Silhouette Studio Tutorial: Make Your Own Scalloped Circles

I was asked how to design your own scalloped circles using Silhouette Studio, so I’ve written a short tutorial.  This can be done in either version (basic or designer).

Here are the scalloped circles I’ll show how to make, using basically the same steps each time.

1. Draw a perfect circle using your “elipse” drawing tool. You can make it a perfect circle by holding the shift key while you drag out the shape. Make it 0.825″.
2. Go to your Replicate window (looks a bit like a flower). With your circle selected, choose “Row of Three”.
3. Select all of those circles, then choose “Rotate Three Copies” while still in the Replicate window. It should look like this:

4. Now select all of those circles and choose “Group” (bottom left icon).
5. Draw another circle that will fit inside the outer ring of circles. This is what you’ll use to fill in the holes in the center when welding. This circle is 1.74″.

6. Go to your Align window (next to the Replicate window), select all the circles again, and choose “Center”. If you don’t like the size of your inner circle you can adjust it here by holding your Alt key (Option on a Mac) while dragging a corner handle and it will stay centered while you resize it.
7. Select all the circles again and choose “Weld”. (Bottom icon, looks like a grey rectangle and circle overlapping.)

Now for the variations:
To make the scallop circle from the top image that looks like a flower:
Steps 1 & 2 are the same.
Step 3: Choose “Rotate Two Copies” (instead of three)

Step 4 is the same.
Steps 5 & 6: Your inner circle will need to be more precise. Make sure it’s big enough to cover the holes in the center, but not so large that it overlaps the very outer edge to interfere with the scallops. (This circle is 1.420″)

Step 7 is the same.

For smaller, closer scallops, you can make this variation:
Step 1: The circle is 0.50″
Step 2: Make it a “Row of Four” instead.
Step 3: “Rotate Five Copies” so it will fill in the gaps due to a smaller circle.

Steps 4-7: You know the drill.

As you can see, these might be fun sketch designs for flowers before welding, too. Just for fun, I made a very small circle (0.345″), but had to choose my “rotate copies” in several combinations quite a few times until the edges were filled in. Because you’re welding, it doesn’t matter that there are some circles with many many layers in the same place.

Once you’ve created the scallop combination you like, these can be resized to fit your project. Have fun experimenting!



33 thoughts on “Silhouette Studio Tutorial: Make Your Own Scalloped Circles”

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *