How to give shapes a distressed look in silhouette studio with free downloadable distressed pattern

7/11/2019

Early on, when I had just started to venture in to the world of cutting, Silhouette cameo 2 was the first ever cutting machine I had purchased and I just loved it! And I still do quite honestly. In fact, being able to use silhouette studio without the need to have an internet connection was the driving force that led me in to buying it in the first place.

To be honest, both silhouette and Cricut (in own my personal experience) are great cutting machines and both have their pros and cons in their own rightful place. But we're not here to compare these too amazing machines(maybe we will in the future? Who knows?) but we're here to learn how to create a distressed look in silhouette studio. If you're a Cricut user and want to know how to achieve this look, head over here as I explain, step by step, how to do just that in design space.

So for all the silhouette users, lets get on with this tutorial!

How to give shapes a distressed look in silhouette studio with free downloadable distressed pattern

Before we begin, let me just let everyone know that this tutorial is mainly targeted towards the beginners and intermediate users and if you think you’re a bit of an expert in this subject matter and don't want to get bored with the nitty gritty of these instructions, just scroll down to the bottom of this page to grab the free distressed pattern (because who doesn’t love a freebie! ;))

Ok, let get back on track, shall we? I can’t believe I keep getting distracted with side notes haha!

First step, open the shape you want to give a distressed effect to. Also open the distressed pattern you are going to work with. You can grab the free distressed pattern at the end bottom of the page at the end of this tutorial. Alternatively, you can grab a distressed pattern from my shop here or a crack pattern from here or get both at a much lower price here.

*If You are a basic edition user, you can see that there's no .studio format in the free zipfile that's available for download at the bottom of the page. A very simple explanation for that is because Silhouette America owns all rights to .studio format. So I'll get into a big trouble if I offer it for free or sell it without their exclusive permission. So to get around this, we will be using the DXF which is compatible with studio and quite frankly is easy to work with.
What is a DXF format you may ask? Well, according to WhatIs.com, DXf is a file extension of a graphic image that is used with a Computer Assisted Drafting software such as AutoCAD (Link)
By the way, I don't own a Silhouette business edition and I get by quite well with just the basic one using DXF format.

Now, with the distressed pattern workspace open, select the shape. Make sure you select all the small bit and pieces as well.
For a shortcut, to select all, you can hit ctrl + a on your keyboard if you're using windows or command-A if you're using mac.

With the shape selected, go to the modify panel that is found in the right hand bar of the workspace and select make under compund paths. As you can see, our shape is now one solid piece which will be easier to work with.

Moving along, you want to copy this newly created solid shape to the same workspace as the other shape, in my case, the heart. Next, overlap both shapes and make sure the distressed pattern covers the entire shape.

Then, with both shapes selected, again go to modify panel and select Crop under Modify option.

And that's it! All you have to do now is cut and weed your newly created Distressed shape.
I Hope you find this tutorial useful and if you know of other ways to achieve this look,
please share with us in the comments section below! :)

You can grab the free distressed pattern below: