Silhouette America Mint Review

An In-Depth Assessment of the Custom Printer

It is easy to see that the DIY trend does not seem to loosen its grip on the Internet.

Now more than ever, people crave to create something distinctive and striking, and such pursuit of originality is not exempt from the seemingly littlest of things – stamps.

With the demand for new and unique technological innovations in every possible field high up, the Silhouette Mint Custom Printer is a refreshing novelty in the field of stamping systems.

Silhouette America is the manufacturing company behind the Mint Custom Printer, which offers a wide array of products related to the crafting industry.

I’m going to tell you more about this innovative gadget, a perfect solution for all of those who crave to leave their own stamp on everything, both the amateur artisans and professionally employed creators.

My Silhouette Mint Custom Printer review will delve deep into its ins and outs, to figure out is it designed in such a way that it is both easy to access, operate and design your own stamps.

Read on to find out!

Silhouette Mint Custom Printer Grade Table

If you want to quickly scan my overall grades and opinions of this gadget, here it is summarized in a handy table:

In order to justify these grades, let’s proceed to the complete review and detailed analyses of all the aspects.

What’s Inside The Box?

• Silhouette Mint Custom Stamp maker
• USB cable
• AC adapter
• Four bottles of Mint Ink (black, red, blue and yellow)
• Two Mint Stamp Kits
• A manual
• Mint Software Studio CD

Technical Specification: Specs and Features

Dimensions: 3.2 x 4.8 x 2.2 inches (8 x 12 x 5.5 cm)

Weight: 11 ounces (400g)

Color: White

Power: multi-voltage (110-220V)

Print time: <10 minutes

Ink size: 5ml

Ink colors:

• Ash blue
• Ash pink
• Black
• Blue
• Brown
• Gray
• Green
• Lavender
• Magenta
• Navy
• Orange
• Orchid
• Pink
• Purple
• Red
• Teal
• Walnut
• Yellow

15 mm x 60 mm stamp kit (2 stamp sheets, 2 stamp mounts, 2 labels)

30 mm x 30 mm stamp kit (1 stamp sheet, 1 stamp mount, 1 stamp base, 2 labels)

Silhouette Design Store – one-month free trial subscription (it offers various designs, fonts and patterns, as well as projects that can inspire you)

Load your own images feature

Text-into-stamp feature

The filter tool

Mint Studio Software

Supported operating systems:

• Windows 7
• Windows 8 and 8.1
• Windows 10
• Mac OS X 10.7 and higher

The Silhouette Mint Put to practice

After covering the basic information and features about the Silhouette Mint, I’ll explore how it actually operates.

The Silhouette Mint is proclaimed to be the pioneering next-generation stamping machine that allows you to create unique stamp designs.

Compared to other devices of such purpose, the Mint’s dimensions and weight are light, which makes it easily portable and convenient to use just about anywhere you’d like; the Mint doesn’t limit your creativity to only one place.

Now is the time that you put your creativity on the spot.

Software & Quality of Life

Before getting to use the Mint, you will first need to install the Mint Studio Software. For all of you that aren’t that tech-savvy – don’t be afraid! The installation process is a piece of cake.

Before getting to the installation process: I know, nowadays more and more laptops come without a disk drive and it has been in many cases completely substituted with a USB port; no worries, if yours does not have a disk drive, you can easily download the software from their site.

Unfortunately, if you own a Mac device without a USB port, this device does not support Bluetooth connection; it has to be plugged into USB.

If you own a PC, follow these instructions: insert the Mint Software Studio CD in the CD drive of your computer and simply follow the instruction prompts that appear on-screen.

If you are a Mac user, simply insert the Mint Studio CD, then drag and drop the application icon into your applications folder, and enjoy.

Once you have completed this first step of this super easy journey, you have to connect the Silhouette Mint to the power supply. To turn it on, press the “Power” button.

Designing With Silhouette Mint

Now that you have successfully connected your Mint, open the Mint Studio on your computer to begin the designing process. Your Mint workspace will become available once the Mint Studio has loaded and you will get to choose your stamp size in order to start creating.

Pretty easy, huh? It gets even better: the features that are available in the Mint Studio will allow you to perfect your stamp design just the way you like it.

One of the features is loading your own images in order to turn them into stamps by simply choosing File, then Open in the navigation bar.

Other features include text creating: you can use any font that you have available on your computer with the text tool selected from the toolbar.

