Do you love pinking shears? I do…. but somehow I almost never manage to have a “straight cut” card after trying to give it a decorative border… sometimes it looks more like one of our guinea pigs nibbled at the card, lol.

Fortunately the Cameo is coming to my rescue with that!

If you own the designer edition of the Silhouette Studio software you can just use the knife tool to cut all the fancy edges – but here I want to show you how to do it with the (free) standard version.

First open a new document and adjust the size of the paper according to what you want to cut. For this project I want to cut a set of index sized cards from colored paper to use them as lunchbox notes.

Next pick the ellipse tool and draw a circle (hold shift while drawing to make sure it’s a circle and not an ellipse). Mine has a diameter of 0.25 in.

 

Now open the “Replicate” window and copy the circle to the right and down until you have a frame of circles the size of the card you want to cut.

Here’s what mine looks like, I wanted it to be 2 x 3 in in size:

Pick the rectangle tool and draw a rectangle that is not bigger than the outside lines of the circles:

 

All that’s left to do now, is merging the rectangle with the circles – do that using the weld option in the “Modify” window (make sure you have everything that you want to weld selected):

 

 

 

Here’s the result: a beautifully scalloped notecard 😀

 

If you use a square instead of a circle you can create another look – turn the square by 45° using the “Rotate” window:

Repeat the same steps for duplicating and welding … and if you did not meet the desired size exactly (as I did here), just use the “Scale” window to enter the exact measurements you wish to have:

Now fill your paper with all the cards you want to cut and let the Cameo do the work 😀

It is a lot of fun to play with different shapes – here’s a look at a more intricate pattern. I achieved this by first welding three circles and then arranging and welding this shape as before:

Add more circles or flowers to make your pattern more intricate, if you like to:

 

I also do have a freebie for you again today 🙂 … for a faster way to get some fancy edges cut, I created some cut lines, inspired by the patterns of craft scissors, here’s one of them for you to play (click image to download):

***Download No Longer Available***

If you want more – you can find these in my store at the Studio (and they’re on sale for 1 $ each right now ;D )

Enjoy!