Ever since I got into journaling and printing my own stickers a while back, I’ve been dreaming of fancy cutting machine. I researched, compared, shopped, and pouted when I found out how much the bloody things cost. I put a Silhouette Cameo 3 on my Amazon wish list and checked out every sale for a year and change.
Fast forward to right after Christmas when I realized I could use my own lettering to cut out pretty decals without having to worry about scanning, vectoring, and all that other nonsense. Out of habit, I checked zulily to see if there were any good deals…jackpot. There was a beautiful black Cameo 3 on sale for 30+ bucks cheaper than Amazon, just staring at me. Full of hope and worry, I pushed the checkout button and immediately looked out the window to see if it was here yet. Thankfully, I had enough to keep me occupied in the 2 weeks before I got it to do something other than stare out the window…like work and figure out how to use Procreate. When that big box finally got here, I was swamped with work and life, so it sat there, staring at me. I tried to install the software on my poor little iPad mini1 and it just wouldn’t work. I bought the vinyl and it stayed in the bag for a week. I was stalling or something, but today, I finally made the first cut.
In typical squirrel fashion, I fudged up the first round, but luckily, I didn’t mess up my pretty glitter vinyl…mainly because I hadn’t set the blade right in the slot, so it didn’t touch the bloody sheet. After laughing at myself, I found a video on YouTube that showed how to correctly load the blade, and tried it again. Success! Of course, I still needed to “weed” the negative space vinyl and figure out how to put the darn things on all the surfaces I had planned. Despite not having the proper tools (I went and bought the ones in the picture after), I managed to weed out the scrap vinyl with a razor blade (as I tried not to cry at all the waste) and ended up with virtually perfect decals ready to make all the surfaces pretty.
I left the sheet on the table and ran my errands, and got to the transferring. Because it was gonna be so easy, just like in all the high-speed Instagram videos. I tried putting my name sticker (that, like an indecisive psycho, I had to poll the internet on the night before) on my pretty new water bottle. No dice. That pretty glitter vinyl was not loving the transfer tape. After I had to scrap BOTH of my name stickers, I decided to go for the laptop decal, since it was bigger. I posted a “Help!” thread in one of the lettering groups I’m in on Facebook to see if there was something I was doing wrong, because hello, I HAD tried to cut the freaking vinyl without making sure the blade was actually making contact. I was redeemed to find out that it wasn’t just me, but that the pretty glitter vinyl and the transfer tape I had. After much cussing, coercion, and some surgery, I managed to get “Ms. Roy” on to my laptop case.
Going to try some other transfer tape and vinyl combos this week, but I think it’s not too shabby for the first go-round! Now to figure out what to letter so I can cut out more…
Secret Squirrel Art 