Slice Design Card Options - a tutorial in the basics

Today we're going back to basics. I’m going to show you the different options you have on your Slice design cards, and give you some tips on how to make the most of those options! I've used lots of different Slice cards in this post. The papers that are shown all come from the Making Memories Panorama collection.

Fonts

Many of the Slice cards come with a font. You’ll notice that not all the fonts are the same size when you cut them out. This means that a letter cut at 2” from one design card might not be the same size as one from another card. When you select a letter, you’ll see it appear in the square on the screen. Sometimes you’ll see the letter doesn’t go all the way to the top of the square, meaning it’s a somewhat smaller font. You can see the difference between the Home Sweet Home font on the left and the Music & Dance font on the right, with both of these cut at 2”:

The same applies to the shapes on the design cards also. Knowing how much of that square the shape will take up when you cut helps you to anticipate how large your final cut will be. On the following cut from the Words & Expressions card, I could see ahead of time that the word only took up the lower half of the square, so I could work out how to line up the cut on my paper.

MS+ cards

Many of the Slice cards have the MS+ option, which gives you the option of mirroring and shadowing features, plus a speed upgrade to your Slice machine. The speed boost is a permanent upgrade and will then work with any of the design cards you have. On the MS+ cards, when you select a shape you'll notice which mode you're in by what the screen says on the left side - Normal, Mirror or Shadow. On the cards that have the Layering feature (see below) this is where you'll notice the Layer option also. Press the double arrow to scroll through the different options. The order is Normal - Shadow - Mirror - Layer (if available) and then back to Normal. You'll notice that some shapes don't have the mirror option because they are symmetrical and so it isn't necessary. On the Words & Expressions card above, you’ll also notice that because this is not an MS+ card, the left side of the screen is blank.

Mirroring

MS+ cards open up all sorts of extra possibilities for your Slice! Here I've used the mirroring feature to make a mirror image of a flourish on the Basics 3 MS+ card. (You'll notice how the word Normal changes to Mirror on the left of the screen.) I've used this idea before and cut out multiple pairs of shapes to make my own border.

Shadowing

Below I've used the shadowing feature for this dragonfly from the Basics 2 MS+ design card. The word Shadow appears on the left of the screen to show you which option you've selected.

Layering

On some of the newer cards and on the Slice Fabrique cards, you'll find a layering option. The layer is a separate shape that you cut and layer on top of the original shape to add dimension to your cuts. Pretty cool, huh! Below is what you see on one of the menus for the Dilly Dally card, to show you what the shapes and layers look like:

 This is what the shape and layer look like when you cut them out: 

Even if you don't have a card with this layering option, Making Memories has designed many of the shapes on the cards to work together so you can make your own layers. Below is a layered shape I made by using two different shapes from the Wedding design card and then layered with pop dots.

Shape size

This is a small thing to notice but it might be useful. In the bottom left corner you'll see a tiny square and it changes size according to what size shape you're cutting. Below is a stork from the Baby design card at 1" and 4" to show you the difference. Plus, I think they look kind of cute together when they're cut out and the little one can hide in the big one! J

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~ Caroline ~