Tag Archives: Team KNK

Wild Fashion Prints Heat Transfer Vinyl

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Wild Fashion Prints Heat Transfer Vinyl  

Detail_Leather vinyl_opt3  

Wild Fashion Prints™ is a preprinted heat transfer vinyl in many popular patterns that add fun to lettering, numbers or your custom design. KNK carries them in 17 different prints including animals, camo, perforated and leather looks. Many of the prints are also textured such as the leather.

And of course, since I am working with my friends Cathy Wiggins and Olde City Quilts to promote a line of garment leather to sewers, I just had to try out the leather vinyl on this t-shirt project. We are vending at the largest quilt show in the USA, Houston Quilt Market and Festival this fall.  We not only wanted to create a unified look when in the booth, but also peak attendee interest when we were spotted away from the booth with a slogan that made folks stop and ask us, what does #itsbetterinleather mean?

First, I created the design for the shirt in Make The Cut! , using the hashtag, #itsbetterinleather and the Olde City Quilts logo.  I did not know what the font name was for the Olde City logo, so I uploaded a picture of it to the WhatTheFont page of My Fonts.com. This great font resource identified the font I needed and directed me to where I could purchase it. Once downloaded, I installed it into Make The Cut! and finished my design.

Filled up the virtual mat with as many as I could fit, mirror imaged the designs and cut on my KNK Maxx Air.

Materials

KNK Zing/Zing Air/Maxx Air Standard Material Detail Blade

Wild Fashion Prints Heat Transfer Vinyl 

Maxx Air Settings

  • Blade = Red Blade, Blade height = 25
  • Force =55
  • Velocity = 250
  • # Passes = Disabled
  • Blade Offset = .25

The material cuts like all heat transfer vinyl, but since it is textured I did have a bit of an issue when weeding. The second time I increased the force a tad and exposed a tiny bit more blade. The design should be reversed and the clear heat proof carrier sheet face down on the mat.

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I then set up my design on the t-shirts and pressed with my heat press for the recommended time and pressure. Temperature at 325°F – 340°, firm even pressure for 12-15 seconds. Peel the clear backing when cool. Cover with a Telfon© sheet or kraft paper and repress for 3 seconds.

This is a fun material to get some cool effects on clothing, and it is perfect for our #itsbetterinleather message!

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“Quinceañera” Banner

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KNK, Omayra Duarte, Cortadora, Digital,

We were celebrating our niece’s “Quinceañero”, so I decided to make something really, really special for her. Using my wonderful KNK Groove-e, vinyl and some embelishment, I was able to make the “perfect” lettering, fixed in the position of an arc to put on top of a portrait of her, that i drew. The portrait, the arc, and the back of the numbers 15 were done using Styrofoam and vinyl. With her name and the number 15 on on the arch, decorated with flowers.

The materials that we are going to use for this project are:

Settings for Groove-e Machine:

  • Force = 15
  • Speed = 150

Steps to make the Decorative Arc:

  1. I cut an arch out of Styrofoam using a Foam Cutter Wire.
  2. I measure the arc and I made a virtual mat on MTC a little bit bigger than the size that would be my arch.
  3. Then, Inside that virtual mat, from Basic Shapes>Generic, I choose the Block Arc and put it approximately the size of my arc.
  4. After that, I choose the letter that I wanted to use and I wrote the name of my niece, t which is Zaylene.
  5. Click on the Bézier Warp icon on the Magic Toolbar. 
  6. I choose Manual size and stretched the sides to make an oval.
  7. Then, I played with the width and height bottom until I get the shape that I wanted and clicked apply.
  8. The final step was to size the name inside the Block Arc that I had on my virtual mat. I wrote the numbers 15 and send it to cut.
  9. The numbers 15 were placed on a Styrofoam, cut with a foam cutter wire, stuck in a wood stick and glued to the arch with hot glue.

Reflectra PlotFOIL © Heat Transfer Vinyl

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Reflectra®  is available as both a plotter-cut (Plotfoil) and an embroidery applique (Stitchfoil) heat transfer material, comes in 23 different patterns and 17 solid colors, including neon and a frosty clear (Sensation Translucent).  No matter how dark the color is in natural light, the entire design lights up bright white when hit with the flash of a camera, flashlight, or headlights.

