Mon, 22 Jun 2020

I looked up the history of the Cameo and was surprised to realize it’s not quite as old as I thought: it’s the pre-2014 version, but can’t be any older than 2011. It’s still had a lot of miles put on it, and today I finally let it do the thing it’s really designed for: cut vinyl.

A year or two ago I picked up some clearanced Cricut-brand vinyl rolls, with the intention of making decals for my niece’s Instax cameras. So my colors are rather limited: sparkle purple, sparkle pink, sparkle silver, and some holographic “blue.”

I pulled up the Dragonquest outline from the dragonrider snap tab set, sized it to fit on my phone, said, “oh gosh that’s gonna be way too much detail,” taped a snippet of vinyl on one of my not-even-sticky-anymore mats, eyeballed the not-even-sharp-anymore blade depth, and hit Export in Inkscape.

And peeled the backing off and said, “well wouldja look at that.”

The blade was still a little low. You can see where it dragged across Ramoth’s hind legs, but only enough to scratch the surface.

I peeled off the surprisingly-durable washi tape that’s differentiated my phone from my husband’s identical one and stuck the decal on to see how durable it’s going to be. I suspect the holo is going to show every fingerprint, but knowing me it’s gonna stay on there forever, cat hair and washi goo and “test” placement and all.

The holo is very changeable.

I’m very impressed with the detail though: dragon teeth and wing claws and everything. Once I get the blade depth finalized I’ll definitely be cutting more of these.

… and taking less cat-hairy pictures of them.