I’m pretty excited to share with you my new crafting tool – the Silhouette Mint. If you haven’t heard of the Silhouette Mint (affiliate link for your convenience) then you’ve got to check this out, especially if you are into scrapbooking and card making, are a small handmade business owner, or are just a general craft loving person! So what does this machine do, exactly? It prints custom stamps that you design! Cool, right? Don’t be intimidated, it is fairly simple to use, and today I’m going to share my Silhouette Mint Review AND Tutorial so that you can get your Mint and get right to work.

Silhouette Mint Review and Video Tutorial

First off, isn’t this mini machine the cutest? It literally can sit on the palm of your hand.

Silhouette Mint Review and Video Tutorial

Included in the box is a Silhouette Mint, Mint Studio Software Disc, 2 stamp kits, 4 bottles of ink (black, blue, red, yellow), an AC Adapter, a USB cable, and a free month subscription to the Silhouette Image Library.

Silhouette Mint Review and Video Tutorial

Within 5 minutes of unboxing the Mint I had the Mint Studio software installed on my computer and was creating my very first stamp. This is a very simple machine to use and I can already tell I’m going to become a stamp addict! I made a quick video tutorial sharing how to create a simple stamp in Mint Studio, as well as how to print and ink the stamp once it is printed. If you want to skip the software tutorial and just see the machine in action skip to the 4:31 minute mark.

My Silhouette Mint Review?

As you can see, Mint Studio is fairly intuitive to use. There were a few glitches, like when I originally went to print the “Hello There” Stamp, the kerning (spacing of letters) of hello went out of whack in the preview. I simply cancelled the print, fixed the kerning and sent to print and it worked perfectly. So just keep that in mind as you send something to print to look over your preview screen before clicking “Start Mint”. The stamps print in a matter of seconds, which is quite amazing! Inking doesn’t take long and once the ink is absorbed, you can get right to stamping, though there is a 10 minute wait period, which I don’t find to be too inconvenient. If you look closely at the photo above with the “Happy mail for…” stamp, the dots that fly behind the paper plane can barely be seen, but they are there. I would probably increase the size of any really small elements. That was my first stamp and I wanted to test it out – so now I know that design elements should be about the size of a pinhead or bigger, which is still pretty fantastic, in my opinion! I love the fact that the stamps can be multiple ink colors and that when the ink runs dry, I can simply add more and continue to use my stamp. I’ve used my stamps several times, including stamping over and over to see the quality and I’ve been quite impressed. They are pretty clear and crisp. One other negative for me? The cost of additional stamp kits. The initial purchase only gets you two stamps. So just as you’re getting the feel for the software and the machine and you have tons of great ideas – bam, you can’t create anymore unless you make additional stamp kit purchases. And you’ll have to stay stocked with the special Mint ink if you plan on using your stamp for a long time, so that is an additional cost as well. But in the end, for me the pros outweigh the cons!

Originally posted in May 2016 on Crafts Unleashed where I am a paid contributor.