I decided to test this product by making a scarf for my daughter Brooke’s dog, Cooper.

CWest_RPF_Normal View

Materials

KNK Zing/Zing Air/Maxx Air Standard Material Detail Blade

Reflectra Plotfoil Heat Transfer Vinyl 

Maxx Air Settings

  • Blade = Red Blade, Blade height = 25
  • Force =45
  • Velocity = 205
  • # Passes = Disabled
  • Blade Offset = .35
  • The material cuts like all heat transfer vinyl, only a minimal exposure of the blade is needed. The design should be reversed and the clear heat proof carrier sheet face down on the mat.

CWest_RPF_Heat Press

  • I then set up my design on the doggie scarf and pressed with my heat press for the recommended time and pressure. Temperature at 335°F, firm even pressure for 15 seconds. Peel the clear backing when cool. Cover with a Telfon© sheet or kraft paper and repress for 5 seconds.

CWest_RPF_Cooper Scarf

  • We took Cooper outside at night to see how it works. Like all reflective material the light source needs to hit the design at a good angle to work. The stars and Coopers name glowed bright white when hit with the flash of the camera even though the color of the vinyl is royal blue!

CWest_RPF_Reflective View CWest_RPF_Normal View

 

 

 

This is a fun material to get some cool effects on clothing, and really light up the night!

{Maxx and Webkinz birthday party swag

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Okay, so I had a Halloween project all planned out for my post this month and well, I sort of didn’t pay attention to my calendar and didn’t realize today was my day! Blasphemy!!!!

So pretend you are looking at a picture of my cool Haunted House…

 

See? Isn’t it pretty?

Instead I bring you something else. Something I’ve never shown anyone anywhere before. I’ll confess it isn’t a new project, but since Mr. Maxx was an integral part of making the day the success it was, here you go…

A couple years ago my daughter begged me to have a webkinz themed birthday party. Do you know what these things are? They are crazy expensive stuffed animals and you get a code and you can play a bunch of games online with your virtual webkinz. I had a hard time justifying spending $15 for stuffed animals, so I made my daughter save her pennies and buy them herself. Well, now she has 100 of these things.

Frankly, I would have saved the money and took a trip to Hawaii. But she tells me, “Well, YOU spent the money on your KLIC N’ KUT that you could have taken a trip to Hawaii.” To which, I said Touché.

Because while I would like a trip to Hawaii, really I would, I don’t think I’d be without my Klic n’ Kut.

Okay, so without further babbling, here is my project:

I found the graphics online and you know how um, cruddy (notice how I didn’t use the word I normally use) the quality of online graphics can be, and traced them into KNK Studio:

I cut the letters out and pasted them on a piece of white card stock and displayed them around the backyard. The dog was paper pieced and then stamped with hearts. These turned out to be a huge hit because many of the girls asked if they could take them home at the end of the party.

One of the games we played was guess how many gum balls were in the jar. I picked up this jar at the dollar tree and used Maxx to make a vinyl stencil and then put etching cream on the glass. I don’t know if you can see it very well in the picture, but it’s etched with webkinz.

I was really glad I took a picture of it when it did, because unfortunately it broke when the winner of it accidentally dropped it. Gumballs went everywhere. She was so upset because she wanted to keep it forever. Luckily I had a back up (read: it was kind of messed up so I made another one, but the little winner didn’t care).

After the girls were done playing assorted games, they spent their webkinz cash they won in a store where they could buy little trinkets for a set amount of money. I think this was the favorite part of the whole party.

For a grand prize, the girl with the most webkinz cash, I made this:

I used Maxx to make the stencil out of vinyl and then painted it with pink paint. I also outlined the letters with a puffy paint pen. I’m not the best artist so I’m a little embarrassed about showing you the closeup:

I guess WordPress doesn’t want me to show you the picture because it won’t let me add it. Let me try again:

 

Hmm. Well. It won’t let me add it. I’ll go ahead and publish this and see if I can add it later.

 

There it is. I was having a bit of an internet problem I guess. I got lucky I saved my post before it crashed.

