"Farmers Market" Sign using Silhouette Cameo

Not too long ago, the hubs finally broke down, after my begging for weeks, and purchased me a Silhouette Cameo

I didn't need it for scrapbooking, but for making signs.  Sometimes using graphite tracing paper doesn't cut it and I wanted to try something new.  

New is the key word here!

Besides the Silhouette Cameo, you will need to purchase a roll of the adhesive Stencil Vinyl for a project like this.

You can use other adhesive vinyl for this project (I did - won't do it again), but the stencil vinyl comes with transfer tape that's a stinking lifesaver if you don't want the adhesive to stick to everything coming and going.  Put it this way - it took me five minutes to lay the stencil vinyl down, and it took nearly an hour to put the regular vinyl down on a previous sign I did because it was sticking to everything and I was desperately trying to keep the letters from tearing in the process.  

Consider yourself warned - Get the stencil vinyl for this project!

For my sign, I used an old cabinet front that I pick up from my "supplier" here in town.  I put two coats of ASCP in Old White first.

Now in Silhouette Studio (software comes with the Cameo), you can design your image using the Silhouette fonts, fonts I have on Photoshop, images on the Silhouette online store, or your own images that you get from the internet or that you already have!

This is why I love this machine and I sold my Cricut machine because of it!

Once I had my image, I simply insert the stencil vinyl into the machine and it cuts (as oppose to prints), the image into my vinyl.  All that's left is to place the transfer tape onto the front side of the vinyl, and peel the adhesive off the backside of the stencil vinyl.

Now place the stencil vinyl onto my sign and and peel the transfer tape off the stencil:

Now I'm ready to paint my letters in!

BTW, the adhesive is tacky, but not so much that it will pull your paint up.

  

That is, unless you use the regular adhesive vinyl and in that case..... it will.

I use ASCP in Graphite to stencil in my letters.  Do this as light or dark as you want it according to how much you want it distressed.

Gently peel off the stencil vinyl and WA-LAA!

Perfect freaking letters!

For the next step, I did use graphite transfer paper, but only because I am a beginner at the Silhouette and couldn't figure out how to get this next image to cut.  It kept cutting around the edge.  So I printed out my picture instead and went to work tracing.

Didn't matter how I did it because it turned out pretty cool looking after I finished:

After a light coat of clear wax and some light distressing as well.....

Then a little dark wax here..... 

and there......

I had a Farmers Market sign!

Is the Silhouette Cameo worth the price you say?  Yeah, oh HECK yeah!  I will post later on a sign I made using regular adhesive though.  The sign turned out great, but using the wrong adhesive nearly had me throwing it out the window!  Needless to say, I did a bit of stocking up on the stencil vinyl.

"Is 25 rolls enough in one order?"