In the midst of Holiday card making, I decided to make a set of tags as well. I wanted them to be foiled and printed with a background rather than just plain white cardstock. And I wanted them cut on the Silhouette Curio. I’m not sure why I made it so complicated for myself, but since they came out cute I’m now happy I made them!
Generally when you foil at home, you print a design using a laser printer in black and white and then run the print with the foil placed over the image (foil side up) through a foiling machine. The machine uses heat to allow the foil to adhere to the laser toner, and on my machine I sandwich the image and foil in between two scrap pieces of paper so that the foil doesn’t stick to the machine. Some people use a laminator (it must be a hot laminator, not a cold one like the Xyron), but I have never tried it with a laminator.
Years ago, I figure out how to get a colored background for the foiled prints. The trick is NOT to print in color on the laser printer. The foil will stick to some of the color, and all of the black, and usually look like a big mess. Instead, print your backgrounds on an inkjet printer, and then run that through the laser printer with just the image you want foiled printed in black. If you use Photoshop or another program that allows layers, you can keep both in the same file. The background image is positioned on one layer that can be visible for the inkjet print, and a separate layer with the foil image which can be set to visible for printing on the laser.
This year I also wanted to cut the foiled designs with my Silhouette, because I didn’t have a die for my Accucut machine that worked well with the images. So I had to do a print and cut.
Silhouette Design Studio allows for layers (you might need to purchase an upgrade to Business Edition for that capability) so I brought in the colored design in on one layer. I then placed the image that I wanted foiled on a separate layer. I used the Page Setup Panel for to turn on Registration Marks so that I could do a Print and Cut from this file.
The final layer contained the lines for the cutting of the tags.
NOTE: I have another post where I discuss trying to align the laser print over the Inkjet print if you are running into issues. I keep that one updated (mostly for me, haha). You may have different printers, but it might give you some ideas of things to try.
Here is a step by step in Silhouette Design Studio for the background printed, laser foiled, cut out tags…
Step number 1- I brought in a background image and copied the design to fill the page. I did not trace these images or anything like that. All of these images were placed on a single layer. I used the Page Setup panel to turn on Registration marks as mentioned earlier. Since I was cutting out the background images, I printed the registration marks with these images on my inkjet printer right from Silhouette Design Studio.
Step 2- I brought in a separate image that I wanted foiled and positioned those over the backgrounds. All of these images were placed on a different layer. Again they were not traced. In this case, I had to position the image slightly lower than the background to get them to line up with the background. I am sure it is a margin issue that could perhaps be fixed with a printer setting, but since nudging by 3 (down arrow key) worked for me I went with that. In the second part of this tutorial, I do these first couple of steps slightly differently.
Step 3- At this point I turn visibility off for the inkjet backgrounds layer. In this instance I turned off Registration Marks before I printed these laser images. If you read my earlier post on Print and Cut, you can see how I resolved an issue with Print and Cut for laser printed images. You will need this for the second method, but since I had printed the registration marks with the inkjet images I could turn them off here. Unless your printers line up exactly when printing, you only want to print the registration marks once. You can do it with the inkjet as I did in this case, but you will see why that doesn’t always work in the second tutorial.
Step 4- The paper with the inkjet printed images is placed in the Laser printer- you will need to figure out which direction your paper needs to be placed so that the images in this step print over the background correctly. For my HP Laserjet Pro, I use the front tray and the paper goes in top first, printed side up. Yours may be different. Then I go back to Silhouette Design Studio, make sure the background images (and, in this case, registration marks) are turned off, so only the layer with the images for the laser printer is visible. Note that the cutting images can show as long as the line style is set to 0px because that won’t print. Then I print again from Design Studio, this time using the laser printer.
Step 5- Finally, on the third layer the tag cutting lines were placed. I made these tags by simply drawing an oval, changing the size to match the background, and then using the knife tool to slice it across the bottom. Then I massaged the points to have it line up with the background.
Step 6- This third layer is set to visible, and the Registration Marks are turned back on, so they will be used for the cutting step. Don’t forget this step! 🙂
Step 7- I go to the send tab and choose the correct cut settings etc and the tags will be cut!
Here is the final view of the tags after the tags are cut…
Step 8- I take the tags and run them with foil placed face up through my foil machine and I get pretty foiled tags! In this case, I used red foil as you can see in the close up.
So this all worked for the example above. However, a couple of days later I was working with a different design, and the cuts were off from the design I had printed. In this next example, the cutting was to be done around the laser printed image instead of the inkjet printed backgrounds. So the registration marks needed to be printed during the laser print rather than the inkjet print.
Step 1- I pulled in some backgrounds to Silhouette Design Studio. Again all of these are on one layer, and in this case registration marks are not turned on. As before, these images are not traced. They are just placed onto a layer.
Important Note– I cut out a section where the Registration marks would be printed. I turned them on briefly to make sure they wouldn’t be printed over by the backgrounds. Since it looked like they would be, I used the knife tool to slice out the section that would cover the registration marks. Then the Registration Marks should be turned off again.
Inkjet Backgrounds No Silhouette Registration Marks
Step 2- From Design Studio I print to my inkjet printer.
Step 3- the images to be foiled are dragged into Silhouette Design Studio and placed on a separate layer. I now turn on Registration Marks in the Page Setup panel.
Step 4- At this point I turn visibility off for the inkjet background layer.
Step 5- I place the inkjet printed paper into the laser printer as described earlier and print the visible layer to the laser. In this example make sure your registration marks are turn ON in this step!
Step 6- I trace the laser images and use outline to get the cut lines for the laser printed images. You may need to work on this a bit depending on how intricate your design is. Once again, the cut lines are placed on their own layer.
Step 7- I go to the Send panel to set up the outlines to be cut for the correct paper settings and send to be cut.
Once again if you have trouble with the Silhouette Curio recognizing the registration marks, please see this post here.
The following image shows what happened when I printed the Registration marks with the inkjet background in this case (bottom set). The cut lines are way off. So when cutting around the background image you should print the registration marks along with the background images on the inkjet printer during that step. In this case, I was cutting around the laser printed image, so I had to print the registration marks when printing the laser images.
And finally, the cut images can be foiled.
Whew! There are a lot of steps for these projects but well worth the effort! Hope this tutorial helps! Enjoy!!
And if you do a lot of foiling and have left over foiled pieces, I will show you what to do with those in a future video!
