In this Silhouette Studio® tutorial, we will create a simple card design with holiday phrases. We will be using the Text tool and the Layers panel. Feel free to use the fonts and colors of your choice. The ones used in the sample project are just suggestions.

The design will be the phrase Have a Very Merry Christmas, with the words in different Christmas colors. The text will be placed on one layer and the cutting line will be on a separate layer. We will tell the Silhouette to not cut the design on the text layer but to only cut the 5 x 7 inch cutting line on the other layer. This will give us a nice 5 x 7 inch Christmas card.

Open Silhouette Studio Business Edition® and let's get started. We will use the words in the phrase to create a shape of a Christmas tree. Let's start at the bottom and work our way up to the star on the top of the tree.

1. Start a new greeting card project. From the top menu, click File - New Project Window.


2. From the pop-up window, select the Card and click the Start button.

You should get the default 5 x 7 inch card on the default 12 x 12 inch cutting area. Let's use that for now (see screenshot).


3. Add the first word which is Christmas. Drag the word onto the right panel of the card and towards the bottom.


4. Double-click and select the text. In the Quick Assess Toolbar, set the Font to Noteworthy, the Font size to 55 pts, the Font Style to Bold and the Color Fill to the darkest red swatch (see screenshot).


5. Repeat the previous steps to add the word Merry. This time, set the Font to Coiny, the Font Size to 55 pts and the Fill color for the word to the darkest green. Repeat this for the word Very. Add the text above the Christmas (see screenshot).


6. The next two words, which will be Have a, will be on the same line above the word Very. Set the Font back to Noteworthy, the Font Size to 36 pts and the color to the same dark red used for Christmas. Add the words (see screenshot).

Now we will add the star at the top of the tree.


7. Select the Star Flexishape and draw a star above the Have a.


8. With the star still selected, open the Fill Color section of the Fill panel. At the bottom of the panel, set the color to gold (DCBE44) (see screenshot).

In the sample project, I used the string of lights and the candy canes that were from another tutorial (see link below). If you wish to add these to the project, click File - Merge to open them in to the project. Place the lights between the two words Very and Merry. Place the candy canes at the top corners.


9. Using one of the Flexishapes, draw a base under the tree. Change the Stroke color to black.

At this point, we are still working on a 12 x 12 inch cutting area. But we need to print the card before we cut out the card. So we need to switch to a Letter size cutting area.


10. Open the Page Setup panel and set the Media to Letter. You will see the cutting area change to Letter sized. But it is in Landscape orientation (see screenshot).


11. To switch to Portrait orientation, click the Portrait icon (see screenshot).

Now we need to switch our design to Portrait orientation also.


12. Select everything including the card cutting line.


13. In the Rotate section of the Transform panel (see screenshot), click the 90 degrees counter-clockwise icon. Drag the design to center it on the cutting area (see screenshot).

We don't need to use the Registration Marks because we will not be cutting out the words themselves. We just need to cut out the card. But we need to print the card first.


14. From the top menu, click File - Print to print your card.

Now we need to cut out the card. But first we turn off the other layers for cutting.


15. Open the Layer section of the Send panel. Uncheck the boxes to turn off all layers except for the one containing the cutting line (see screenshot).


16. To cut out the card, click the Send button at the bottom of the panel.

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The Silhouette Cameo 5 was supplied to me by Silhouette America.
Silhouette, Silhouette Studio, Silhouette Connect, PixScan, Silhouette CAMEO and Silhouette Portrait are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Silhouette America, Inc. Product screen shot(s) reprinted with permission from Silhouette America®, Inc.