9/10/2009

Playing with Vinyl


Finally....I did it! I spent a bit of time with my Wishblade and the roll of vinyl I bought oh probably 13 months ago. Yikes. 13 months, that's scary.
My original plan was to use the vinyl to cut words for my family room wall, but I could never decide exactly what I wanted to say - so I didn't. Recently however, I decided that my bedroom wall needed some dressing up and I got to task.
Now you have to understand that while I've had the cutter for eons, this was my first experience with vinyl. All things considered it was easier than I expected it to be. I had a bit of trouble initially getting my design to fit within the bounds of the machine's cutting area (it was too big to s
tart with), and while I wasted some vinyl doing this, I did eventually get it right. Once it was cut, removing the 'extra' vinyl from around and within my cut image was a bit tricky too - this took a while, especially some of the tiny areas inside letters. There must be a trick here that I just haven't figured out yet. Applying them to the wall was a breeze once I got it straight, but I did have to be patient and remove the transfer paper nice and slow.
Here's a pic from a bit further away of the completed application so you can see how it all came together. Due to limitations with the cutter's size, I couldn't get it quite as big as I would have hoped, but I'm happy with it overall. Top to bottom of the word Today is about 8 inches which includes the top of the 'd' down to the bottom of the 'y'. This was really the word that gave me grief but I didn't want to change the font since it was so swirly.
So now that I'm a pro at working with vinyl (not!) I have some fabulous ideas about how I can use use it for some really neat Christmas decor and gifts! I'm excited.