Quickutz Silhouette Digital Craft Cutter

The Quickutz Silhouette Digital Craft Cutter is an awesome addition to a scrapbooker's collection of tools. The size of a printer, the Silhouette sits next to your computer and connects through a USB outlet. For use, it must be set out from the wall, but when not in use, can be pushed back. The Silhouette uses dowloaded fonts and designs along with the computer to digital transfer it to the machine and cut them out. Basically, you open a program, select the design or font you want, edit it on screen and the Silhouette cuts it out.

The Silhouette comes with software, cables, blades, and a cutting sheet. 50 design dowloads are also already included. Downloads from the company directly are about $10. They are purchased through your software and an internet connection. Prepaid dowload cards are available from Quickutz dealers making downloads a fraction of the cost. For example, with a pre-paid card, 5 downloads is $30, compared to the $50 you would pay by paying as you go. The Silhouette also uses fonts already on your computer. You can use any font as long as it is a "true-type" font, meaning it will end in ".ttf" in your documents and dowloads. You can also dowload many true type fonts for free on the internet. A quick search of my computer before I bought the Silhouette told me I had 233 true type fonts already on my computer. You can also cut the downloads that are pre-loaded, ones you purchase, ones you create, and clip-art that is not copyrighted. .GSD files , .GST files, and DXF loaded images can also be cut.

Although expensive, the Silhouette is easy to use. It can also cut out and entire word at once, compared to traditional cheaper die cutters where you had to change dies with every letter. It comes with a blade and three colored ends to attach to the blade to make the depth of the blade different. This gives a variety in the papers it can use. The blades can cut paper, cardstock, vellum, vinyl film, specialty paper, sticker or adhesive-backed paper, iron-on transfer paper, and magnetic paper, making it incredibly versatile.