CD player decals for the vision impaired

My mum has macular degeneration, and so she reads books on a CD player. The buttons on the edge are black on black. Hard to read, even for a sighted person.  Product designers should ask themselves if their buttons can be read by a person over the age of 43, when close-up vision becomes more of a challenge.

So, I dug out some black adhesive vinyl and made some decals for the functions. Their positions on the top surface corresponds to the location of the button on the edge.

As usual I used my Cricut expressions machine with Sure Cuts A Lot. [But you can't get that combination any more, if you were to start out now you'd have to get a different cutter if you wanted to use SCAL.]

I will create a pay-it-forward listing on my etsy shop for the decals at cost if you want to do the same for your vision-impaired loved one. 

Goldfish Decal

The PC I use to print decals is not attached to anything, so it's a bit of a production to transfer files from one place to another. I didn't want to be bothered with transferring my recently-created TouchDraw app goldfish outline to the PC.

Instead I just drew a few shapes in Illustrator, ovals and triangles, combined them and converted a few anchor points here and there and voila! A simplified fish.

Maybe if I'm a little less apathetic I'll add a few scales. Nah.

Art Piece, painted vinyl decals over printed tarp.

I haven't attempted a painting since my Acrylic painting course a few years ago. I love the look of cherry blossoms against a turquoise background. I saw such a painting at a Twisted Goods store. I had a tarp with a turquoise color that might work as a suitable background. I'm planning to paint the details on the flower decals with WR-LPU before affixing them to the tarp. This is the color blocking for the project, not the finished piece.

Now to find staples for my staplegun so I can staple the tarp over my 22"x28" canvas frame.

Thanks to EcoLogicalArt for the idea of painting on tarps.

Custom Bicycle Panniers

A client emailed me asking if I'd do custom panniers. I jumped at the chance because I wanted to get data on a number of things, like using marine paint on adhesive-backed vinyl, and designing and working with decals. It's given me a lot of information on how to estimate for future custom jobs.

My client liked Art Nouveau, and Mid Century Modern. So I did up some drawings of various possibilities for those styles in Adobe Illustrator and we went back and forth on the designs. The next step was the backgrounds for the tarps, so I pulled out many of my tarps, photographed them and emailed so she could pick from that, Photoshopping the decals over the tarps. She went with the mostly-tan color you see here.

It was a bit challenging getting the decal colors right. I'm going to make up a palette of the colors I can create with the System Three WR-LPU topcoat I have, for future work.

I'll make a page on my website for custom work as a happy result of this project.

Harry Potter Memory Phial Decal

I really like the doily-style labels on the vials in Dumbledore's Memories Cabinet in Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. I thought such a label would really dress up my hand sanitizer bottle. My label is simpler than the one in the movie, but I'm happy with the result. Although, I wish my handwriting was nicer.

Update: I made another label for my spray cleaner bottle.

If you are interested in working with this label, you may download the .svg file here: http://www.4shared.com/u/pzgmrqms/77e85c19/VinAlly.html

For you Sure Cuts a Lot users I posted the SCUT file here http://forums.surecutsalot.com/viewtopic.php?f=50&t=8843

George Jetson Wallet

Combined vinyl tarp with adhesive vinyl decals on this wallet. I have lots of white tarp so this technique might be a nice way to dress it up.

There's about 20 or more individual seams on a wallet such as this, so I'm not too inclined to set my price really low. Similar wallets at department stores go for at least $45 so I think my price here is a good deal. And my design works better and its made from recycled materials. Just saying.

Working with tarps with glued decals

Some tarps have glued-on letters which makes the tarp thicker and harder for my vinyl cutter to cut through the layers. I have tried to peel off the decal in the some cases, but that is time-consuming. Also, some decals don't lend themselves to being removed. I tried a multicut and that cuts through both layers, but its a bit messy. Maybe if the cuts were simpler in design it would yield a better result.

I had been setting that type of tarp aside, but now I'm seeing that I will be able to work with it, even though it will take longer on the cutting machine.