My New Silhouette Cameo Cutting Machine

04 Jan My New Silhouette Cameo Cutting Machine

New year, new cutting machine. Actually, I bought a new cutting machine back in November but have been too busy to open the box.

Why did I get a new cutting machine? I currently own the Klic-N-Kut Element, which is almost 4 years old. It still works pretty well, but it's a little finicky, so I thought it was a good time to get a new machine. The second reason for getting a new machine is so that I can recommend a machine for those of you who want to make my cards, but do not want to hand cut them. Some of my cards are pretty intricate and would require a lot of patience to make by hand. Another reason to get a cutting machine, which is the initial reason I got one, is to make many cards. I bought my cutting machine to make invitations for my wedding. The money I saved making my own wedding invitations paid for the cutting machine. Also, many of you have asked me what machine I would recommend using, and since the Klic-N-Kut Element is outdated and can't be bought anymore, I wanted to recommend a more recent model.

Why did I get the Silhouette Cameo over the others? There are quite a few new cutting machines out there. After doing some research, I narrowed my choice between the Silhouette Cameo and the Klic-N-Kut Zing. Both have great features and come in a really nice small form factor. I chose the Silhouette Cameo for 2 reasons. First, it is a lot cheaper than the Zing, so I'd rather recommend a machine that is more affordable. Secondly, I already have a Klic-N-Kut, and can make cutting files that will work with it, so I wanted to get a different machine so I can offer another option for anyone who didn't have a Klic-N-Kut. I'm sure the Klic-N-Kut Zing works well.

What comes with the Silhouette Cameo? I created a quick video on unboxing the Silhouette Cameo that you can view here:

The Silhouette Cameo comes with the following items:

• Silhouette Cameo cutting machine
• Power cord
• USB cord
• Cutting blade
• Cutting mat
• $10 credit for www.silhouetteamerica.com
• An instructional video CD
• Silhouette Studio software
• Quick start guide
• Registration card and precautions information sheet

Here is an image of what came in the box:

I thought it would be a good idea to show you what the Silhouette Cameo looks like next to my old Klic-N-Kut Element.

The element actually weighs a lot more because, not only is it bigger, its housing is made of metal. The Cameo is a lot lighter because it's made mostly of plastic.

So here's my first impression of the Silhouette Cameo after having cut my first template with it. It works really well and is able to cut very fine details. There are a lot fewer controls to fiddle around with than my old cutting machine, which makes it a lot easier to use. We'll see how well it works over time. The cutting mat is already tacky, which is nice since you don't need to fiddle around with spray glues. But that also means you can't control how tacky you want the mat to be. The Silhouette Studio software looks slick but seems somewhat limited. I'll have to play it a little more. It currently does not read .pdf files but it can read .dxf files. I'll have to convert my templates to .dxf or .studio(Silhouette's file format) files in order for the machine to cut my templates. I may recommend a third party cutting software like Make the Cut or Sure Cuts A Lot. Overall, it worked well out of the box.

If you are considering getting a cutting machine to avoid cutting my templates out hand, you can buy the Silhouette Cameo from Amazon.com or from Scrapbook.com.

For those of you who already have cutting machines, I'd like to know what machines you use and what file formats your machines can accept.