I love my Silhouette, but sometimes I want to throw that thing out the window. I just printed 3 different things to cut for a planner spread. I printed on good quality sticker paper ... (let's not enough talk about the ink) and the silhouette chewed the first sheet up during the cutting. The next one ... the cuts were all off. The whole sheet was ruined. That's two fails on two different sticker sheets. The last one ... I could not get it to register. So I threw that one aside for possible hand/fussy cutting on another day. So, entirely frustrated... I printed a 4th sheet and went back to one of the other ones for cutting. And even though I thought I cancelled the last print/cut sheet in my queue) ... it was still there and the silhouette ignored the most recent request for cutting and cut a totally different sheet. Sometimes things are so easy and it takes like 10 minutes to print and cut ... and other times I think this Silhouette is out to test my every last nerve. I'm disgusted looking at the ruins and feel like I need to have a funeral for these poor stickers sheets. It just makes me so sad and MAD! Please tell me I"m not the only one to go through these frustrations ... ... how does your cut machine treat you? .... are you generally problem free? ... or do you get errors and mishaps too? ... Care to share you worst cut machine nightmare? I need a group hug. My husband just looks at me like I'm crazy. At least it looks like this new batch of sticker sheets are finally cutting nicely. Fingers crossed!
I used to mourn it until I started buying cheaper sticker paper (I use 8.5x11 full-sheet labels). I only use stickers in my planner, though, so I'm not terribly worried about longevity. @KatrinaHunt13 gave me an AWESOME tip that has totally fixed my registration issues, both with it not registering and with cuts being off. She told me to shine a flashlight directly on the optical reader while it's registering. I did that last month when I printed my planner stickers off and had ZERO problems. It was a miracle! In general my Silhouette treats me fairly well, and, since I bought an inexpensive (but still awesome) color laser printer, I don't worry about ink costs, either. I've had it since February and am still on the original toner cartridges that shipped with it. I was actually able to go into the driver and tweak the colors enough so that it looks pretty good for printing layouts, too!
You know what I remember reading that ... and it definitely has worked for me in low light (when I'm cutting at night) ... maybe I should have tried that ... but there's decent light this morning so it didn't occur to me. Thanks for the reminder Melissa. I hate using the cheap papers ... the colors are just wrong and ugly. Years ago I spent hours and hours calibrating my printer and tweaking and playing with settings so prints (on the good papers) would come out stellar. I have a hard time accepting faded and less vibrant colors on my printouts. Now, if I'm using good paper I pretty much can get my prints to look like what I see on screen (of course there are the colors that will never print just so on inkjet ... but otherwise I am really happy with the color quality). I am curious to hear more about your laser printer model and cost if you don't mind me asking Melissa. That laser printer prints really nicely on the inexpensive label papers?
I don't use sticker paper a whole lot. I do have issues with iron on transfers. Sometimes I forget to flip it when printing. Sometimes it's not exactly the right size. It kills me to waste those.
I got my sticker paper on clearance when our local office depot went out of business. So it wasn't really expensive. However, I totally cry when my Silhouette messes up stuff. Like yesterday, I too was working on some planner stuff. Guess what didn't play nicely?! Yup, my Silhouette! I have found that cutting stickers tends to wear my blade and mat down super fast. Also, if your registration marks didn't register you can do a manual registration. The flashlight trick doesn't work for my Silhouette, so I've used manual registration quite a few times. overall if my machine isn't cutting well, I turn everything off, go do something else for 10 - 15 minutes, then come back to it. Usually then we've had enough time out from each other that we both get accomplished what we need to.
Me and hardware don't play well together. I don't like printers much as they often won't do what I want. And yes, I grieve the lose of a good sheet of paper.
Sure! I use a Brother HL-3170CDW color laser. The price on Amazon bounces around a little, but I paid $159.99 for it. Office Depot/Office Max also had it in stores when I bought it, and they may still have it there. (Full disclosure- I also needed a laser printer for invoices and shipping labels, so I totally got to call it a business expense.) I am absolutely thrilled with how it prints on both cheap and good papers! I did have to make sure that my Mac installed the Brother driver and not the generic Mac one. The Brother driver has lots of extra options for tweaking colors and print quality. The performance with the generic Mac driver was rather blah. I use Vivid and bumped up the brightness a little, and I may have bumped up one or two of the individual color channels, too- I saved my settings so I wouldn't have to do it every time, so I don't remember off the top of my head. I also set the media type to the thickest type of paper available. I was having some trouble with toner flaking off because it was feeding the paper through too fast on the Plain Paper setting. With a setting for thicker paper it moves the paper more slowly, giving the toner time to really set. It also has a rear bypass with a lever to set it to allow thicker papers through, and with that set I have zero issues with jamming. Laser is a totally different process from inkjet, and that makes the quality of the paper not quite so important. Inkjet printers are actually putting a wet ink onto the paper, which means that some of it soaks in. Better quality inkjet papers have coatings/properties that control how much of the ink soaks in. More ink staying on the surface = brighter, more vibrant colors. Laser printers use toner, which is basically a colored powder, and bake it onto the surface of the paper. This means that no ink soaks into the paper, so you get all that lovely color right on top. Some papers are not that great for toner adhesion, but as long as you get a paper that says it's compatible with laser printers (the labels I use are), it should be fine. I hope that helps! If you have any more questions, fire away!
While I have nothing really to add to the conversation, I was stopping in to say Yes, I absolutely would mourn the loss of sticker paper. I get mad if my printer messes up on a normal sheet of paper, let alone sticker or card stock.
I completely lose it when this happens. (and I'm sorry you had so much trouble - your efforts are massively appreciated!)
I have a Brother B&W laser printer for admin/mom/boring stuff and I love it. But it doesn't print borderless..... does your model? I'm most likely going to need to replace my much loved but overused Epson Artisan within the next year.
It does not print borderless, unfortunately, and that is the only complaint that I have against it! My Mom has an Epson Artisan that she loves- they are awesome printers!
I moan the loss of any fancy paper or special kind of paper. And you should ask my dh how my fancier presention is stored so it doesn't get accidentally used.
I love love love my Epson printers!! And yes the light on the Silhouette head works! My Cameo is under a window and I still have to use the flashlight. Funny thing is I haven't printed stickers yet! I need to with all the hybrid I am doing to give the elements a different look. I may need to get tips @scrappyjedi from you!!!
I LOVE printing stickers with my Silhouette. Know why? Because the sticker backing paper is left intact, so you don't have to peel all the individual pieces off of the mat. Just peel the whole sticker sheet off the mat at once, then peel the individual stickers off the sheet. It is DA BOMB! (I think I just showed my age a little there.)
This was so interesting and helpful Melissa ... THANK YOU! And that is a good price!!! Maybe the next printer for the house will be something like this.
It does not happen very often. So I guess when it does it stands out? And its not enough to deter me from playing with your planner goodies.
I have an Epson Artisan that I got refurbished (and it's an all in one ... ) I love that thing so much.
Yup! And I store the 8.5 x 11 sheet with the leftover stickers in a big binder ... i just slip them into sheet protectors. Then when I have a week that is really busy ... I can grab leftover stickers and still make my weekly spread pretty in less than 15 minutes.