Craft Edge

Who knew! I was browsing around the menus for eCAL and saw under the OBJECT menu an option to make a shadow layer. If you select the element or group of elements that you want to cut around to make a mat use this option. My only complaint is that the shadow comes in grey but unlike the other option in the appearance panel most of the inside are already blacked out. I just set color to none and stroke leave the stroke grey but you really should give it a go, I really like it.

Thanks for the tip I will try it

Just tried the shadow layer. That's a nice feature. In the appearance pane, the shadow feature shows up automatically and you can then change the grey color and the outline color. Thanks for pointing it out.