Products Used
- TeckWrap Craft Holographic Pattern Adhesive Vinyl in Rainbow Diamond*
- Three Piece Weeding Set
- Exacto Knife
- Lady Mandala SVG design from SVGLady
- Orders placed directly through the TeckWrap Craft website incur a $30 shipping fee unless the order is $99 or more. Orders at or over $99 qualify for free shipping.
FINALLY Got This Lady Finished!
This lady mandala has been a LONG time coming! I’ve been attempting to make this project for MONTHS. I originally made a vinyl decal of this design twice for a friend’s birthday last June with no problems outside of a mail problem. I wanted to make it again for myself and finally brought myself to make it in February.
Right after finishing the layered lion project, I attempted to cut this lady mandala on a holographic rainbow vinyl. I have attempted to cut this design four times before I finally succeeded. The first attempt did not cut through the vinyl completely, so I recut it a second time with more pressure. The second attempt failed when the computer froze, taking my Cricut down with it. Once everything had booted back up, I once again started to cut the design.
The third time was NOT the charm. When I say my machine failed me, it failed me hard. That machine pretty much yeeted itself out of existence. It D.I.E.D died! Apparently, the rubber roller on the front bar of the machine somehow moved out of place and started going everywhere but where it needed to be. After some conversations with Cricut tech support, it was determined to be an unrepairable mechanical issue and the machine had to be replaced. The waiting period between the old machine kicking the bucket and the new machine arriving was the reason for such a significant delay between the lion project and the following layered butterfly project.
That Wasn’t All…
Once the new machine arrived, other projects were done to ensure the machine was in working order. Once I felt it was time to once again try the lady mandala, I put the new machine to the real test..and watched it fail twice more! SMH Seriously, though, Design Space does not seem to want to continue communicating with the Cricut when a screen saver kicks on. So one of my cuts completely stopped in the middle of the cut again. The other had too high of a pressure setting and pulled up too much vinyl, ripping the design.
But, alas, I would prevail! I was at that point absolutely determined to make this project work, regardless of the amount of work required. With the right pressure setting, monitoring the blade to make sure it didn’t get vinyl pieces stuck to it, and making sure the screen saver didn’t start, the design finally cut successfully. There were a few pieces here and there that weren’t cut through completely (most likely due to another piece of vinyl stuck to the blade before I cleaned it), but those were still workable with an exacto blade.
Storage and Filming Issues
I do my project filming using my phone and editing with Adobe Premiere Pro or Premiere Rush. Over the past month, I have had no room for storage on my phone. Even with offloading some projects onto my laptop, I kept running out of room on my phone. With this project filming, my phone once again ran out of storage. Unfortunately I didn’t realize it in time, so I lost the last part of the weeding process. It was when I removed the outer edge from around the design. I was really bummed about that since that’s one of my favorite parts of weeding.
After the mishaps with filming, I ran out of storage room on my computer when trying to transfer the video segments to it for post production. To remedy this issue, I had to order (and then wait for) a new storage solution. All in all, this project that was completed on Monday with the intention for being shared on Tuesday ended up taking until early this morning to finally complete. Sadly not kidding about everything being early this morning…I’m currently waiting for the YouTube version of the video to export so I can upload it to YouTube. It is 1:28am. Yeesh!
This project has really made me reevaluate my process for each project from start to published finish. That reevaluation has led to a s few changes to my work flow, specifically with regards to storage of footage and filming. I did some research and settled on a new camera to use for all filming and photography in the future, allowing me to reclaim my phone for personal use. I also have a new external hard drive with a capacity of 5 terabytes to ensure my computer doesn’t run out of room. These are the newest tools to my work flow:
You are way more patient than me! Where will she live?
At some point, it wasn’t so much patience as it was stubborn determination to win. LOL!! I’m trying to choose between either my computer desk or side of the the cubby shelf above the couch in my craft room. Either place would be on display well, so I’m torn.