Friday 4 May 2012

mini card dilemma & bear money boxes


Matisse felt a bit left out, he wanted to say hello :)

Mark being all manly in bed last night reading his XBox mag with owly


I was delighted this morning to find a Moo branded package amongst the post. You might remember me mentioning last week that I had ordered the trial of 100 Mini Cards for just the cost of the £3.90 Postage + VAT. I have taken some photos of them to show you just how wonderful they are - I am so pleased with them. I have pictured my old Moo Business Cards to give you an idea of the size of the Mini Cards.


old Business Cards

new Mini Cards

The only thing I would say is that the pictures I used which were photos rather than scans are alot darker - but I still rather like the colours they came out in.
Now I have come across an issue with my lovely new Mini Cards... Being the fool that I am, I ordered my cards with the domain name on assuming that it would be available as when I checked it seemed to be. Well, when I went to claim my domain name today it appeared to be taken. By a GBBO website. Which turned out to be mine would you believe. I set it up over a year ago and it turned out to be a rubbish host by Google - and now it appears I can't even get into the website nevermind delete it. So until February 2013 my domain name is taken - I was devastated!!!
So, I ordered my Mini Cards to replace my Business Cards as I'd decided not to use Etsy anymore. And now my Mini Cards are also redundant until next year!!! I just reordered them, changing the redundant domain name!!

After my stressful time with the domain name issue, I decided to have an arty afternoon to try and chill out a bit :) I got out my waterslide decals and my blank money boxes. I will talk you through the steps...

All the things I needed
1. Decals on waterslide paper (printed previously)
2. Clear Acrylic spray
3. Scissors & newspaper
4. Blank object
5. Bowl of water

Ordinarily, you wouldn't start where I did. Firstly, you'd print your design on to the decal paper. Then you have to spray it with Acrylic a few times waiting inbetween for each coat to dry. Now you're up to speed :) and the first thing I did was cut roughly around my designs.

Then cut as closely around your design as you can, try not to leave any tricky edges though.


This is where the bowl of water comes in. You need to submerge the decal in the water for 30 - 45 seconds. You will know when they are ready, as the backing paper will just slide off.


You have to act quickly now, placing the design where you want it on the blank object, or money box in my case. It will slide around a little for the first 5 seconds or so, so you can move it a little once on.


Once on, if there are any little bubbles in your design you can smooth them out with water and a soft paintbrush. Now you need to leave it to dry for a little while. It should dry quite quickly.

Once dry, you need to spray over the design with the Acrylic Spray and then leave to dry for about an hour. You need to repeat this one or two more times, just to make sure your design is extra safe, leaving an hour between each coat. Make sure the room is well ventilated, as this spray is very strong smelling!!!

And voila :) three bear money boxes with hello bunting on the reverse. I made these for my upcoming craft fair, and look forward to seeing if anyone likes them. I'm very pleased with how they turned out, and have 6 more to make in 2 more designs. If anyone needs any help with doing the decals, just ask! :)

2 comments:

Thanks for your lovely comments! I try to reply to them all :) x