Making Stencils with Silhouette Cameo or Silhouette Portrait

The Cameo and Portrait from Silhouette are familiar fixtures on the craft cutting scene. The lightweight, portable Portrait is controlled by the same software as the larger and more capable Cameo: Silhouette Studio. But Silhouette Studio is licensed software, and both cutters can also be drive by Silhouette Go on an iPad or the same app on Android tablet.

No matter which machine you use, you’ll get great multi-layer stencil results using bridged SVGs from Bay Stencil. How do you get started?

Bridged Stencil SVG from Bay Stencil

Follow the simple steps in the video to create your bridged multi-layer stencil.

Upload your SVG to Silhouette Go

While you can also use the industry standard Silhouette Studio to import SVGs and cut on these machines, Silhouette Go is sufficient, and the principles are the same. You just have to group the components of each layer together as you import them, and then scale all the layers together.

Summary of Steps to Import Your SVGs into Silhouette Go from Bay Stencil:

1. import each layer into the canvas
2. group all shapes for that layer together after each import
3. then select all the grouped layers together
4. scale (stretch or shrink) the layers together to fit your canvas or cut area

BE CAREFUL NOT TO scale or stretch the layers independently!

What is Bay Stencil doing for me?

Why do I need Bay Stencil? While you can upload an image to Silhouette Go, you can’t create a bridged stencil in Silhouette Go. The bridges are what hold the islands in place in a stencil of, for example, a bulls-eye (or the letter ‘O’), and Bay Stencil’s magic is in creating and placing the bridges in just the right places!

What program are you cutting with?