A Challenge

My Husband owns a body repair shop... Well he has a customer that wanted to change a ford emblem to a U OF L  Cardinal emblem. He asked my husband if he had any idea of where he could find something like that to which my husband said. "I am sure my wife can do it." So he brought me this Ford Emblem

off of his truck and I changed it to this.He was so excited he brought me another one the next night.

Tiles, Tiles, Tiles...

I am making tiles like crazy... I post my finished products on facebook and many people ask about the process. Well I thought I would post it here and not clutter up facebook. :-) These tiles are 13 inch ceramic tiles from Lowes. I buy them by the box. The process for making one starts here. I use a program called Make the cut. If you havent used it and you own a cutting machine it is awesome.. Anyway you design your tile in Make the cut first. Here is the pattern I am cutting today.

After I create my pattern ( I usually do this while my husband is watching some zombie movie at night) :-) I hate zombie movies... Anyway I create the patterns at night and when I am ready to cut them I go and hook to my 24 inch silver bullett it is an amazing machine and here it is.

I feed vinyl into the silver bullet on the blue mat you see sticking out of the back. I then set the depth and speed and tell it to cut and watch it do its magic.

This is the vinyl as it comes out the front as it cuts. You really cant see the cuts very well on the vinyl at all.
Then when it is all done the machine will stop and you can remove your vinyl from the machine. I leave it on the mat so that I can cut around the pieces without cutting my table.

If you look reall close you can see the cuts. Now to weed the project this is the hardest part because it is hard to see and hard to know what stays and what goes. I use a dentist pick for this. Its the best tool I have ever owned. :-) Weeding means take out all the little bits you dont need leaving only what you need on the backing paper. 

As you can see I have started to weed this piece. Below is a picture of it further along. But not finished.

 

next when it is completely weeded I have to take and cover it with transfer tape and squeegee it down so that the transfer tape pulls it from the backing .

Now I have my design sticky side up and I can place it on my tile. This is kind of tricky if you mess it up you have to start all over because it will stick to the tile and ruin it.

Here I have placed it on my tile and once again squeegeed it down and am peeling the transfer tape off this is a slow process because some of the little bits stick to the transfer tape and you have to squeegee it more until it sticks to the tile. When you get the transfer tape off successfully your tile is finished. Put it in a stand and display it. :-) i did 3 today I can't show you two because they are presents. :-) But here is this one completed.

Wow I havent been here in a while.

Christmas has come and gone along with a lot of hustle and bustle. I love christmas and what it stands for the but the commercialization has killed it for me. I am glad it is over. We had a good Christmas we are all healthy and alive so that is good. :-) I got bad news January 1 my mom is thought to have dimentia. She has steadily gone down hill for years and it seems that her outbursts I will call them have gotten worse and worse lately. We are probably going to have to force her to move in with one of us kids and that is going to break her heart. As well as ours. It is so hard when someone has a disease you cant see but it effects their mind. :( The second week of January my sons house pipes burst and flooded from the third floor to the basement they have upgraded it to a catastrophe. He and his family of 2 kids and his wife are living in a hotel. The house has been gutted and all drywall and floors removed. Furniture ruined it is a mess. He and his wife are handling it all well. I have had asthmatic bronchitis so I have not been over there in fear of getting sicker than I already am. I guess you could say January came in and slapped us in the face and said I AM HERE! I still feel fortunate i have a wonderful job, a loving husband who would do anything for me even after all these years , two fantastic grown adult children I am proud of and 4 magnificent grandchildren. :-) As always thanks for stopping in. Lesa