In addition to the standard PNG files, the new Folkart Love digital craft kit has print and cut files for use with the Silhouette die cut machine included right in the kit. I thought I’d share a little about the cut files.

In this sample card, I used the paisley border and the rooster print and cut files from the kit.  All the papers used were printed form the kit also.

When you open the .studio Silhouette files in your Silhouette Studio software, you’ll see a file like this:

You’ll see that the image color extends beyond the cut line – providing bleed so you’ll never have any unprinted edges on your cut image.  You can print and cut the image as is, but I find it easier to copy and paste all the images, tags and borders I want into a new document and then just print and cut 1 sheet of paper.   The image and cut file are grouped – so its easy to select them both, copy and then paste into a new document.

Remember that you can re-size any of them – just make sure to re-size the image and cut line together using the corner of the bounding box to keep things proportional.  I’d also recommend re-sizing your pasted copy so you don’t accidentally overwrite the original.  You can make the original larger, but if you make it a lot bigger, you may begin to lose print quality.

To make files easy to find, the tags are all grouped together by shape in one file – just select and copy the one you need.

For my card, I printed and cut the paisley border and the rooster.  I also printed blocks of the patterned papers in the kit to make the rest of the card elements (the lace circle and scalloped image mats are cutting files too – coming soon!)

I use Brochure paper to print on because the colors will be much more vibrant than on card stock.  Then I just simply assemble the card.

The butterfly card was made the same way – I just folded the butterfly a little to pop it up and put a ribbon through the ribbon slide.

I’m having so much fun with my Silhouette cutter – I can hardly stand it!