Silhouette Tutorial: Make the Font You Want

When I was making my plant labels for all my potted veggies, I was playing around, trying to find just the perfect font for my basil.

There's a fun font called Zebra (you can download it for free here) that I love, and that's what I was leaning toward using. But the "s" just wasn't exciting enough. So I used the Silhouette software to make it exactly how I wanted!

For this tutorial, I'm going to first show you the finished product, and keep it in the bottom corner of the screen so you can see how we get from beginning to end.

So to start us off, here are my finished pots:



Now let's begin!



The top left word is the word "basil" typed in Zebra font with no editing. The bottom left word is our end-goal. I'll leave it there throughout the tutorial so you can keep your eye on the final product.



I have now misspelled basil to say "bazil." The reason I did this is because I love the big fat curve of the letter z, and want that as the base for my letter s.



Now click the Modify icon in the upper right toolbar, and click Divide. This will separate all the letters in "bazil." While you're at it, type an s off to the side. We'll use this for the top of our modified letter s.



You'll now pull down the letter z away from the word "bazil." You'll see because it overlapped with the a, there is a notch cut out of the z. That's why we can't use this. So type another free-standing z off to the side, near the s.

Then use the Knife tool (on the left vertical toolbar) to cut the top off the s, and the bottom off the z. Separate the pieces.



Now move the top of the s and the bottom of the z together and overlap to conjoin them. Then click the Modify tool, and select Weld. Welding will create one continuous letter. Since the new s looks a little crooked, grab the rotater at the top of the conjoined letter and rotate it counter-clockwise slightly to straighten it out.



Now just delete the notched z, and the remaining parts of the cut-up s and z, and slide the new s into place.

Finally, select all of the word, click Modify and Weld, and you have a perfect new label with the font you want!



I then applied it directly to my basil pots, and they look great on my porch. And the font is so much more fun now!