Wow, It’s been like 21 months since my last post. All I can say is that after my last post in May of ’18, my life went into overdrive and changes were coming faster than I could even comprehend. The good news is that ALL of the changes were positive and my family and I could not be happy with the end results. Needless to say, however, these changes have kept me busy.
The other issue that has kept me from streaming lives and posting here is my internet connection, or rather the lack thereof. My internet truly is BAD!!! Sorry @CenturyLink, but 9M download and less than 1 upload is just not good enough. Unfortunately, it’s the best I can get right now. So lives will be a bit rough for a while, but I’m determined to make it happen. I can certainly craft without doing lives or even creating videos, but I truly would like to share my experiences and maybe save someone from making the same mistakes I do.
With that said, let’s talk a bit about tonight’s live. Overall, I’d call it a win. That’s not to say there weren’t lots of problems though. I’m having to use my phone as a hotspot to which I then connect my computer, an iPhone 7 plus, and an iPad mini. The 7 plus and iPad are being used as cameras. I did a test video last night using the hotspot, and everything stayed connected. That was NOT the case tonight: one or the other kept disconnecting. Doesn’t mean I won’t keep trying each time I do a live, I’ll just be more likely to give up one of the cameras more quickly than tonight.
So, tonight’s project came to mind a few days ago. I have eight students who will be graduating this spring and I decided I’d like to do something nice for them. So I went to the Dollar Tree and purchased 8 smooth white mugs. I had seen a project on Cricut that says “Bee Kind” with a bee in between the words (seen below). What better message could I send my students out into the world with??!!! So tonight, even through all of the technical
difficulties, I managed to get the decal cut out. The first decal I cut ended up not having the tiny little dot you can see there on the left. I tried to salvage it, but ended up just having to recut it. I wasted a lot of time trying to work with the first one that wasn’t necessary. Had it been a bigger piece of vinyl, I would have made it work because I HATE wasting vinyl. Since it was only scraps to begin with, I decided to ditch the first and move on.
Tomorrow I’ll do a quick live just applying the decal to the cup. It shouldn’t take more than 10 minutes, but you never know what might go wrong, so I’m not going to make any promises.
Materials
Here are some of the materials.
- Cricut Tools–totally endorsing
- Cricut Maker–also totally endorsing (Use the Chrome extension “Honey” for discounts)
- Cricut Cutting Mat–necessary
- Cricut Design Space–necessary
- Oracle 651 Vinyl–From Brilliant Vinyl (quick delivery) (necessary)
- VINYL FROG Craft Weeding Vinyl Basic Tools Kit–LOVE these tools
Video Equipment
- iPhone X
- iPhone 7Plus
- iPad mini 5th generation
- Arkon Stand
- Cowboystudio 4 Piece Continuous Photography /Video Studio Digital Lighting Kit with Umbrellas and Background Lights–NOT tonight.
- Ecamm Live–only problem is that it’s for Macs only, which I’m great with, but I know many people are not.
Ok everyone, that’s it for now. Until next time
