This is an issue, I wanted to address, as I regularly get this question. Let me say that I am a Silhouette user and a Silhouette Design Store contributor so I have a little experience in print n cut files. As I really enjoy creating stickers, I wanted to show you with screenshots the dilemma to do stickers with a black border or not to do? Without a further delay let’s get down to business.

This is our main image, I created it this week, inspired by my two kittens, we are going to use for our example. Why? Because it’s large and clear. A perfect example.

So we upload this design to Silhouette, you can see it has no black stroke, just a white background which is meant to unify the design so the hearts are not cut on their own.

Let’s use the tracing feature and try to trace it so the outline lines are created and the sticker can be cut.

This is the first tracing pushed at the maximum threshold, of course we need to trace the outer edge so let’s just do that. Result:

M… it was obvious from the upper screen for an experience user, but now it’s obvious for all; the white background is not enough to unify the design. The hearts will be cut separately. So here is another attempt:

Here we pushed the scale option so it can contain the hearts but again once you remove the design and left with the tracing (and you should always do this to ensure a smooth cut) is this…

Here the designer has no option but to jump out of the window…or apply a black stroke…So we have to visit Photoshop…

Let’s see the result now…

Now we are tracing with the Threshold at maximum and the Scale option as it was in our previous example (when I was ready to jump out of the window…)…

And voila now Silhouette correctly traces our image without hassle.

So a black stroke is unfortunately a necessity to guarantee successful tracing especially when there is a need to address both Cricut and Silhouette users.

I hope that you find this article useful and got an insight into designing and how things are not always so obvious or straightforward.

Send me an email for further questions, I will be glad to help.