freezermink

hey XLII- if you don't mind, i'm thinking about grabbing this idea for a gift or two for friends that have just purchased a house. what types of tiles are you using for this? what sizes? i thought i'd become intimately familiar with all that home depot had to offer since i'm in there all the time, but i realized i don't know much about tiles. what standard sizes do they come in? any specific material that they're made of that you prefer? thanks for the help-

mobil 1 rally championship is still one of my all time favorite racing games. the physics in the game aren't incredibly accurate, but they make it intense and fun as hell. real 10-20 minute rally stages, plenty of courses, damage, etc. if i didn't already own it i'd pick it up in a heartbeat. that is, if that is the same game i'm thinking of.

hey guys- i figured i'd finally post up... i've been trolling this forum for the last few weeks as i contemplated ordering a vinyl cutter. I decided on the USCutter MH721 with stand. It arrived a few days ago and I was thrilled to have it up, running and cutting a great looking sticker in just over an hour! I had a friend with a Roland machine and helped him on many projects/jobs (mostly weeding until the wee hours of the morning), so i was familiar with the basics, but hadn't had the chance to get the feel for the process from the start until i picked up my own. I can already tell that this is going to be an addictive littly hobby. Its a great thing that vinyl is cheap! I just wanted to introduce myself and thank you guys up front for all the info that i've already gathered from the previous threads. I look forward to continue the learning process and hopefully get to the point where i can share my knowledge as well.

i got into some small time screen printing a few years ago. i first bought a speedball starter kit that was very simple to use and learn from, and was very inexpensive. if i remember, it was around $50 and it contained a screen (small, but it worked), emulsion, emulsion remover, a squeegee, some other itmes, and plenty of instructional help. the only other thing i needed was ink. i purchased some water-based stuff to start and was making shirts that same night with pretty great results. after that i stepped up to 5 larger (20x24) screens at $20 a piece, some plastisol inks and a halogen light setup and have the ability to make some great shirts for a relatively small cost. the presses and things are great, but if you're only doing a few at a time, the start-up costs are low. while using the methods you're using now, it'll be really tough to get a quality turn out. it takes some practice and technique with the proper equipment, let alone a home-made setup. i'm very impressed with what you'd gotten with what you used! if you're serious about getting into it, i suggest researching the proper methods (you-tube is incredible for this) and invest $150 or so into some starter equipment and go from there. you'll be suprised at what you'll turn out.

i ordered some etching goop with my last vinyl order and thought i'd try it out. immediately i got a few ideas for christmas gifts for the grandparents. this is one i finished just last night. (we're celebrating christmas a few weeks late this year - tough to get a big family all together.) i thought it came out better than i'd hoped. the mirror itself is about 9"x9". i found it in the frame at target for $16. $.50 worth of vinyl and almost zero etching paste used (once recovered), and i've got a pretty kick-ass gift. it is an irish 'blessing' of sorts, in irish gaelic. my grandmother is irish catholic and i'm sure she'll love it. it reads: Go si

wow, if you guys really like that sulfur smell that much... let me eat a few burritos and invite me over.

i'm really not positive since i've only had it for a short time, but i've reclaimed and reused the paste on 5 or 6 different occasions by now with no ill effects. i did happen to leave one of the applicator sticks out with a bit of the etching paste on the end over night the other night. it seemed to have the same consistancy the next morning as the rest of the bottle- no change. not the same as reclaimed paste, i know, but it did boost my confidence about the stuff. USCutters description lists it as a 're-usable cream', so we'll see how that pans out. i will update in the next couple weeks or so if there is any change in this goop. good lookin out bayotle-

yep, gozo is correct. essentially the paste is reuseable, as you can scrape it off the glass and return it to the bottle after using it. that said, the small bottle should last me for quite a long time. totally worth the price, considering the fantastic job it has done. thanks for the support guys! i'm just stoked that i've been able to get these kinds of results after only having my cutter for a few weeks. its too damn fun.

good find! does anyone else find it funny and ironic that their name is 'coastal business', but they are located in missouri? couldn't be much farther from either coast.

here's the other one i just finished. for my grandmother on the other side of the family. she's a nut for owls - they're all over her house. cheesy, yeah, but she'll love it.

haha. i think so too. to be honest, i did get the translation from the internet. it could really say any number of terrible things, i wouldn't know the difference. i'm banking on it being fairly accurate though!

to me, taking all these tasks into account when pricing something would seem to put things into a price bracket out of reach for such a simple piece. i completely understand taking your time and overhead into account, don't get me wrong. materials, cutting, weeding, proofing-no problem. however, if i added up 'learning my craft, bookkeeping time, time i spent researching and ordering materials', the price for that piece would be verging on astronomical and i just started! its a slippery slope. (btw, taking into account and charging for your time for receiving payment just sounds ridiculous! ha. again, however, i totally get where you're coming from.) $20 including shipping or $20 + shipping both sound like reasonable numbers.

