Category: Silhouette Cameo

Empowering Girls in the Makerspace

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Feminists Unite!

Next to sustainability, empowering girls in the Makerspace has been my focus for this school year. This initiative came after seeing how girls were using the makerspace during the first year of operation. They were building interesting creations but they generally chose to experiment with more traditional crafting materials. I’m totally for this but I wanted to find a way to create a bridge between crafting and digital fabrication.

First sketches

To get this initiative off the ground, a Feminist Maker club was created. Using the term ‘feminist’ was landed upon because it’s inclusive and I wanted anyone who was interested to join. The first task for this club was to create logos for our identity. They first sketched out the designs and then I showed them how to use Illustrator so the designs could get transferred to various digital fabrication software. Each member designed their own and in the end we organically ended up with two design options. Currently we’re using the vinyl cutter and the embroidery machine to show off the logos. The next step to start thinking about how we want to utilize them i.e. keychains, t-shirts, totes or even jewelry!

Conditional Art Vinyl Experiments

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After designing vinyl initial stickers in Illustrator with my 7th and 8th graders, I wanted to continue their connection with using Illustrator, Silhouette Cameo and the process for applying vinyl to surfaces. The inspiration behind this project came again from Erin E. Riley’s The Art of Digital Fabrication.

My makerspace has a pretty big white wall which I’ve been waiting to utilize. After reading the section in Erin’s book on Design With Rules, I decided it would be a great jumping off point for what I wanted to do with my students.

After exposing students to Sol Lewitt and his use of Conditional Design blueprints, I gave each student a slip with a specific design rule on it. Each student then had to utilize this design rule in Illustrator, setting their project size to 12in X 12 in, the size of a vinyl sheet. Once students completed their design rule, they would use the Silhouette Cameo to cut out the design. Each student’s vinyl sheet was to then be transferred onto the wall I spoke of earlier.

Examples of rules were:

  • Fill your page with no more than 15 triangles. Using the “Line Segment Tool” fill the rectangles with lines. Make it so the lines in triangles next to each other are moving in the opposite direction.
  • Fill your page with acute triangles of varying sizes. Make sure an angle on each triangle connects with 1 additional triangle.
  • Fill your page with no more than 15 triangles. Using the “Line Segment Tool” fill the rectangles with lines. Make it so the lines in triangles next to each other are moving in the opposite direction.

One outcome I didn’t expect from this project was how having students add their designs to the wall would give them additional ownership of the space. They proudly share with each other which design is their own. The effect is also quite stunning. I’m looking forward to see how they use Silhouette for personal projects going forward.

Vinyl Name Logos in Illustrator

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This school year I’ve opened up my 7th and 8th grade classes with learning the basics of Illustrator to increase the skill level of my students. Last year we primarily used Tinkercad with the laser cutter because I didn’t have the time to focus on how to teach to students. Over the summer I made sure I strengthened by connection to Illustrator so it could be tool students could rely on.

I’m continually inspired by Erin E. Riley’s new book, The Art of Digital Fabrication, and decided students first Illustrator experiment will be designing their initials using as few shapes as possible to be cut out of vinyl on the Silhouette Cameo. I showed my students first how to manipulate shapes using shapes and the Direct Selection Tool. I also modeled how to add anchor points so they could truly sculpt shapes easily. The Pen Tool was also introduced to see how they can create different shapes depending on they movie their cursor. In the lesson, I used my own initials, as seen below to provide them a foundation.

Last year my students used the Silhouette Cameo a good amount, but they mainly used the trace tool to recreate royalty-free images they found on the internet. This year they are only allowed to use it on original designs since they all know Illustrator. It will be interesting to see if this new distinction will increase their creativity. Also now that the project is complete, the 7th and 8th graders all have their new initial stickers decorating the front of their MacBooks Airs, making for great PR! I decided to my design on my coffee mug because if it gets lost, I will be quite upset.