Silhouette Portrait

My Silhouette Portrait came today, so first thing I opened it up and started using it.  To start with, the unit is amazingly light for those of us who started with the Cricut.  It's also much simpler to use because the software is much more intuitive than the Cricut Interface.  I'm not big into instructions.  I'll go back to them if there is something that I don't understand, but I like to figure things out pretty much for myself.  That being said, I was able to take the Portrait out of the box, plug it in, hit cut on my favorite shape in my library (a steampunk cog background), and it worked.  Right away. No fuss.  No muss.  Just worked! Amazing.  The next step was to try the print and cut feature.  I should have read the instructions.  The machine didn't immediately recognize the registration marks on my page.  These are marks that you print from the software in the corners, that the machine uses to line the printed images up with where the cut lines will go. Instead of manually detecting the first time that auto didn't work, I just hit cut.  I ruined a journaling card that way.  However, the pause button followed by the power button worked, and I used the easy to follow guidelines to manually detect the marks.  Voila! Success! I am going to have so much fun with this machine. Here are some pictures of the things I made in about 30 minutes of having the machine out of the box.

  

                              












That hot air balloon is from the Everyday Eclectic collection from Echo Park.  I liked it so much in paper that I got it in digital as well.  One of the first things that I did with my new Silhouette was to see if I could print and cut some more of the elements from the collection to use with the left over scraps of paper I still had.  I think that it turned out pretty well.  You?