Silhouette Tutorial Matching Colors with Traci

Hey Lori friends!

It’s Traci here with a tutorial for matching your Silhouette print & cuts to your favorite card stock. Have you ever created a print & cut, only to find that after you printed it, it really didn’t match the paper or card stock you were using? Maybe the greens were too blue, or the yellows were too orange? Well, there are a few ways to solve this problem, and today we are going to focus on matching your card stock.

Before we get started, I will add one disclaimer…much of this technique depends on the quality and level of the ink in your printer. If you are low on ink, the colors may not be as true as you might want them to be. But I encourage you to try it and see how it works for you!

I use many brands of card stock in my projects, but for the purposes of this tutorial, I am going to use Bazzill. The reason for this is because in order to use the Silhouette software to match your colors, you need to know the RGB code for each color. Bazzill provides a few different ways for you to look up a color’s RBG code. They have a paid app in the iTunes store that I use. You can use the app to search a card stock name and find the RGB code. Another way is to purchase Bazzill swatch books — these have the RGB code listed right on the swatch. I am in no way affiliated with the Bazzill company, and I am sure there are ways to find out the RGB codes for other brands as well.

So let’s get started:

First, pull up the shape you want to use in the software and resize it if needed.

I’m making a card, so I resized this cute subway art to fit the front of my card. (I later made it a bit smaller).

To resize, click on the Scale menu to specify dimensions.

Next, right-click on the shape to “ungroup” the pieces if you want them to be different colors.

Go to the Fill Color menu (little paint bucket icon) and find the “advanced options” at the bottom of that screen.

Next, highlight one piece of the shape that you want to color, and then input the RGB code for your card stock in the boxes on the advanced screen.

Hit enter, and your card stock color will pop into your shape.

Repeat the step above by entering the RGB codes for each piece of the shape.

My RBG codes included values for Bazzill Garnet, Parakeet, Hillary, and Black card stocks.

Next print the shape. I am not cutting this shape out with my silhouette so I just sent the image to my printer.

If you have a shape to cut out after printing, be sure to follow the guidelines for a traditional print and cut.

I also repeated the steps above to change the colors on this adorable “Jolly” label. Just be sure to

ungroup all of the individual pieces of the shape to change each color.

And here is my final card and ornament box. Although hard to tell online, the colors match very well, especially

the greens 🙂 Have fun trying this on your next print & cut!

Traci

www.artsyalbums.com

Lori Whitlock Shapes:

Christmas Subway Art

3d Box with Scallop Band Ornament

Christmas Labels

10 Comments

How awesome is this?! I had no idea that cardstocks had RGB codes, not to mention there is a specific way to use them in the Silhouette software. Thanks for the tutorial. 😉 Your projects turned out cute too!

I loved the info on matching paper and printer ink using RGB numbers.
You mentioned a app for paper names to rgb numbers. What is the name of the app
Thank you

This is awesome! Now I just need to figure out how to get your digital collections to match your non-digital paper collections. Then I could use the digital elements with the regular paper.

I’m with Patsy, what is the specific app that you use? Love this idea as I am always trying to hold the paper up to my screen to see if I can get the best color match. Thanks for the great tip.

Thanks for a great tutorial! I had no idea you could match colors like that! Awesome information!

Thanks for the grea tutorial! I had no idea you could match colors like that! Awesome information!

Thanks everyone! Glad you liked the info! The app I use from iTunes is Bazzill’s app. There is a small fee for the app but worth it in my opinion 🙂 I checked with American Crafts and was told that they don’t have a list of RGB codes. They did say however, that if we called customer service they would try to help. Have fun with this!

Great tutorial! When I got my printer last Christmas, I went to http://www.realcolorwheel.com and requested a chart of colors that I printed on several different papers that I commonly use. There is also a “key” that gives the RGB codes for each color in the chart.
I also made a chart sampling the preset color swatches in the SSDE & IrfanView programs & printed them on the papers I like to use for print & cuts.
I keep all these charts in a notebook for easy reference. When I need to match a color, I pull out the charts & find the best match. Well worth the time spent printing them out!