Frustrated With Your Silhouette Cameo?

I received my Silhouette Cameo for Christmas in 2018. I was super excited because I was going to be able to make my own stickers for my decorative planning.  I am a Happy Planner and LOVE it!!  My daughter got me started in April of 2018 and now I have quite a few stickers (see some of my other posts).  I have MAMBI sticker books as well as other sticker books, and a lot of stickers from Etsy Shops.  I still buy those, but am now able to make ones that I want specifically.  A lot of Etsy shops will take special orders, but if it's not something they think will sell, they aren't likely to do it, plus they receive a lot of requests.  I started working with my Cameo in January and just kept getting frustrated!  I watched a lot of YouTube videos and was still struggling after a few weeks.  I decided to take a break from it and focus on something else.  I ended up getting sick, then went on vacation, so my couple of weeks break turned into a 3 month break.  I'd forgotten a few things, so started watching videos again, and for some reason, things just started clicking.  I didn't expect the learning curve to be that difficult.  I think because it can do so many things, it's intimidating at first.  Plus, technology and I don't get along well.  It's rare that I can just sit down and do something.  Whether it's my cameo, laptop, printer, sewing machine....it doesn't matter.  They regularly act like I'm asking them to sweep the floor.  LOL  Keep on trying, you will eventually get there.  I tend to struggle with the simpilist of things sometimes.  Definitely don't give up.  Once you get it, you'll have a lot of fun.  Cutting the vinyl didn't seem to be as difficult, but I'm sure there is a learning curve with that as well if you are cutting anything other than just the regular vinyl.  Now that I have making stickers figured out and basic vinyl, I need to come up with something else that I want to try.  I want to make some decals for my car, so that will probably be next.  For vinyl, the weeding seems to be the most difficult.  I think it just takes practice.

Check out Silhouette School as well.  Melissa is awesome!  Follow Silhouette groups on Facebook, too, they can be very helpful and you'll see some awesome projects from fellow members.

Keep in mind that every machine is different and your settings will likely differ from the videos you watch.  Play around with them until you find what works for you.  I think the sticker paper I had made a difference as well.  I'm not sure what I had to begin with, but ended up buying Online Labels (the brand all of the YouTubers reccomended) from Amazon and they are perfect.  I also bought a new blade, so I'm not sure what the cure was, but I was glad it all finally came together.  Be patient and have fun!!

My settings for stickers:

I use a red line for the cutting line around my stickers, so I set it at a speed of 5 if the stickers are detailed, if not, then I set it at 7.  I set the force at 7.  I set the material on Sticker Paper, White

I use a blue line to cut around a group of stickers - I use a speed of 7, force of 20 and set it on card stock plain.  I finally created a "template" for stickers so that I have 4 sheets of stickers to a page.  It makes things a lot easier.  Once I'm finished creating my sticker, I copy/paste into my template and fill that "sticker sheet" with as many of those as I want.  It's a little hard to see, but the red line is the line that you need to stay within (that is set by the Cameo).  The blue lines are what the machine will use to cut through the paper to create your "sticker sheet" (I decided on the size of those....I created one, then copy/pasted the other 3 so they were all the same size).

Here is one I created for my work planner. This is what it looks like before you send it to the Cameo). The thick red lines are the cutting lines. 

My printer is an Epson XP-310.  When you put the sticker paper in the top, make sure the side guard is pushed in completely so that the stickers will print straight.  That was another issue I was having.  One side would like up perfectly when cutting the stickers, but the other side wouldn't.  Through trial and error, I figured it out.  I kept thinking it was something within Silhouette. 

This is not a sponsored post from any of the companies mentioned.