My Minc and Me

My Heidi Swapp Minc foil laminating machine arrived today. I picked it up for 1/2 price at an end of year sale at Studio Calico. Funny I did not even know I needed one, but here it is.

Before it arrived I had to make space. I decided my cameo and Minc could share space on the same metal table, but I had to build a shelf to hoist one up when the other was in use. I bought brackets at Ace Hardware for about $5 and used a sign I had picked up at a tag sale last year as the shelf, a few mollies, screws and a hammer put me in business.

The starter kit came with 3 coated card stock tags, one very large transfer folder and a small piece of flimsy (very) gold foil. (6 X 12 inches maybe). I had watched a few videos on You Tube before I tried it out, so I wasn't afraid of messing up. Luckily I knew that toner adheres to the transfer sheet, so I am very cautious to make sure there is none showing. Using a piece of copy paper as a shield works.

Two tags came out pretty good, but on the third, the arrow had two smudges, but I am not sure what caused it. It was not until after I bought this toy I found out that it only works with toner from a laser printer. Of course mine is inkjet and I don't work anymore, so it's not like I could print at the office. But UPS does laser copying and they are a back roads 3 miles from here.

I developed 4 pages of script and drawings and brought them with a piece of black card stock and several sheets of Neenah solar white to print on. I copied the black card stock so I could get a full sheet of black toner. $1.60 later I was ready to begin some testing.

I tested ink on the coated tags, dye worked and so did Stazon on a stamp and it wiped away from the gold foil.

Next I used a leaf die on the black toner paper, ran that through, my oh my. It really came out beautiful.

As always, you never throw away the negative, so I tried those on the same black toner paper. They came out ok, not great. Then I tested pigment ink on the negative leaf foil thinking I could get a white leaf. No go, in fact it gave my foil poc marks.

I am not anxious to use up all of my starter kit foil, not until reinforcements arrive or I take a trip up to Michaels... So I won't do any large scale testing on my scripts and drawings until the weekend. I may do some more die cuts tomorrow and I also want to test it with sticky embossing powder, on a lower setting, it is supposed to be like magic.

 

We will see. Thanks for stopping by.

 

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Photo shot? I forgot!

It is not usually a problem of forgetting my camera, I remember to take it, I just always forget to use it. Yesterday John and his 3 siblings were together for brunch for the first time in a long while; An extremely rare occasion that probably won't happen again for several years, if ever. Wouldn't that have made a great photo op? Guess who never took the camera out of her purse?

The restaurant, Pucketts Boathouse was a rustic building in downtown Franklin Tennessee. The ambiance would have made for some interesting photos as well. My loss. How am I supposed to scrap my life if I keep forgetting to photograph it?

 

Maybe next time. If there is one.

 

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Mini Album

This week I started working on a mini album for an online scrapping class. Several months ago I printed the photographer's photos from the wedding in July, but I had yet to do anything with them. Let's face it, I was tied up with the cross country mega album for 3 months after we returned from our trip. During that time I also put together a wedding album for the bride, a mini album of a 45th wedding anniversary party; Made a dozen Halloween and Thanksgiving cards and 60 Christmas cards. I am not complaining, I am retired and for me this is heaven.

The hardest thing about a mini album is getting started. I did not know whether I would make the album out of chipboard or use a ring binder I already had. I knew it had to be large enough to fit the 4x5.5 photos and most of those photos were landscaped. Once I had my binder in mind I was good to go.

Earlier this year Big Picture Classes which is a subsidiary of Studio Calico (SC) had a nap time sale. 20% off everything and I found these gorgeous Heidi Swapp planners that were already marked down. I picked up two of them. Not to use as planners, but to use as scrapping handbooks. As it turned out, I was so impressed by the contents I started using the Hello binder in August as a planner!

 

For the striped handbook I removed all the calendaring contents.. They will fit perfectly into the other "planner" and give me a full two years of "to do" lists. This was to be my mini album. I had some small page protectors from SC and a perfectly matched Heidi Swapp paper pad all the correct size for this handbook. One small problem: the holes did not align on the page protectors. Easy fix: make a ring guide and cut new holes.

And now I can begin. I spread out all the liner papers and matched them to photos, then piled everything according to how it will best tell the story of the wedding.

After one has been buying scrap booking and card making supplies for several months, or years, the stash starts building up and overflowing. These mini books are a great way to deplete supplies. Each little page tells a story and the opportunity to embellish is endless. But like any work of art it takes patience and perseverance.

I don't expect to finish this in one sitting, in fact it is best to break away now and again and work on something else. So far I am happy with the results. My workshop mess, now that is another story. For another day.

Thanks for stopping by.

 

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