Vinyl Adhesive

Sewing appliques is time consuming, especially since my 1948 Singer does not have a backstitch. Lots of turning. I wanted to find an adhesive that would work for vinyl to vinyl applications on wallets, purses, and my soap totes.

At my local big box hardware store I found Lepage Flexible Plastic Adhesive. Works great, have to be careful not to get it on to the outer dyed surfaces because it removes the finish. Can't wait to make a wallet and field test it. When you try to pull it apart it leaves the outer vinyl layer so that you can see the inner mesh of the banner. Also works for vinyl on glass. So you could use it to stick vinyl letters to glazed tiles. Ha! now I can put "flush" onto the toilet tank!

I'm featured on Fairytalefibers' blog

On the January 28,2009 posting at http://fairytalesandtl.blogspot.com/, my soap totes are featured!

Graphic Design Course Book Cover

I have to design a book cover using only text and geometric elements plus one other color along with black and white. Here's my first attempt. How is it coming across, do you get what the book is about? Comments appreciated! I will tell you what my teacher thinks of it after next Tuesday's class.

Update: Well, it didn't work, people didn't get it. I thought with the additions I had from the first draft, the word "Recycled" and the "Things to Make with Them" that the design would work. But, they didn't. My problem is that I was having trouble coming up with a new idea so I went with this one. Someone also thought that the grommets were part of a film strip.

I guess I learned that sometimes what is needed is to go back to square one rather than being committed to a design that isn't working.

Custom clothing labels for an actual client

I did these clothing labels recently. The challenge was printing fine-lined fonts onto a dark background. I had to thicken up the letters by adding a very small stroke to the letter fills. Also there wasn't much room with which to work.

Another challenge was that the photoprint fabric distorted the dark brown to a khaki green so I ended up having to use dark tee shirt transfer fabric, which is quite costly.

I just joined Twitter as Sewnagain

In other news, I started a class last night in Graphic Design at the University of Calgary. That should complete my 250 or so hours for my Certificate in Visual design.

Update: I changed the twitter ID to VinAlly because that's what I'm now focusing on.

Billboard Vinyl for Making Stencils

One potential client from Etsy was wanting a custom stencil. So I have been exploring the possibilities of using recycled billboard vinyl for this purpose. Billboard vinyl has internal fibers that do not always get cut by the Cricut Expressions. I experimented with multi cuts as well, but the fibers seem to persist. I also learned that big loops require joins or bridges or whatever the term is for stencilling. Otherwise the large loops will shift during stencilling and produce an unsatisfactory result.

The making of the stencil required a doubling/displacement/combining/anchor-point-deletion of the words "Love" and "loved" because some parts of the letters were too thin at that scale to cut well. The Arial fonts required joins or bridges on letters like "e" and "a" and "g" because they had internal space within their letters and they needed solid material to anchor those central holes.

I think that a larger design with not too many fine cuts would work well for making stencils, and I'm definately going to use it myself for my own stencilling.

vinyl filagree bracelet

I know Karl Lagerfeld was showing lace-like metal "tattoo" jewelry and lacy vinyl cuffs to in his Spring 2009 collection. That image has stuck in my mind. So I decided to explore making my own version of a vinyl bracelet, and here's the second prototype. It's comfortable and fits on my small wrist. I made a few more more joins from the first prototype so that there's less large pieces to stick out and get caught on things. This one is now an Etsy listing. The blue colour of the vinyl is genuine Calgary Sky, and it's one of the best blues for my skin tone according to my colour theory studies. Now to make some in black and white and other colors.

I'm happy with the way this turned out so now its time to make some different styles. I will put on my twenty-something-New-York-hipster thinking cap.