I hope it’s okay that I steered away from Halloween a bit. I was really excited because it’s my favorite holiday of the year, but maybe I can show it next month. I can’t wait to see what you are making with your machines! I wanted to show you my iPhone card (in honor of the new iPhone release) but the picture isn’t on this computer 🙁 🙁 I’ll find it at home and post it on my blog.

 

edit: Just a gentle reminder that I do respect copyright and I only used these images for personal use so unfortunately I can’t share the files.

{Sewing with MTC and Maxx

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I wish I could come up with these fantastic ideas on my own. I also wish I would learn to book mark the sites where I find these fantastic ideas so I can heap loads of credit on the creators because I never find them again. I was surfing the web one afternoon and I came across a site where the designer made cards using that embroidery floss.

I clicked on her patterns and saw they were hand drawn. The lightbulb in my brain that often has cobwebs on it went off and I thought, “Self, you can do this with MTC!”

I have one of these things:

 

You roll it around your paper and it pokes holes in it so you can sew your own cards. I’m a little challenged though and my lines came out crooked and it annoyed me.

Unfortunately I can’t share the files I made since I don’t think the Lettering Delights peeps would be too happy with me if I did, but I can show you how to do it. You know that whole teach you to fish instead of giving you one saying? Just don’t hit me with the fish or anything, k?

So here’s what I did. I opened up MTC and went to my lettering delights folder. Since Christmas is coming sooner than I want it to, I went for those cut it files and found this one:

Simple Christmas tree, right?

I opened the rhinestone dialog box (ctrl+k) and started fooling around with the settings. I picked the .0750″ stone size because they seem to be good sized holes to sew with. I played with that spacing bar until I saw that the dots covered most of the corners. I found it will change with different designs you do so fool with that cool little slider and hit “preview on mat” to see the changes. Don’t be a Deb and be sliding that slider around and wonder why nothing is happening because I forgot to click Preview on Mat.

I unchecked “delete original” because I wanted to have a line to work with should I need to adjust any of my circles. And I can see areas where I need to.

 

I clicked accept.

Go over to your layers box and click the “+” by the Christmas Tree layer. It will change to a “-” and you will see the paths broken down below. Click on the RS one and MTC will select all the circles.

Break apart the circles. (It’s ctrl + something. I really don’t know right now and am too lazy to open up MTC to look. I’ll go with ctrl + b for break, but don’t quote me on that, k? And hey, I knew the rhinestone one by heart)

See how the corners don’t have a circle? They need one so that the image will look right when you sew it. Any time you have to change an angle, you want the little circles there. So select a circle and move it to the corners. You’ll find you have to move a few of the others to make it look spaced out even, but it only took me a minute or two to arrange them how I wanted them.

This is where having the original path of the tree came in handy so I could make sure I was moving circles and not screwing up the design.

Once you are happy, move the original path away (and delete it or close the little eye ball) so you can select all the circles and join them again (going to have to assume it’s ctrl+j for join).

I used 110 lb white paper and it really looked nice.

Here’s the finished tree:

I sewed them using  DMC floss and doing a back stitch. I don’t even begin to know how to explain how to do a back stitch. I didn’t even know I knew how to do it, but apparently I do. I don’t cook and I’m not sure how to work my iron…or even if I have one, but I knew a back stitch.

Here are some other designs I made. These are all lettering delights graphics too. I’m not going to lie, I don’t like how the pumpkin turned out. I think I needed to make the stem a little longer or something. Also I can see I didn’t adjust the coloring right in the pumpkin card photo because that’s orange thread, not red.

Here are the cards I made:

The teacher in me has to give you a couple of ideas to do with your preschooler/kinder age kiddos… You can make a design with bigger circles (I would make them at least .156″ if not 1/4″) and have it cut out on a full piece of card stock. Buy some of those plastic yarn needles they sell at Michaels and have the kids sew the designs with yarn. This is such good practice for building fine motor skills that kids (especially boys!) need for writing and it also helps them build tracking skills for reading.

You can also do this with letters of the alphabet. Kids who need that tactile experience can use them to help them learn their letters.

Kids really get into this project and I kid you not, it will keep them quiet and occupied for a good half hour to forty-five minutes. And I’m all about that.

Well, that’s all from me for this month. My poor bloggie has been neglected but I’ve been super busy at work. After next month, things will ease up and I’m hoping to get some stuff going again.