This Could Be Love

If you've been reading this blog any length of time, you should know by now that not only do I teach others to make cool ass shit (cause I'm an art teacher, yo), I also make cool ass shit myself.  This is relevant because back in October I got a message from my friend Cori (from the Wayback in Mongolia), asking if I wanted a Cricut Maker.  Her hubby is a mechanical engineer for the company, and during a discussion of anime my name came up and since I'm the target market they offered to send me one if I was interested.

I'm definitely more crafty than tech-y, but I feel like only an idiot lets the opportunity to get new toys slip through their fingers (particularly if you have half-formed dreams of actually making money off your hobbies), so I told her yasss - onegaishimasu!  A few weeks later, a DHL guy was handing over a very large box, and I was facing the fact that until that moment, the whole thing had kind of felt like I'd dreamt it up, and I had some major housekeeping to do before I'd be able to set it up.  I left it sealed in its box as I swept the floors and rearranged my work surfaces.  Then I realized that my iPad is old AF and can't use Cricut Design Space because it won't update to iOS 10.  Luckily my school just bought a class set of iPads, and by promising I was planning to use the Maker for art club and that I would give up my firstborn child* if I broke one, I got permission to borrow one at night or on weekends as needed to get me started.  With that, I was finally ready to break open the box!

It crossed my mind to do an unboxing video for my new toy, but I don't have a cameraman and I've never really seen the point of watching someone else open up something exciting.  I was pleasantly surprised to see that it came with materials for my "first project," so once I got through the intro screens of the app I decided to try it out.

It's a cute card but relatively simple to make.  First I had to load a pen into the tool holder thing, and the Maker took it from there, drawing out the lines that you see.  The fact that they were drawn, not printed was kind of a surprise to me, and had me thinking about what all you might be able to do with a robot to do all of your drawing.  Next it used a blade to cut the cardstock down to size as well as cut out the letters, the tail of the kite, and the places where I inserted the blue.  So far, so good.

That said, the point of having one of these things - for me at least - isn't to make other people's projects, but to make my own.  I decided its first real test would be to cut a pair of glasses for one of my plushies.  Having mislaid my old pattern, I had to redraw it.  Then I had to scan it.  I could have done this at school, but it's mendoksai to use the scanner there, so I used the much more straightforward method and visited my friendly neighborhood combini - all of them have English-speaking copy machines that also print photos (or, you know, the Golden Kamuy paper sumo pdf, which was like Christmas coming early) and scan.  Eventually it made it to the school iPad I borrowed and I uploaded it to Design Space.

When I said above that I'm not very tech-y, I meant it, but as long as it's not too complicated a program, I can usually figure things out.  I think Design Space was created with users like me in mind, because it didn't take too long to figure out how to get it to cut out my glasses.  I was even able to alter the dimensions of it in the program to solve the slight proportion issue my drawing had.  The one issue I had was that I didn't have the right cutting tool for craft foam, so the cuts only went about halfway through...still far enough to be able to "punch out" the glasses.

I had my doll pattern already scanned and ready to go, so I uploaded it and tried cutting out a couple of head shapes.  That went pretty well but I wasn't too sure what to do next.  A week later I had my answer.  After cutting out the head I finally started making my Sugimoto doll, but so far he was bald.  Around two years ago I spoke to my Dark Lord and Master about business strategies** and he'd suggested making kits.  I've been toying with the idea but wasn't sure how to go about doing the hair.  This finally forced me to work on a solution.  I sketched out a pattern for Sugimoto's hair, scanned it in, uploaded it, and set the Maker to work.

At first I wasn't convinced that all the effort was worth it, and for one doll, it might not be.  That said, the pattern was a pretty complex one.  After putting the cutting mat into the maker, it went to work and was beautiful to watch.  Since one of my drawings didn't scan as well as it should have I had a chance to test how the two techniques compared.  After watching the rotary blade make quick work of the pointy bits on Sugimoto's hair I had to sit down to trace and cut the final piece.  I ended up with Sharpie all over my hands and it took probably about the same amount of time from start to finish as getting the pattern into Design Space and cutting it with the Maker.  I can see vast potential for the whole "make a kit" idea with that - I could design the basic hair shapes and customers could choose which one they wanted to make, using their own Maker to precisely cut the design.

With the end of the term and coming up on Christmas break, I didn't get any further than that, but I had plenty of ideas.  Now that I'm back from the holidays, with a new iPad of my very own, and very little motivation to leave the house hopefully I'll start putting those ideas into action.  Stay tuned.

*Joke's on them, though - I'm never having kids!
**Most people pay big bucks for the kind of advice he gives me for free.  What can I say - it's one of the perks associated with the lease on my soul.