Miss Ginger's Consumer Product Review®: Silhouette Cameo Cutting Machine

Shortly after man discovered fire, he invented the personal computer, which he found rather worthless until he invented a machine to make it print. 

From that point forward, history advanced rapidly as the computer-attached-to-a-typewriter was replaced by dot matrices, lasers, and all sorts of ink-spraying contraptions that we now call "printers".  

Once the typewriter had been obliterated from the desks of happy secretaries everywhere, mankind took aim at the venerable "scissors", and created the "knife plotter" to slice paper, vinyl, and just about anything else that comes on a roll with digital accuracy.  Of course, like all new computer technology, these things were huge and expensive. (Cue cheesy infomercial music:)  
"Until now!" 

The Silhouette Cameo is a small-scale vinyl cutter designed for  hobbyists, scrapbookers, and  crafters. Miss Ginger has been using the Silhouette Cameo cutter for several years now, and finds it to be versatile, well-made, and, most importantly, fun! 

First, a little background on hobby "cutters".  

The first hobby cutters were "punches", not unlike the old one-hole punch we all used a kids to put our homework into binders.  Clever hobby marketers created punches in thousands of shapes, sending many a scrapbooking hausfrau into the poorhouse as she spent the butter and egg money on the latest, newest shapes.  But punches were limited in size and intricacy, so the crafting industry needed to come up with a new idea, since they had run out of simple shapes! 

Next came the "die cutters", which use a sort of high tech "cookie cutter" to punch shapes out of paper and other flat materials.  Die cutters had, and still have, the distinct advantage of being able to emboss paper without cutting it, making textured cards as easy as turning a crank. This machine allowed the craft marketers to rake in millions as they created a seemingly endless array of shapes and textures that led us all to scream "Buy ALL the dies!" At $10- $20 bucks a pop, husbands across the nation where declaring Michael's "off-limits" and canceling internet service to prevent unauthorized ordering. 
Yet still, we wanted more....

Crafting engineers figured out how to make a small-scale electronic cutter for hobby use, but their marketing people screamed "WAIT! Don't screw up our market for shapes!  We need consumables!" and the "cartridge" was born.  In an astounding feat of retro technology, this almost "cutting edge" machine was relegated to the video games of the 1980's by requiring the user to obtain the cutting files on proprietary cartridges that contained the files needed to make this hunk of plastic slice a frog out of green paper.

Then came the Silhouette Cameo, and crafters the world over were freed from the tyranny of craft marketers forever!  The Silhouette, as modern as it is beautiful, allows the user to download design files from the internet, and store them on just about any memory device they see fit.  The machine works with memory cards, USB sticks, or even your computer's hard drive.  Once you've downloaded a file, it's yours forever! 

The file type is proprietary, so the marketers haven't completely lost their minds; you can only use files you download from the "Silhouette Store", a sort of iTunes for shapes.  But there are still huge advantages over cartridges: they download immediately over the internet, you can resize and manipulate them with the Silhouette software, you can store hundreds (maybe thousands?) on one tiny SD card, and most importantly, they are really cheap! You can also create your own designs with the software, which is included with the machine! 

Another huge advantage for Miss Ginger is that this machine, in addition to cutting paper, can cut self-adhesive vinyl, making it useful for lettering and stenciling without having to use adhesive spray or tape.  It can also cut fabric, and can be used as a pen plotter with accessory ink pens. This photo, with cover raised, shows the relatively simple inner workings.  The white plastic rollers are adjustable to different widths of material.  The knife fits into the black cutting head, which you can see to the left of the machine, just above the sheet of vinyl.  When you download a design file, you will use the silhouette software to let the machine know what type of material you are using. Sending the design to the machine is just like send a print job to a printer, and the machine whirs into action, moving the blade side to side, and the material up and down, to cut the lines and curves of your design... so easy! 

What can you make with the Silhouette?  Check out Miss Ginger's craft pages- most of her designs use the machine in some way or another!  In addition to vinyl, paper, and fabric, the machine can cut heat transfer material, so you can iron-on to fabric to create custom garments, pillows, etc.  There is a rhinestone transfer material that Miss Ginger has yet to try, but it allows one to use heat-set rhinestones to create intricate designs. 

The machine is not cheap, but it's not super-expensive, either... it costs about the same as a mid-range sewing machine. The real value, however, comes in the price of the designs... most cost about 99 cents! You download only the ones you need, when you need them, and once you've bought them, you can use them again and again.  The vinyl material is kind of expensive when you buy it in the little rolls they sell at retail, but you can order a commercial-sized roll from US Cutter and use it forever! 

For versatility and usefulness:   5 lipsticks!
For value in the long term: 5 lipsticks!
For quality and durability: 5 lipsticks!

