Hi Everyone!! I'm Mandy and I blog over at the super-awesome Sugar Bee Crafts - come check out all the fun over there!

I just tried the coolest thing with my Silhouette Cameo - cutting a hand-drawn design!

Here's how it went down....one of the girls from church wanted a sticker for her new MacBook (um, all the middle schoolers in our school district were issued one - what?!) and so she came over with a sketchbook where she had drawn a design:

At first I thought we'd find a similar design in the Silhouette Online store, but it'd be much awesomer to use her hand-drawn one. I had seen a recent similar situation on the Silhouette Blog and decided to give it a try - and it really worked!

So - - first, take a picture of the artwork and get it on your computer - I just used my phone and emailed it to myself and then downloaded the attachment.

Now, when in the Silhouette software, open up the image (when browsing make sure it's for "all file types" and not just Silhouette files). Then you can erase some of the background around the design.

Then open up the "Trace" option and click "select trace area" and draw the rectangle around your image. It'll highlight what is inside as what it will trace. Then uncheck the box that says "high pass filter". And click "trace".

That'll do it! Move the image out of the way and it'll leave behind the portion that it traced - pretty cool, right?! Then just cut it like normal out of vinyl or your material of choice.

I love that you can tell everyone that your design was HAND-DRAWN!! A one-of-a-kind work of art! Perfect.

Hope to see you over at www.SugarBeeCrafts.com - where you can find lots more ideas of Silhouette projects