My Version of Print & Cut

I've been doing a lot of Print & Cut lately and I've refined my process so that it's nearly foolproof!  Here's how I do it:

First, find some clipart you want to use.  I needed a teddy bear for my Baby Card.  So I found a free clipart file and copied it from the web.  Then I pasted it into a Pazzles Inspiration file. 

 

I clicked on the AutoTrace button and selected the tool Detect Intensity and clicked on the image.  When the pop up window showed up, I moved the slider bar until I got nearly a solid black image in the After window.  That gives me a great outline to use for Print & Cut and I change the line color to red.  I usually have to do a little clean-up, the first step being Shape > Advanced Path Option > Change to Bezier curves and segments.  The AutoTrace delivers a choppy line.  You can see how choppy it is around the top of teddy's head above. 

  

 Here comes the foolproof part!

 

Above, I have 2 teddy bears (one for the boy card, the other for the girl card).  I match up the red outline (that I created with AutoTrace described above) with the clipart, then draw a blue box around each.  Then I copy it below itself and change the box line color to green.  In the upper box, I delete the red Print & Cut outline and in the bottom box I delete the image.  One other tip I've learned the hard way - thicken the blue box line around the image.  Then I send it to the printer.  I cut out the image with my craft knife on the blue box line - which since I thickened I can now see!  After putting it on my mat, I open the Cut Control Panel and I cut out the green box and leave the mat in the machine!  Remove the green box paper off the mat and replace it with the blue box image that was cut out by hand.   Then, in the Cut Control Panel, I cut the red outline.  It comes out perfect every time!

 

 

See how cute he turned out?  I've been doing a lot of Print & Cut lately and this method is so easy.  I've tried a couple different ways and had varying success.  I never have to worry about losing a part of my clipart because it doesn't match up exactly.  It seems like a lot of steps once I've written them all out, but after doing it twice, I think anyone could repeat this without notes.  Hope you'll try it and let me know!