SNC Basics - A step by step guide to Test Cuts

Draft post - quick and dirty for an fb group where a poor user has cut a ginormous hole in their mat (hopefully now taped up from the back and useable again).

Oh dear! you've cut a big hole in your mat, or your cuts aren't clean and messing up the surface of your material. arghhhh you are so frustrated, the machine looked so easy on the TV! and you can't get it to work and want to throw it out of the window for all the wasted time and money.
Is it your fault? why won't it work?

Well, have you done proper test cuts, do you understand the relationship between speed, blade depth and pressure? Because yes, some materials are just horrible and won't cut well, but usually cutting problems can be solved by using the right settings. The settings are NOT arbitrary, it's NOT an arcane mystery. The settings are logical and can be created to be pretty much exactly right if you know how and why they behave how they do.

I did a post on test cuts ages ago. This is complimentary to that and is a step by step 'how to do test cuts' the long way round.
Let's learn to do test cuts!

SNC Basics - Exploring using the Machine as an X-Acto Knife or Guillotine Part One

As you may be aware I have severe ME/CFS which leaves me pretty much housebound and mostly bedbound. What this illness does, is stops my body providing me with the energy and strength that normal healthy people have, as well as giving me a lot of pain and nausea and other symptoms that are exacerbated when I do too much. And for me, doing too much is basically anything over and above eating, going to the loo and telling my carers what to do every day. And that's why I bought this Scan and Cut Machine, because I wanted to try and get back to doing some crafting using modern technology to reduce the amount of energy and movement needed.

This Month's CnC Member Gift (In the Garden Kit by HunkyDory Crafts)  HERE

ScanNCut Project - How to design a Charley Harper style papercut Cardinal Bird in Canvas

Evening. I originally designed this bird shape as a papercut within the machine itself. However, as it turns out, I've not actually seen my camera since Christmas Day so I assume it's still at the parentals' house. So this project has been done using the Free Brother Canvas software to then be transferred to the machine for cutting. Eventually if I ever remember to ask the parentals, I may well have my camera back. But for now, Canvas all the way!

This Project uses basic shapes in Canvas to create a 3 colour papercraft Cardinal Bird in the style of Charley Harper, a mid 20th century American designer. If all goes well, it will look like this:

Charley Harper style Cardinal papercraft bird

Canvas - Manipulating Basic Shapes - Process Functions Explained - Weld, Divide, Remove Overlap, Subtract - and how to use them

Manipulating Basic Shapes - Process Functions Explained - Weld, Divide, Remove Overlap, Subtract - and how to use them

One of the trickiest things in Canvas is to get to grips with how the Process Functions work, particularly working out which ones I need to achieve my desired result. At least for me....

This blog post covers Process Overlap (the bottom section) and the Order section (above Process Overlap on the right)

Canvas - Manipulating Shapes - Aspect Ratio

Oh hai. I'm on a roll, nothing for a whole year, then like buses, three posts come along at once! Why? Well because I want to make a paper bauble garland for my mantelpiece and I need to create the shapes in Canvas, so I thought I might as well do a tutorial at the same time, as it's not hard to do screenshots and explaining as I go along.

Complex Bauble made from basic Circle using Aspect Ratio, Order, Weld and Subtract

In this post we are going to play with basic shapes and aspect ratio to make more complex bauble shapes.

Canvas - Manipulating Basic Shapes - Resize, Weld and Subtract

As it's December, I thought it'd be a fun introduction to Canvas to learn how to make a basic flat bauble shape with a hanging hole. This creates a simple shape that is one single pattern. Once made it can be resized, and the hanging hole is an integral part of the pattern.

We cover - choosing basic shape, duplicate, weld, subtract and resize with this one.

The end result - a bauble shape with hanging hole

Canvas - What is it and what can it do?

Hi. It's a very very long time since i've blogged! Sorry about that. I was getting ready to move and then actually moving house and then unpacking, and being disabled with the main issue being lack of energy,  absolutely nothing craftwise has happened for ages!

I'm now on a few facebook groups, and I keep seeing the same sort of questions over and over again, but as I don't have a clear table surface for my machine, and I can't find my SD card reader for the laptop post move (I know I've seen it since, just can't remember where), I can't do more blogging about working with the machine.  So I decided that I can do blog posts entirely on the laptop using LightShot for screen grabs, so I should start the series on the Canvas software.