Laser cutting & Naughtiness - Yeeha!

 Chunks of rocky road, tiny meringues and a cake on a stick!!!

First to the naughtiness. There I was happily working away last night in Brenda's office at IDC inkberrowdesigncentre.co.uk, The Old Needle Works
 when she comes back from a W.I. meeting with lots of swag. Beautiful candles and lots of little tasty bits. Cakes on sticks, rocky road and lots of tiny little meringues. For those of you who don't know - IDC is where I teach my Experimental Textiles course. experimentaltextiles.com

I have come up to Redditch a day early because I have decided not to travel on a Friday if I can help it, it is just a nightmare. I am teaching for the Genesis Textile Group tomorrow. We are indulging in 'A new starting point'. More newspaper. It definitely seems to be the most popular workshop at the moment. The workshop is in Solihul, 30 minutes from Redditch so I thought I would stay with Brenda and help out in the office while she is teaching today - it should be peaceful enough to get on with planning the photo shoot for my book. I also need to paint up some Bondaweb ready for tomorrow.

This week has been quite an exciting one for me for many reasons, one of which was taking some foiled interfacing to be laser cut. It was a 'look & see what happens' exercise. I need to see how a piece of equipment works before I can start to think about how I can use it for my work. Claire Pain has a laser cutting business and she is helping me cut and engrave a new range of jewellery. Claire and I met when she was a student on one of the Foredown Tower workshops. Claire has been SO helpful - helping my poor brain work out what I would like to do and how we can achieve this. Between us we are going to create some very interesting textures and FAB shapes. Claire is very patient and so helpful.
 

 These are few of the basic test shapes I had cut, we needed to see if see if layers I had created would cut and at which speed. I now need to design the shapes and sort out the design for the engraving - it's all very exciting. I needed to mask off the piece of foiled interfacing as the laser would not cut such a reflective surface. It would be a bit like putting tin foil in a microwave, not good!!!! I have been thinking about stocking Fuse n Tear, as an embroidery stabiliser and and as a support for wibbly wobbly things you want to put through your ink jet. You just iron it on and peel if off and you can use it several times. You can also use Fuse n Tear to mask off your reflective work when putting it through a laser cutter. So I will be stocking it - a very useful product indeed! Don't you love it when a plan comes together?

*

I must get back to work now, I need to contact all the artists who will be featuring in my next book, the photo shoot is next  month - aaRRGHH!!! I'm NOT going to leave it so late to write it this time . . .


Comments

  1. Chris Gray28 September 2012 at 11:58

    I'm glad I'm not the only one who leaves the writing bit 'til the last minute :-)

    Love those laser cut thingys....

    ...I had to cut all of mine with a blade...

    ...and rounded shapes are a bit awkward!

    Glad you're having a good time with all the newspaper and cakes.

    x C

    ReplyDelete

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