Vinyl: Silhouette Decal

The use of red vinyl for the house numbers makes them pop off the black paint.

In this workshop you will be introduced to Google Image search, Inkscape's Trace Bitmap function for a clean outline, and Silhouette Studio for running the CAMEO cutting tool.

We will be using a solid color piece 9"x6" vinyl.

Searching for an image

Start by going to http://images.google.com/. Google Image search is a fast, quick way to search for images. Your search should be similar to the example below, as in, an animal and the word silhouette. Using silhouette in the beginning will make this easy. You can also try the word vector, but you may find silhouette yields more results.

In the image search results, we have optional suggested searches, such as cute, love bird, and bird in flight. Below that we have many images to preview. The images in the orange boxes will be clean simple cuts on the CAMEO. The image of the tree and birds together will be a more detailed cut, meaning it will take longer, and there will be many small pieces to it. For today, please choose an image which has a few basic, mostly solid parts.

Below are some examples of silhouettes which would be a simple cut and easy to transfer. Feel free to use an image with a bit more detail.

You may notice some of the images have watermarks. A watermark signals ownership or copyright protection, and don't assume that because an image doesn't have a watermark that it isn't protected. Fair use allows copyrighted images to be used for nonprofit educational purposes. This article points out some key issues, and there are many books in the library to help you determine if and how you can use copyrighted images.

Saving and Opening

When you click on an image in Google Image Search to preview it, click "View Original Image".

You'll have a new window with your selected image. Using the RIGHT mouse button, click and select Save As, or Save Target As (these vary by browser). You may save it to the Desktop. Warning: if you want to save this file for another day, you'll have to save it on a thumb drive, upload it to your cloud storage, or email it to yourself.

Open in Inkscape

Now open Inkscape then go to File > Open, and select your animal which should be on the desktop. Or right click your file and select Inkscape.

Inkscape will ask if you want to Embed or Link the image. Select Embed.

Go to File > Document Properties

In General, next to Default Units, open the drop down and select Inches

Tracing

Using the Arrow, or Selection Tool, make sure your image is active. It should look something like this with the border and arrows pointing outward:

Go to Path > Trace Bitmap

Your settings should be close to those in the image below. For scans, 4 is a good number, but you can go higher or lower depending on your image. Select Grays, and Remove background. Click Update for a preview. (If you do not see a Preview, your image is probably not active -- go back, use the selection tool, and click on the image.) Click X to close the dialog.

You'll see multiple sets of the dashed line because there are multiple scans of the silhouette. You're on the right path! (Get it? It's a vector joke.)

With your object selected, go to Path > Break Apart.

Now go to Object > Ungroup.

You'll have to sort through the scans, keeping the version with the smoothest, cleanest lines.

Resize your image. We are using vinyl sized 9"x6", so you can make the longer side up to 8.500", but the shorter side should be no more than 5.500". We want to leave room at the margins.

Saving

Now let's save your file. Go to Save As and select the Desktop. For type, select Desktop Cutting Plotter (AutoCAD DXF R14) (*.dxf).

We're ready to copy your file to a thumb drive and head over to the CAMEO cutter!

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