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Craft World Problems
Mar. 7th, 2014 08:34 pmI was so giddy to find out that Pazzles has come out with a print and cut machine that can detect printed objects on the paper. When I bought my Pazzles years ago, it was THE machine to have, because unlike a Cricut (which is also made by Pazzles), you could use your own designs and fonts.
Unfortunately I have never been able to use the Pazzles to its full potential. It's a great machine, very robust, but there are two big drawbacks. One is the clunky software. It has standard graphic program features, but they aren't arranged in an intuitive way and I found that frustrating. There are now third party programs like Sure Cuts A Lot and Make the Cut that I might try instead - just downloaded the MTC demo. Second, the mats. The mats! Ugh. The mats. Basically, when the Pazzles mat is new, it's super sticky. Either you assign the new mat to a paper that needs lots of sticky (like heavy paper) or try to reduce the stickiness with fabric. If you put average cardstock on a super sticky mat, it will...stick. And rip. Finally, after many many uses, the mat has no more stickiness. Some people restick their mats with mod podge, but you have to scrape all the crud off first because the surface will be uneven. This chickie does not have time to be scraping crud off! Rubber cement worked for a while, but then the amount of crud (mostly fibre from the paper) stopped making that a good solution. I haven't tried just flipping them over and rubber cementing yet though, because my rubber cement has dried up!
The mats are expensive, so some crafters go so far to use 12x12" plastic placemats found at the dollar store and mod podge them up. If I didn't have birds and didn't live in Canada, I probably could get by with some repositionable spray glue as some suggest. You can use Cricut mats with the Pazzles, but the word on the web is that they are a slightly different size. The Cricut mats come in different sticky strengths, which is a smart idea. For a Canadian, the mats are expensive - $27 plus shipping on Amazon.ca. I would rather try my luck with the Cricut ones. The eCraft machine doesn't have mats, but the reviews on it are a little mixed. I'm not really up to doing all the research on a new machine though...and by then...something new will be here :-D
Unfortunately I have never been able to use the Pazzles to its full potential. It's a great machine, very robust, but there are two big drawbacks. One is the clunky software. It has standard graphic program features, but they aren't arranged in an intuitive way and I found that frustrating. There are now third party programs like Sure Cuts A Lot and Make the Cut that I might try instead - just downloaded the MTC demo. Second, the mats. The mats! Ugh. The mats. Basically, when the Pazzles mat is new, it's super sticky. Either you assign the new mat to a paper that needs lots of sticky (like heavy paper) or try to reduce the stickiness with fabric. If you put average cardstock on a super sticky mat, it will...stick. And rip. Finally, after many many uses, the mat has no more stickiness. Some people restick their mats with mod podge, but you have to scrape all the crud off first because the surface will be uneven. This chickie does not have time to be scraping crud off! Rubber cement worked for a while, but then the amount of crud (mostly fibre from the paper) stopped making that a good solution. I haven't tried just flipping them over and rubber cementing yet though, because my rubber cement has dried up!
The mats are expensive, so some crafters go so far to use 12x12" plastic placemats found at the dollar store and mod podge them up. If I didn't have birds and didn't live in Canada, I probably could get by with some repositionable spray glue as some suggest. You can use Cricut mats with the Pazzles, but the word on the web is that they are a slightly different size. The Cricut mats come in different sticky strengths, which is a smart idea. For a Canadian, the mats are expensive - $27 plus shipping on Amazon.ca. I would rather try my luck with the Cricut ones. The eCraft machine doesn't have mats, but the reviews on it are a little mixed. I'm not really up to doing all the research on a new machine though...and by then...something new will be here :-D
