Fancy Reflective Bee

Products Used

**Vinyls**

**Tools**

**Filming**

• GoPro Hero 9 Camera
• Arkon Mount
• Neewer 2 Pack Dimmable USB Video Lights with Tripods
• Raleno LED Soft Light Adjustable Temperature Film Light

Hello World!

No, it’s not placeholder text. I actually want to say hello to the world. I’ve been branching out in my creativity and am cycling back around to my original crafting love: layered vinyls. I will be trying to incorporate more techniques into future work, making more purposeful art versus making decals just because the design is neat…so I made a reflective bee.

The bee stood out to me as a great symbol of springtime with all the flowers blooming. However, you will notice that this is a fancy reflective bee. The reflective vinyls were specifically chosen to make a statement. Bees are beautiful (even though I am super allergic) and so very important. They really do need more visibility as a critical role in ecosystems.

While the fancy reflective bee is only part of a larger, more time consuming project, I wanted to go ahead and share it. This bee will eventually find its home on a painted canvas with abstract flowers and flight patterns. The canvas is one of my first attempts at purposeful pour painting. More will come on that front later on. Fingers crossed!

New 3D Printed Tool

This caption pretty much says it all. It may not look like much, but this handy little resin-printed doodad has been quite useful. The hole at the top with the longer opening that looks like a crack is great for getting vinyl off the weeding tools. When it’s full, the bottom simply pops off and can be emptied into the trash. Since Robert (my husband) made it with his 3D resin printer, it is smooth and required no sanding.

For those who might be interested, the file for this tool is free on Thingiverse HERE.

Changes on the Backend

It has indeed been some time since the last project post, but there is a good reason! Everything has been undergoing changes to the backend, including a move to Amazon AWS to allow for more control of WordPress updates and plugins on my end. It is SUPER helpful having a tech-savvy person around to help out with the move.

The goal of the back end changes were mostly so that I can manage the website more on my own, including troubleshooting, instead of needing to rely on someone else. With the freedom of relying on myself instead of others, I’ll be able to have more flexibility over content. There will not be a need to wait for someone else to be available to fix something or wait for an answer on formatting or video imbedding. YAY!

Cut setting

Since upgrading to the Cricut Maker 3, I have come up with a new cut setting for most of my adhesive vinyls. It takes a bit more time to cut a design, but is worth it given that the one setting has worked on every TeckWrap Craft vinyl I’ve used so far. That’s a win! If you aren’t sure of how to create your own custom cut setting in Design Space, check out my walk through HERE.

For this new cut setting, the pressure has been set to 130. I kept the fine point blade selection, but changed it to a 2x cut. I chose a 2x pass because there have been so many times where a specific setting has cut the vinyl almost perfect, but had some areas that didn’t cut completely. The two passes helps to ensure that it all cuts cleanly.

Of Course I Messed Up Somewhere

What is a project by me without some kind of mishap? Even though this fancy reflective been looks great now, it could have been a fail.

As you can see in the above screen cap, the bottom reflective layer was cut off at the wing. While a minor inconvenience of recutting the layer, it turned out that four out of the five layers were all clipped off at the wing. Gah! This is why it is important to correctly measure things, folks.

I set up the design to be 6 inches by 6 inches in Design Space. Then I cut each piece of vinyl to be 6 inches by 6 inches. I didn’t realize why that was a bad idea until I got to weeding. Go figure! Always remember that there needs to be more vinyl than the size of the layer being cut since the Cricut has a margin. Don’t make my mistake. Let me make the mistakes so you don’t have to. *wink*

Finished Decal

I am over the moon happy about this finished reflective bee. Even more so, I cannot wait to include it into a painting. It’ll be my first attempt at doing anything like that. Fingers crossed that it goes well. We’ll know before too long though.