Sketching

Fonts and Sketching
Yesterday and today I've been learning a lot about using the sketching ability* of my Cameo. I have a pen holder for it, but only one of my ball point pens actually fit in it. I also have glitter sketch pens specifically design for the Cameo, but those are shaky at best. When they work, they're great, but they are unpredictable.

I bought some gel ball point pens at Michael's recently, but they didn't quite fit in the pen holder. But, I discovered if I remove the pen tube from the pens and cut it down, I can use the casing of the glitter sketch pens! It sounds confusing, but it's actually easy. Yes, you're right, pictures would clarify things. No, I'm not going to post pictures.

I have also learned that, for sketching/writing purposes, I typically will want to use a single line font. From what I can tell, that is the same as an engraving font. Most of the fonts installed on my computer (e.g. Arial, Times New Roman, basically all the ones you'd recognize) are double-line fonts. That means when they are used in the Silhouette (and presumably all other applications), each letter is actually an outline. It just doesn't appear that way in, say, a word processor because its line color and fill color are the same. The top Hello below is a double line font. The lower Hello is a single line font. If I want to use the Cameo to write something (like on an invitation), it makes sense to use a single line font, otherwise it'll draw the letter as outlines.

I stumbled on all this because I'm working on Elise's BD invitations. I wanted to make the invitation text more interesting than just using a printer. Also, I will be doing Carlotta's wedding invitations soon and I want to know about all possible options. Plus I just like figuring out how to do this stuff.

I typed all the above yesterday before a trip to the art store. I figured there had to be better pens out there and there are! The end result of that purchase is that I'm very pleased with how I can use the Cameo to write text. Why would I want it to write text using a pen versus just sending paper through the printer? It looks much more like it's been professionally printed when done with the pen than with a printer.

* think of it how a plotter works and that is how the Cameo is able to draw and write

Mimi = mini progress ... maybe
The G's had their date night last night. D called and asked if he could play poker. Mom is here, so I said yes. As long as I have one other set of hands to help with cooking and clean up and baby holding, it's easy enough. When the G's left, they quickly handed Mimi over to Mom and made a beeline for the door, which is the most effective way to minimize Mimi's crying if the crying is going to be minimized at all. While I was cooking dinner, Mom was walking around trying to soothe Mimi. She was better than me in that Mimi would stop crying for 30s-1m intervals every once in a while. But this is all with complete attention on her and a lot of effort/bouncing/soothing/attention. After a few intervals of quiet, Mimi just ramped it back up to her usual loud screaming, so I decided to get dinner on the table for the 3 kids and Mom, then take Mimi upstairs to give her a bottle and put her down. That worked quite nicely. I mean, she still screamed the whole time, including while drinking her bottle (suck, suck, screeeeaaaam!, suck, suck, screaeeeaaaammmm!, repeat) and then when I put her down, but she was asleep the next time I went up to check on her.

Tomorrow I head over to the G's house to babysit the four kids while the Gs go to brunch.  RHG's dad will come over to put Mimi down for her nap, so that makes it all very easy. It's worth noting that when Mimi was in one of her 1 min stretches of quiet with Mom, if she caught site of me, she would immediately start screaming again. Mimi has no love for me. She's fine (ish) with me if RHG is around, but damn she doesn't like me. Ah well. Can't win 'em all.

Wedding Invitations
Carlotta is coming over in 30 minutes or so to work on her wedding invitations. Here is the design I came up with after much playing around yesterday.  The dark brown is paper of her choosing; the lighter color paper is very simliar to the paper she chose. I edited out her name and the details, but you get the idea. The red flower is embossed. I cut out the stencil for it in vinyl, then used red embossing powder to get the flower color. All the text and the non-red flowers are done using this gel pen. It actually looks much better in person.