It sure looks easy when it’s all done, even to me. So let me record here the behind-the-scenes moments. I first worked on the bib. There is the actual cutting line, the stitching line, and the button hole. Each had to be on their own layer in Adobe Illustrator and their own settings (solid vs dotted, ink pen vs blade). Since the dotted stitching line is not the same size as the cutting line, it off-shifted the result on my first trial. Let’s just say, 4 attempts later, I succeeded.
Let me digress for just a moment. One attempt failed because my die cutter mat was losing it’s tackiness. I had been using a 20 year old roll of airbrushing frisket to gain back some adhesion (I rolled the frisket with sticky side up onto my mat and after peeling wax had a new clean surface), but it sometimes got cut through so it got caught up in the roller and my paper moved, hence attempt #4. I found another method online using Zig 2-way glue (blue when wet = permanent bond, clear when dry = temporary bond). It’s not bad but I find some residue comes off the mat and sticks to my papers.
The text was easy out of vinyl. Each part of the duck was a separate file and pass because they are all different colors of paper, even the wing and body. The orange was so thick it would not cut through even after 8 passes, so I finished cutting by hand. I cut the pupil from the same blue vinyl as text, but it was so small, I thought it didn’t even get cut. Let’s just say, my dreams of making cards to sell and getting rich quick is evaporating with the alarm clock chime – I think I’ll go blind first – but it was certainly worth doing for our new little nephew.
