Grrrrrr.
About those Valentine cards for my grandchildren . . . .
Last night after dinner I sat down to paint the remaining three cards. As I had already shot my best ideas on the ones I'd already made, I went to YouTube to steal somebody else's ideas. ;) This was a mistake.
I saw "pop-up" cards.
There was this really cute one that opens up to a planter full of grass with tulip-like hearts mingled in.
Now, I had a brief love affair with pop-up cards a year or two ago. It lasted long enough for me to acquire a stash of paper and other supplies - scissors that cut pretty borders, all kinds of tape and glue, embossing powder, ya-da ya-da - and it all survived last year's craft room purge. So when I saw the heart-y pop-up card video, I thought, I can make that, and I stopped the video, went to the cra - er, studio - and dug it all out.
In the stash was a stack of glitter cardstock in colors that my granddaughters love. It nearly took my breath away. What pretty cards it would it make! So I go back to the video and learned that each card required cutting FORTY-FIVE tiny (1/2") hearts, which would be glued together in groups of 3 to make the heart-flowers. 45 x 3 = 135 tiny hearts. No way.
But ...
There's a cutting machine in the studio. I hadn't used it for a long time. The cutting mats aren't very sticky anymore, but there's one good-ish one that would do. And the machine even had a pre-designed, perfect heart shape that I could re-size and duplicate 135 times. I wasn't sure the cutting machine could handle that glittery cardstock, so I cut out 135+ hearts out of plain cardstock, pink and red, and glued 45 of them together in groups of 3- enough to do one card.
I finished that one card before I went to bed. Let's just say it was not as pretty as the one in the video. I should've done the hearts on thinner paper, I think.
So this morning I got busy trying to re-vamp the video project to suit the supplies I have on hand. I really, really wanted to include the glitter cardstock somehow, so I decided to test it in the cutting machine. It is thick, and gritty, and I knew it would dull the blade, but I knew I had spare blades, so I went for it. I cut 3 glittery blue butterflies - small, medium, and large - had my blade set to 6, 0 pressure - and they came out pretty good, with just a tiny bit of snagging. So I cut another set of butterflies in pink. They, too, came out snagged but good enough to use. So then I tried some green ones, and this time I flipped the cardstock over so that the glittery side was down. BIG MISTAKE. My mat was already not very sticky, and the cardstock shifted when the cutting started. I stopped it right quick, flipped the green over, and started over. It cut half of the first butterfly, and then just started moving across the page, cutting nothing.
The blade *shaft* had broken. The cutting tip fell off, but the shaft did not fall out. I made several attempts to pry it out, knock it out, dig it out, but no luck. I gave up and ordered a new blade holder (and a new blade for a spare).
Well, that shoots the pop-up card idea.
But I had that one I made last night, and though it was not very professional-looking, I put it in the mail to Granddaughter #1, away at college, and went back to looking for ideas for the other two cards. (One is for the LRB, the other for The Grandson).
Overload.
Paralysis!
I gave up for a bit and went back to try again to get the blade shaft out of the cutting machine blade holder. And this time I did it. Took it apart from the top, where I don't think it's *really* supposed to come apart. If you squeeze it just right, though, the top cap can be eased off without breaking the little nubs that hold it on. There's a magnet inside. It was easy to get out with a little screwdriver, but a bitch to get back in (wouldn't turn loose of the screwdriver - had to use a skewer). When I put it back together, the depth dial wouldn't turn, but I took it apart and reassembled it, and it worked and fine cutting out a Valentine card I downloaded from somewhere.
So, yay for the blade-holder. :)
Not so yay for the card it cut out. I made a mess gluing it together.
What the heck. She's THREE.
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