I get occasional emails from Jessica Sprague, because I’ve done one or two of her online classes and rather enjoyed them.  One of the recent emails was about a new series of lessons about working with a Silhouette or Craft Robo, as it used to be called.

 

 

I received my machine as a birthday present in 2010 and love working with it.  But I’ve never really explored its full potential, I’ll admit.  Still, the email about the class came as I was busy with other things and I forgot all about it.

Last week, however, a new email arrived, about a “next steps” class and this time, I thought I’d go for it. Reading the class notes though, I was reminded of my own failings – you know, the bit about “wanting to do everything perfectly and preferably in the next five minutes”.  Maybe I’d better do Class One before diving into Class Two?

 

 

As it turns out, I’m glad I did.  I scooted through it pretty quickly, since I was actually familiar with most of the functions and the processes.  But not only did I learn one or two tricks, I also increased my confidence about getting the machine to do exactly as I wished, to place the designs correctly on the page and to avoid some of the nasty surprises that have characterised some of my efforts.

 

 

The final project, bringing together all the processes we’ve learned during the class, was a book.  OK, perhaps I didn’t really need another little book of familiar photographs and suchlike, but it was a useful way to collate all those samples and rather satisfying to create.

 

 

In particular, I was pleased with the concertina spine, created using a piece of card cut and scored using the Silhouette.  Though I’ve made similarly constructed books before, I was glad of the precision the machine brought to the process and even though the end result is only 99% precise (user error?) the completed book is quite pleasing.

 

Rather than cross post my photo of the day, get a different look at the finished book here