i'm sure they're not exciting to anyone on here since they are very basic simple designs/cuts, but i was able to get these out of the machine after only an hour or so of taking it out of the box. granted, i am very familiar with illustrator and corel so i knew what was expected, but i had not used a cutter before and the ease of setup with the MH721 surprised me. here are a few that i started with. 1st is an image for a relative of mine who owns a small business in tire sales (mounting/balancing, etc). i'm going to try and surprise him with some advertising window stickers and the like. (obviously blurred out part of the phone #, though if i hadn't maybe i can get him some business! haha) 2nd is a small two color logo as well. its a logo i have made for my recording studio and i think it came out great. i made it before i really had any place to put it, and it ended up fitting just great on the end of my plotter! haha. let me know what you guys think. thanks!

i just picked up some of this etching paste myself... added it on to an order of vinyl from uscutter. just tried it out a few minutes ago and i have to say... for decorative glasses, etc, it seems to be a fantastic option. i know sandblasting would look ultra good and it does have the texture, but for the price of this etching paste and the job it does i'm very impressed.

my girlfriend mentioned that she'd like to have more art on the wall, and i remember seeing some fairly intricate urban silhouette scenes done, so i thought i'd give it a shot. we're not in seattle anymore, but we spend ~7 years there and we truly miss it. i thought i'd give that famous skyline a try. its not really the correct vinyl for the application (cheap avery), but it seemed to go on well enough. the gloss is a bit too much if the light is right on it, but where it is positioned in the room it seems just fine. i'd like to get into doing more of the wall art so i think this was a step in the right direction. i also cut it, weeded it and taped it before we even had a place to put it. haha. i took a stock google photo of the skyline, greyscaled, contrasted the hell out of it, did 30 min or so of tedious details and then eventually found the right trace setting in illustrator. i'd love to go bigger, but i only have the 15" vinyl at the moment. once i get a few rolls of 24" i'll give it another shot. first is taped (sorry i was excited and didn't get a shot before taping), and the other two are in the room. what do you think?

the file is pretty node-intense so it won't let me attach it. i just uploaded it to my site, you can grab it from there if you need. it should immediately bring up the option to open/save. www.thereisnostudio.com/misc/seattleeps.eps its a really quick, basic attempt with vectorizing. the problem comes in with getting a high contrast black and white high-res photo. i found one online but still had to photoshop the hell out of it to get it right, then mess around with the tracing options in illustrator until i got it close. i'm sure if you spend a bit of time with it (straightening out some lines, moving some nodes around) you could get it to look even better. i was too impatient to see it actually cut rather than spend the time with the file.

thanks dude! We're not sure what we want to do at the moment... i'm slightly overwhelmed at the possibilities really. everything sounds awesome. one of the ideas is to come up with some sort of subtle integration with simple vinyl wall art behind and around her photographs. shes an amateur photographer and has quite a few pieces that hover around a very simple abtract shape theme. another idea is just to cover the walls with anything we see that looks neat at the time. ha.

ha, thats exactly the vinyl i have on order... it just hasn't arrived yet and i got impatient. i actually didn't expect to be that sucessful with such a detailed piece, but it weeded perfectly and went on great. once i get the 24in oracle 631 i'll do it up right. thanks!

oh i'm sure. it would be easy enough to find just by the name; if someone wanted to find out that badly i'm sure blurring out any part of that wouldn't stop them. i'm not worried.

nice. i'm sure it is 10000% easier with that clear transfer tape... i have gotten lucky so far with the few multi-color ideas i've had so far using the conform, but that was very helpful to see. i'll have to pick some of that up. great job.

i think that is the whole point. 'stealing' is stealing. the idea of getting inspiration from a design and making it your own has been done since the beginning of time and is almost impossible to avoid. ask any musician. great composers like tchaikovsky, bach, handel had certainly come up with most, if not all, of the possible chord combinations. if i want to write a song now, i'm no doubt going to infringe on some sort of chord progression that thousands before me have done. its not stealing, as i'm making my own song. if you look at it like 'stealing', then it is. stealing, to me, implies that you're taking a design, copying it, and then willingly and knowingly changing JUST enough to be able to argue that its yours. i may like the way someone had placed a shadow under some text in a logo that i'll use. i won't use the whole logo, but the idea of the shadowing is fair game.

i love the staring at the camera when he first throws the heat press down on the shirt. he definitely made it 'extraordinary.'

i'm using the supplied signblazer at the moment, but i have a pretty intimate familiarity with both adobe illustrator and corel draw. i'm only using signblazer as a means to send the images to the cutter. so far it has worked out better than i had originally expected. flipped it on, sent a file to the cutter and it cut great first time... good depth, speed, everything. i have a few projects stewing... i'll have to post them up when i get them finished up. thanks again!

ha. i stand corrected. lurking would categorize it much better. i don't have much as far as work completed yet as i've only had it for about a week, but i should have a good run of 100 or so by the end of this week - my first 'job', making window stickers for my uncle's business. thanks for the welcomes.