Silhouette Cameo 4

Hello all! As many of you know, I entered the Dreaming Tree Christmas Challenge last month with my Over the Hill project. After the first day of voting opened up for Dreaming Tree fans, I looked at all of the wonderful projects and thought no way is my project in the running! There were so many beautiful projects and a lot of hard work done for this challenge. I have to say I think it's the largest Dreaming Tree contest I have seen to date.

Fast forward to January and I received a message from a friend telling me congratulations. I asked her for what?! Turns out my project took 1st place! WHAT?! I was so excited because I honestly did not think I had a chance. I did this project because I love a challenge and one of my specialties is taking multiple files and combining them into something else.

What did I win? A $25 Dreaming Tree gift card and a brand new Silhouette Cameo 4!  I'm all about the Silhouette machines so YAY! A HUGE thank you to the Dreaming Tree team for picking my project. I do not envy their task of having to choose the winners. And congratulations to the other winners as well.

 Let's unbox him...

Standard things you get with your machine. Blade, mat, USB cord, and power cord.

For shipping safety, you will find blue tape over seems, drawer, and blade carriage.

Gently take the blue tape off.

This machine also has little green tabs that take off the protective shield. I just started at the bottom because the tape bubbled it up, doesn't matter where you start though!

On the inside, there are several things to remove. It is packaged this way to protect your machine the best it can during shipping. BE VERY CAREFUL removing the tape, plastic, and foam pieces.

Some have had issues with their blade carriage after unboxing. Pay attention and gently remove the foam piece you see here.

Remove this core piece.

 Remove the blue tape gently. I cannot stress that enough!

There will be a plastic piece at the left side of the blade carriage. Remove and throw away.

Once your machine is plugged in, the blade carriage will move to the left where it should stay. Be sure to remove this little foam piece that is on the track in the right corner. Again these pieces are here to protect your carriage during shipping.

With the Cameo 4, the blade is an autoblade with obvious differences. You will also receive 4 attachments that can be used for Silhouette Pens, other brand pens, ratchet blade and other things.

They come as a "flat" item, all you have to do is connect them to the little tab to make them whole.

One common question I see is what is this little tool (black arrow pointing to it below) that came with my machine. This is a blade adjustment tool (your machine will automatically adjust the blade if you have the autoblade selected while cutting). It can also be used to help remove the very tip of your blade housing for cleaning. It has two different styles on it to fit all the different Silhouette blades.

Okay let's get into the difference between the Silhouette Cameo 3 and the Silhouette Cameo 4. And yes, I totally name my machines after characters I love in movies. Can you guess the movies? Cameo 1 is Baby. Cameo 3 is Towanda. Cameo 4 is Everest.   

The first obvious difference is that the Cameo 3's lid pops up where the 4's lid slides towards the back. This is actually really useful if you have your machines on a shelf (mine will be eventually). So that you can work the 4 without having to lip the lid up. I really like this new feature.

One thing that I absolutely am going to miss from the Cameo 3 is all of the storage compartments within the machine.

 The display screen on the 3 is inside the lid as well and has a LCD screen.

The Cameo 4 has a touch panel for loading/unloading mat and other commands.

This is a great new built in feature of the 4.

This drawer can be extended to not only help with mat stabilization, but when it is fully extended it has rollers for vinyl.

You can buy a similar design for the Silhouette Cameo 3, but I love that this is part of the machine and collapsable for when I'm not working with vinyl.

 It can be adjusted from 12 inches to 9 inches.

Cutting noise. It is common with any electronic cutting machine. I am so used to it, it doesn't bother me. But I commonly see this as a complaint. I do have an anti-slip pad under my Cameo 3 might help cut down on noise.

Cameo 4 cutting

Cameo 3 cutting

Stick around to see what I have planned to make in the near future!