Cricut Silhouette with Sure Cuts a Lot.

The other day I posted about the Sure Cuts a Lot Program.

I have been wanting to use my Cricut more, and my yard sale sign plans just aren't cutting it with my creative craving.

Walking by the silhouettes I made of the kids (by hand) that hangs in our kitchen, I realized that I could be making silhouettes of everyone I know.

Or my pets.

Or other random things that I love.

All I need is Photoshop (Gimp or Inkscape work fine too) and my SCAL program.

Easy peasy.

{any of these photos can be enlarged by clicking on them}

Start with the photo you want to use.

Crop it to be just the subject you want the silhouette of.

Go to Filter > Extract and the Extract dialog window will pop open. Using the brush tool, I outlined the shape that I wanted to cut out along the edges. Then I filled the shape with the paint bucket to show the areas that I want to “keep.” When you outline, then fill, you’ll be able to click the “Preview” button to view the extraction. When finished, click “OK”.

His hair was a bit wonky and made his head shape alien-like rather than his regular ol' big head. To fix it for the sake of having a decent silhouette, I simply outlined to cut off some of his hair.

Then I filled the background with a contrasting color so that I can see how well the extraction did.

Then I played around with the brush tool and filled in (very carefully) all of the areas I missed. (I'm sure there's a fancy Photoshop way of doing this, but I have yet to figure it out.)

I then turned the photo into grayscale.

(This could easily be Step 1 if you have a subject with hair that isn't wonky.)

Then I changed the contrast to make the silhouette...umm...a silhouette.

{descriptive writing FAIL}

I then highlighted the background with the wand tool and filled it in with a shade of gray. You could use any color; this step will help define your final image later. After that, I used the wand tool to highlight his face. Then I used the brush tool to color everything black.

For the areas that didn't get highlighted, I simply used the brush tool alone and filled it in with black. (And for everything that I totally ruined using the black, I fixed on the opposite side using the gray.) Once the silhouette looked how I wanted, I used the wand tool to highlight the entire background and hit "delete" on my keyboard.

I resized the image to be around 3 inches and saved it to my desktop. (You can save yours in your "What On Earth Is Kimmie Making Me Attempt Now?" file.)

Then I opened my Sure Cuts a Lot program and clicked the little image of a tree to open my silhouette.

After it opened, I positioned it where I wanted it to cut, placed paper on my cutting mat, and clicked the little scissors button in SCAL.

And this is what I ended up with:

This is about 3" on thick scrapbook paper. I'll be using it for an upcoming project.

But wait.

There's more.

With the scrap I got from this silhouette:..

I realized that you could use freezer paper and make silhouettes on clothes, gift bags, purses, etc.

{his and hers pillowcases, anyone?!}

Or use vinyl and personalize dishes as a gift.

Or create wall stencils.

Seriously, the possibilities are endless.

I'm going to be posting a lot more ideas for your Cricut.

(And if you're just figuring out how to use your SCAL program, I will be posting more projects soon to help you get inspired. Woot for no cartridges and happy, endless creations!)

Happy Thursday.