It's unanimous! The Silhouette Cameo earns Miss Ginger's coveted:

5 LIPSTICKS AWARD!

Now, what do YOU want to see Miss Ginger make with it? 

Miss Ginger's Product Reviews!

A new feature for the new year! Miss Ginger, being the avid consumer, will offer you product reviews, shopping tips, and general advice designed to encourage your consumption and stimulate the economy! It's just Miss G's little way of "paying it forward"!
Her reviews will be honest, unrewarded, and completely and totally unbiased by anything except her own great taste and her real life evaluations!
Miss Ginger will review all kinds of products and services, and will note her recommendations thusly:

ONE LIPSTICK:

Leave it at the store! This product is not worth the tissue you'd blot on!

TWO LIPSTICKS:

This product has little merit for Miss Ginger, but some might find it interesting, useful, or worthwhile.

THREE LIPSTICKS:
It's a good product, and worth the space it takes up a Chez Ginger!

FOUR LIPSTICKS:

Highly endorsed by Miss Ginger. You probably need this product!

the coveted FIVE LIPSTICKS!:
What the hell are you doing reading blogs when you don't have this FABULOUS product in your house! Stop now and GO GET IT!!

Now that you all know the rules, let's play the game, okay?!

THE IMPETUS:

As you may know, Miss Ginger is a lover of all things kitteh. Especially Jackson and Shelby. Those of you who share Miss G's love for the feline species also know that they sometimes express their little feline needs and opinions "from the bladder". This is especially an issue with male cats, and older cats, both of which describe Jackson. And anyone who has been around cats knows that cat piss is one of the most vile odors on earth! Hence, the need for this product!

THE PRODUCT:

The Bissell "SpotBot®" Handsfree Compact Deep Cleaner promises you "the freedom to walk away while it does the work for you!" "While the SpotBot® gets the stain, you get back your day!" "All pets have accidents! That's why SpotBot® is trained to remove pet stains in no time!'

THE TRIAL:

Brother John left his plastic shoes on the floor, and those are Jack's favorite, so he peed on them! The cat urine got on an afghan unnoticed, and was transferred to the sofa accidentally.

Miss Ginger purchased the SpotBot at Lowes for about $119. She also purchased the special "Pet Stain and Odor" chemical for $17.84, which seems like highway robbery for a bottle of detergent.

This particular dose of cat urine had seeped down into the space between the cushions of the sofa, so Miss G immedately realized that the automatic feature of the machine was not going to work. Luckily, tha machine also comes with a manual "Tough Stain Brush" "for versatile cleaning of stairs, auto, and upholstery."


The brush attachment was easy to use on the upholstery, although there was a fair amount of "overspray" as the nozzle has a pretty wide spray pattern. Miss G will admit that this was a particularly difficult test, as the urine has saturated at the edge of the cushion near the welting, meaning it had soaked down into the seam. Now that the fabric, is dry, there is a faint smell of urine if one sticks one's nose down into the cushion, but it can't be detected from across the room as it could before cleaning.

Being the thorough reporter she is, Miss Ginger located this stain on the ottoman to test the unit's "automatic" feature for her gentle readers.

It's been there for a while and God only knows what it is, so Miss Ginger placed the unit on the stain and selected the "Set-in Stain" cycle on the unit.

The machine whirred into action, alternating periods of spraying, scrubbing, and sucking. Miss G noticed immediately that the machine released a lot of cleaning solution, which darkened the fabric and bled beyond the reach of the unit's rotating nozzles.


After about 5 minutes are so, the machine beeped to signal the end of it's cycle, and Miss G removed it to reveal this:

That big, wet, keyhole shaped spot would certainly dry with a dark edge on the napped fabric, and she suspected a big, clean circle would be left, based on the amount of crud in the collection tank.


So, Miss G employed the manual nozzle and hose to clean the entire surface of the ottoman, a process that took about 5 or 10 minutes and yielded embarrassing amounts of crud in the collection tank!


Once dry, however, the ottoman was clean, evenly colored, and spot free!


THE RECAP:
The Bissell SpotBot® is lightweight, small, and affordable. It operates effortlessly, as promised, but it will leave a perfectly round, obvious clean circle wherever it does it's work. If your carpets are even modestly soiled, it might be smarter to have the entire carpet cleaned. The collection tanks and hoses do have to be cleaned after each use to avoid having all that grossness fester in the machine, and Miss G had to mop the overspray off of the hardwood floors after using the manual attachment on upholstery. Still, the unit did leave the ottoman looking great, and greatly reduced the pet odor on the sofa.


THE JUDGEMENT:

THREE LIPSTICKS!

This is a product Miss G will pull out whenever Jackson pees on anything that's can't go in the washer.

What kind of products do YOU want Miss G to review?