How To Use A Cricut Mat With Your Silhouette Cameo

It's Monday again and time for Money-Saving Monday tip #23!  Today's tips come from my sweet friends Becky and AJ. Did you know that you can use Cricut mats in your Silhouette Cameo?  I did, but I couldn't quite get everything to line up and cut just right.

It didn't take too long after I got my Silhouette Cameo to completely wear out the cutting mat that came with it.  I started using an old Cricut mat I had, but the cutting area seemed off from what it was showing on my computer screen.  No biggie unless I was trying to fit something in a tight area, and then I would miss the mark every time and waste the paper I was using.  I found a couple of things that helped with this problem, and now the Cameo cuts like a champ again.

The first thing to do is to adjust where you line up your paper on your cutting mat.  Instead of using the regular Cricut lines, move the top of your paper up to the guideline at the very top of the mat, where it shows the tick marks for measurements.  See the photo above.

When your paper is lined up correctly on your mat, it should look just like this...

The next trick is finding where to line up your mat once you are loading it into your Cameo.  If you look closely on your Cameo, there's an extra, smaller line at the left side of your machine...

Line the edge of your mat up with that small line just like this...

This is actually where you're supposed to line up anything that goes into the Cameo...mats or vinyl.  I never even noticed that little line until Becky pointed it out to me!

Since I've learned and implemented these two tricks, I haven't lost a single piece of paper to a bad cut!!

Happy Scrapping! ~Amy E