutter with you without also taking a laptop. 
• You can replace the blade with pens if you want to draw instead of cut. This is a handy feature for adding lettering and other details to your designs. 

You can watch the overview video to see the Silhouette Cameo in action. 

One of the key things to check about a craft cutter is how you get get designs to cut on the machine. For the Silhouette Cameo you have a number of options:

• The Silhouette Cameo comes with a library of designs and fonts that you can use to get started. 
   
• You can buy designs from the Silhouette online store. These are digital designs that you can download immediately into the Silhouette Studio software. 
   
• You can draw your own designs with the Silhouette Studio software which comes with the machine. 
   
• You can use True Type fonts (TTF) which are installed on your computer. There are lots of free and commercial fonts available. 
   
• You can upgrade to the Silhoutte Designer software which has more drawing features and the ability to import SVG. 
   
• You can use free or paid for SVG files which gives you access to lots of designs. (Provided you have Silhouette Designer or one of the alternatives for using SVG files.)
   
• I use a mixture of bought designs and ones I create using the Inkscape vector graphics tool. Silhouette Studio actually looks much easier to use than Inkscape, but I don't really want to have to learn another tool when I already use Inkscape for other things. 

The Silhouette Cameo has a glossy white and brushed silver case. It looks very modern and sleek which I really like. I'm not into cutesey craft tools! This probably shouldn't be the most important consideration but I'm going to see this machine every day, so it does matter to me. 

The machine seems solidly built. The control buttons all work well, the display is clear and the machine is straightforward to use. It's very easy to adjust the blade depth and switch between pens and the blade. (I was concerned that this would be tricky and I wouldn't bother switching - not the case at all.)

I bought my Silhouette Cameo mostly for cutting cardstock. I do a lot of crafts with my kids and thought it would be fun to be able to cut things out for craft sessions and decorating for birthdays and holidays. 

I was amazed what I realized all the other things you can do:

• Cut out magnetic paper to make magnets. (You can print on it first with an Inkjet Printer.)
• Cut adhesive cardstock to make stickers. (I've just ordered some - when you've got kids in the house you can't have enough stickers!)
• Create heat-transfers for clothing. 
• Creat vinyl art for your home and possessions - anything with a smooth surface is a target!
• Create rhinestone designs
• Create vinyl stencils that you can use with fabric paint or paint walls. 
• Make 3D card crafts like party favor boxes and 3D cards and lanterns. Set the blade to the right depth and you can score edges that are to be folded. 
• Draw designs using pens.