As a lot of you guys know, we’ve been running our Cricut & Me course for a few years now and we’ve had more and more requests to add a course about using a Silhouette cutting machine. We aren’t quite ready to release that course just yet, but we have started ordering in a number of the Silhouette Cameo 4 machines for when we’re ready to launch.
This post is going to be a quick review of the Silhouette Cameo 4. For those of you who have only worked with Cricut machines in the past, you’re in for a treat. We’ve done loads of research for this article, and we’d like to give a quick shout-out to Cut, Cut, Craft!’s Silhouette Cameo 4 review, which really helped fill in a lot of the missing details for us.
So what can you use this machine for?
- making holiday and greeting cards
- cutting through thicker materials like acrylic, wood, and leather
- making outdoor vinyl signs
- 3-d papercrafts
- making your own custom stickers or t-shirts
- and a lot more!
Basically, you can think of it like a Cricut Maker but even more powerful and that can cut much longer spools of vinyl. The biggest improvement we’ve seen from Silhouette is really the cutting power and tools that work with the Cameo 4. Silhouette Studio software is still as good as ever, and they keep improving it everytime I update it.
There’s also two larger versions of the Silhouette Cameo 4, one that comes in 15 inches, and another that’s 20 inches for working with really wide materials. We’re just getting in the regular Cameo 4’s, but if you buy one of the other ones yourself the course will work for you too.
They’ve released a bunch of new tools for working with materials like felt or fabric (a Rotary Blade) and they have adapters so you can still use the Silhouette Cameo 3 tools with the new machine.
The design have a built-in holder for vinyl rolls, but there is a bit less storage than there used to be. For me, I’m happy to trade less storage for all of the improvements they’ve added, but I know a lot of crafters are pretty upset, especially those who are working in a smaller space.
The biggest change if you’re moving over into the Silhouette world is going to be the tutorials and community support available. Silhouette does have a great community, but if you’re used to sites that only have Cricut tutorials it might take a bit to get a hang of it. Once you get used to their software though, I think you’ll probably make the switch, which is something we’re considering ourselves here, to just have one Silhouette course (if you come up with a catchy name, please let me know!).
Silhouette has really great starter kits for the Cameo 4, which I highly recommend getting if they’re in stock. It’s always a lot easier to pick up a new craft if you have a first project to work on.
All in all, we give the Silhouette Cameo 4 5 out of 5 stars! It does have some downsides, but we really like the changes Silhouette has made and think the Cameo 4 will be a machine that will last for a really long time. You know that we typically like to reuse and recycle before purchasing new things here, but we’re making an exception for the Cameo 4 because it allows you to use so many scrap materials and repurpose them into really neat crafts.
If there are any Silhouette tutorials or example projects you want us to feature, please leave a comment, thanks guys!