Sunday, February 15, 2009

Assembly line

Thanks for all the input on the valentine color! You can probably see that I came up with the solution suggested by a couple of you and mounted the little crow print first on black, then on red. It was the perfect combination in my opinion. Also good because I had a package of red paper leftover from a previous valentine project and enough black as well. I also had a box of envelopes from a previous project too, so the valentines cost next to nothing to make this year, except that I had to go buy a new color cartridge for the printer to print the letters. Whew! Those cartridges are expensive. So now I am assembling, printing, addressing and will get them out the door in a day or two.

This guillotine is one of my favorite tools and makes it so much easier to do paper projects. This was something I claimed when we emptied my parents' house after their deaths. My dad used it to trim photos that he printed in his darkroom and I assumed that was what it was made for. Just recently my brother told me that it is not, in fact, a paper cutter, but a belt cutter, made for cutting rubber belt material. (For machinery, like conveyer belts, not to hold your pants up.) My dad was a mechanical engineer and owned a machine shop, which was probably what it was purchased for. I was incredulous. I googled "belt cutter" and sure enough, there it was. It is the best paper cutter I have ever used! You can cut a goodly stack of paper very accurately and easily, though not very large sheets of paper. Obviously, Dad had figured that out.

2 comments:

  1. Cool cutter! Your assembly line looks like mine at Christmas time. I had blocks lined up to stamp in progression and cards drying all over the studio. I hadn't thought of doing Valentine cards. Maybe next year - if I can remember, lol.

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  2. Anonymous1:31 PM

    Oh man, I remember that cutter! And you're right it is the best cutter ever. Very, very accurate. You'd put a stack of paper in and crrrunch down the blade and every piece was perfect--no sliding, no tearing, no bending instead of cutting. But I am still amazed that I didn't cut a finger off--it would have easy to do and if anyone were to do that, it would have been me.
    I have a cutter with a rotary blade, now. It's, ehhh, OK but can only do two sheets at a time. I don't worry about digits (except when it comes time to change the blade. I've always been a disaster waiting to happen.

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