The Vinyl Cutter Worked!

After much research about raster graphics and vector based graphics and much practice using various graphics programs like Illustrator and Fireworks, Dan finally figured out a process to make our shapes work with the software that came with the vinyl cutter, which allowed him to mechanically cut the shapes out of the rolls of vinyl in various colors that I had purchased.

The vinyl cutter is like a big printing machine that connects to Dan's computer. It uses a stylus that automatically moves to trace the outlines of the shapes that are provided to it by the software program on Dan's computer. We can replace the stylus in the machine with another that has a cutting tip, and it cuts the outline of the shapes into the vinyl, but without cutting into the thicker backing paper. It's a pretty cool machine!

Dan can adjust the vinyl cutter to cut the cartoon-ish designs in various sizes. I had purchased rolls of the vinyl in several colors. We had already agreed to a general design for the walls, so it was just a matter of cutting the shapes in the correct colors, and taking the sections we wanted and placing them on the wall.

Here's a little insight into our design process. All of our projects end up much bigger than we originally intend them to be. The design started with our idea of having a kite or several kites hanging from the ceiling in the room. The walls in the room are a bright, light blue, so we both imagined clouds on the walls as a background for the kites. When we looked at commercially available vinyl decals of clouds, we found one package that included a green airplane and a few clouds. We purchased the package, and loved the plane, but I didn't like that the clouds were pink and clover-shaped. When we saw that the vinyl decals were essentially just shapes cut out of a sticky vinyl, we thought that if we found that type of vinyl, we could cut out whatever shapes we wanted and make our own decals. I was happy, because then I could create clouds in shapes that were more appealing to me, and I could make them larger. Another design we found that we like was of cute, cartoon-y little guys that were parachuting and falling out of the sky. We thought that would go well with the airplane, so a version of those were added into the overall design. As Dan was playing with working with various graphics to work with the vinyl cutter, he decided that some birds flying by should be added to the design, so he worked up a cartoon-y shape of a seagull and used the vinyl cutter to create different sizes.


What started out with an idea about a kite hanging from the ceiling turned into a full blown wall mural of vinyl stickers across two walls of the baby room. The whole process took a few days. Mostly it was because Dan had to work and I was busy sleeping through my 10-day sickness and only working on the project during the few hours in the evening when my head was clear. When the project was completed, though, both Dan and I were happy with the results.