The third feature that I especially like and want to mention is the filter tool. You can apply a filter onto your image(s). When you opt to use the filter tool, your workspace will change into Preview mode and it will allow you to see what your stamp will look like. You can choose from a variety of desired filters that are easily applicable and adjustable.

After you have completed your ideal stamp in the Mint Studio, the next step is to send it to your Mint.

Simply click on the “Send to Mint” icon and your stamp will be sent to your Custom Printer.

The next thing you have to do is click on the “Start Mint” button, which will warm your machine up for receiving a stamp.

The important thing before actually inserting the stamp sheet into the printer is to ensure that you have the stamp sheet that matches your desired and selected proportions of the stamp size in the software.

Once that you are sure that they match, you may insert the sheet into the printer and voilà – your stamp is printed!

Assembling your stamps

Now comes the only slightly tricky part that you will surely master on the first try and that is, removing the stamp.

You should see a perforated line on the sheet holder of the printed stamp sheet. You should bend it and attentively remove the stamp.

If it happens that the transparent cover attached to the sheet lingers onto your stamp, separate it and pay attention not to scratch or damage the stamp in any way. You shouldn’t use any razors, scissors, or knives to cut the stamp sheet.

Instead, what you need to do next is put the stamp mount into the stamp base.

You will need to remove the protective liner first and then place your printed stamp onto the mount. After that, place the stamp base onto a balanced, flat surface.

If you don’t want to get your hands dirty, use a pair of gloves, because ink comes into the game!

The package includes four bottles of colorful inks (black, red, blue and yellow). Select the one you like the most for your design (or a combination of two), and apply it on top of the space that you want to ink.

Depending on the size of your stamp, you should wait approximately from 4 (if it is small) to 10 (if the stamp is larger) minutes. Let the ink imbue the stamp before you use it.

In order to secure the dimensions of your stamp, take a piece of paper to test your stamp.

Any excess ink should remove itself easily upon a few pressings. If you haven’t waited long enough for the ink to be absorbed, extra ink can be added easily, so don’t worry about that.

One custom-made stamp will imprint around 50 times before you have to re-ink it.

If you wish to leave your stamp on a piece of fabric, this is possible too if you buy permanent fabric ink. The “permanent” part here is relative, though – this ink will fade after a couple of washes and you will have to re-stamp it, although it is an excellent feature if you want to decorate your clothes.

The Silhouette fabric ink also comes in various colors of the spectrum, perhaps the most interesting one being the glow-in-the-dark one.

Additional features & Membership Benefits

The Mint Studio also offers something extra – 50 exclusive stamp designs that you are free and welcome to use. These designs are easily accessed through the Mint Studio, by clicking on the “My Library” button. This folder can be used for any new designs that you make – simply drag and drop your designs into it and they will be saved there.

Additionally, you can download new shapes and designs from the Silhouette Design Store. It is a database that contains hundreds of designs that are interesting, sophisticated and fun. It should be noted that not all of the designs that you can download are free, but most of them cost as little as 99 cents.

Another perk of the store is that you can create your own account. There are different types of accounts: in order to create a FREE account and buy designs one at a time, you should choose the “Sign up for FREE” option. What you need to provide for registration is an email, a password and your name.

If you bought Silhouette Mint Custom Printer with a subscription card, you can use it to purchase designs from the Design Store. To do this, you should click on the “My Account” button, and from there “REDEEM A PROMOTIONAL DOWNLOAD CODE”.

Once you type in your code, you should click on the “Apply card” button. This trial subscription card allows you a Basic subscription to the Silhouette Design Store for one month.

Overall, the customer support (both online and the instructions that you get) is satisfactory and will help you master this gadget in no time!

Silhouette Mint Review – Summing Up…

Conclusion & My Recommendation

Taking into account my Silhouette Mint review, you can see that this gadget proved to be an amazing machine.

The modern market is burdened by unnecessarily complicated products and machines that sacrifice the ease of operation for complicated interfaces and incomprehensible software which makes them seem scary for the ordinary folk.

On the contrary, Silhouette Mint is:

1. Ubiquitously easy to use, install, and operate
2. Offers A wide library of designs to use
3. Compatible with an array of accessories

Your holiday cards, gift cards, family newsletters, holiday tags, just about anything that you want to put your own stamp on, will get highly personalized and fun to make.

But beware – this little machine is highly addictive, and the two stamp sheet kits and four ink bottles that you get with your Mint won’t ever come close to satisfying your stamping needs!

Forget all the considerable time and effort that you needed to put into personalizing something before – because in the end, all that this brilliant little machine asks of you is that you unleash your creativity and let your imagination run wild.