how to draw a tree in the silhouette cameo
One of the gifts that I made for Christmas this year was a family tree. I found an SVG to create the perfect tree to fit our extended family. There are a few design features in Silhouette Studio that helped to make the creative process much easier. These features can be utilized for many applications. Now, Let's Go Silhouetting….
I found an SVG which can be utilized to make a perfect family tree. The Grow a Family Tree by Clean Cut Creative has the components to create the family tree exactly as needed. After writing out the family tree for my in-laws and asking my dear husband to double-check it for accuracy, I opened the Grow a Family Tree SVG in Silhouette Studio. It is Grouped together and needs to be Ungrouped to utilize the various parts individually. I also brought in an image from the PDF to help with visualization while I was creating. This image remained out of the way where I could use it for reference.
One of the most helpful features of Silhouette Studio that I utilized while designing was the ability to move the Center of Rotation. For every leaf, I moved the Center of Rotation to the bottom of the stem. By doing so, I was able to place the base of the stem on the appropriate leaf and rotate the entire leaf to my liking without having the base move.
A second feature of Silhouette Studio that saved lots of time is the ability to drag a copy. I could leave the "pallet" of original shapes in the grey Holding Area to the side of my design area and use the Alt + Click & Drag shortcut to bring a copy of each item to my Workspace. Easy! I avoided lots of the multiple-clicks of Copy, Paste, and then moving.
I also found it helpful to create a shape for the tree top. Mine was an Ellipse that was Center Aligned with the trunk. This helped me keep my design uniform and symmetrical.
When the designing was done, I used the Select by Color feature in the software to easily select and group similar parts. The darker green tree parts were the only parts Welded because they were overlapping.
To help with properly sizing the names, I created a Text box and typed the names in a column. This helped me to visualize the longest name(s): Mary Ann and Brantley.
The longest name is used to determine the font size needed. Once again, I grabbed a leaf (Alt + Click & Drag) to use as a guide in sizing the names. I used the suggested Cooper Hewitt font, Bold and sized it to 17 pt. All the names were Ungrouped and then each individual name was selected and made into a Compound Path. Each name was placed on the appropriate leaf and then the names were grouped with the dark green part of the tree.
"The Foster Family" label was created. After making it a Compound Path, I could center it in a rectangle that could be used to easily align the name within the space allotted. After Aligning, I could remove the rectangle, leaving "The Foster Family" label perfectly centered.
When it was time to cut, Cutting by Fill Color made the job much easier. However, for the birds, fruits, and hearts, there was so much empty space around them, that I just could not waste that much HTV. So I Nested those small parts together into a much smaller area for cutting and placed them where needed when I pressed.
I cut the design from Siser EasyWeed HTV (Aqua Green for the tree, Mint for the additional leaves, Hibiscus for the fruit, Coral for the hearts, and Sky Blue for the birds) and applied it to a Cotton Canvas Pillow Cover (in Candlelight Ivory) from Craft Chameleon.
The finished project was a beautiful testament to a growing family, and a perfect gift for a terrific woman who loves to work on her family's genealogy. Do you know anyone who would appreciate the gift of a family tree?
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Source: https://letsgosilhouetting.com/index.php/2018/12/29/designing-a-family-tree-in-silhouette-studio/
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