The Best Thing I've Ever Bought!
I got a new toy!
A few weeks ago, I was lucky enough to win tickets to see Rammstein in Las Vegas in July. Unfortunately, with the price of the hotel room, the gas, the food, the drinks, merchandise, etc., it was just going to end up costing more money than what we can really afford. So, I sold my tickets to a friend of my husband's instead.
About half of the money we would have spent on the concert and a night in Vegas went towards my Mother's Day and Birthday present. I bought a Silhouette Cameo 3! I had been wanting a vinyl cutting machine for a while. But I wasn't sure whether or not I wanted to go with a Silhouette or a Cricut. I did settle on a Silhouette (as the price was lower), but I definitely don't feel like I settled.
I ended up finding a bundle on Amazon.com for about $260. It included the machine, the tools you'll need (including the blade), plenty of vinyl to get started, transfer tape, and markers to use in place of the blade! The program used to create your designs downloads right from the Silhouette website. The bundle also came with free stock designs, which do come in handy!
So far, I've made about 4 different decals, which are pictured above. I also have a few designs saved to the library within the program just waiting to print! They were incredibly easy to make, once I figured out the program a little bit better. I am willing to go through and make a tutorial on how I made them, for those who might need some inspiration. Adding fonts was a little bit tricky. I did use a free website, but if you're planning on selling the designs, you need to make sure that the font you choose is free for all uses, or you will need to buy the commercial license. Trust me, you don't want to get pegged for not giving proper monetary credit.
I have only made sticker decals at this point, but this machine is amazing for scrapbooking as well. The blade it came with is auto-adjusting, which is set within the program as they have defaults for different types of mediums used within the machine. You can also buy heat transfer vinyl to put designs on shirts, hats, bags, whatever your heart desires. The type of vinyl it came with was a "permanent" adhesive vinyl, which is great for car decals, thermoses, water bottles, etc. Keep in mind that the adhesive is not food safe, so if you're going to use it on a drinking apparatis, keep it separate from where you're actually going to put your mouth. It also wont be dishwasher safe, so hand washing is best. You can buy vinyl that's got a lighter adhesive on it. This would be great for wall decals, and you wouldn't have to worry about peeling paint when it comes time to remove it.
The transfer tape is vital for making decals. Once you have your design cut out, and the extra pieces taken away (called "weeding"), you will apply the transfer tape over top, and use that to place the sticker onto it's chosen spot. The transfer tape included is Silhouette brand, and I find that it's extremely sticky. I did have a problem with the decal having some sticky residue left on it, which did clean away. But I am going to try a different transfer tape to see if I might be able to find something more managable. I did figure out that if I went extremely slowly while taking it off, and had the transfer tape basically folded in half (while removing, gently pulling and keeping the tape close to the project), it helped quite a bit. It's a little bit difficult to explain, so let me try again.
Say you have peeled the design up using the transfer tape, and placed the decal onto your car window. Peel up one edge of the transfer tape slowly until you've almost reached where your design begings. The part of the transfer tape that has now been peeled up, fold that over in the direction you're going to be removing, so that the sticky side is facing up, and the non-sticky side is touching the transfer tape that is still on the window. If you use your fingers on the sticky side to slowly slide it across, you shouldn't have a problem. I was able to see sticky parts that were still stuck to the decal, but did stay attached to the transfer tape.
This is seriously one of my favorite purchases ever. I can't wait to make more on it! What would you make if you had one!? Let us know! You can use the link below to see the bundle I purchased, and maybe purchase one for yourself!
