I was very productive over the much needed Thanksgiving Break! I needed an inexpensive gift for my students. I love giving personalized gifts so why not give a personalized gift to each student. I decided to make ornaments made out of their name. I have been dying to try cutting some other materials on my Silhouette machine so why not try craft foam!
Amazon to the rescue! I ordered craft foam that had the adhesive backing on it thinking it would be easier. Ha! Nope! I knew that I was going to have to cut the name the right way and then flip the name horizontal so that both sides would be glittery and read their name. I also order the 2mm craft blade on Amazon to cut the foam. A trip to Hobby Lobby scored me the hooks and the little holiday themed charms I wanted to attach to the names.
In the design studio, I used my name for my first attempt. When I went to send it to the machine all these little squiggly lines showed up on the mat! What?? After some googling and YouTube searching I found nothing but did learn that the kraft blade does not turn like the auto blade as only one side of the blade is used to cut. I finally figured out this is how the machine turns the blade so the sharp edge of the blade is cutting. So if you have never used the kraft blade before let me save you the worry when you see this.....
I cut my name forward and backwards, pulled the mat out and.......nope no cut! When I finally found a setting that worked (I still had to work at the name to pop it out as it still did not cut all the way thru the foam) I had both cuts and popped them out. I pulled the backing off and then attempted to attach the two names together. DISASTER! That adhesive is really sticky and I found the flexibility of the foam didn't really give me room for errors in matching them up correctly!
So back to Amazon to order craft foam with no adhesive. Once I got that I was off and running. I found the perfect setting. When you choose craft foam, bump the force up to 27 and do 4 passes. This is what I found did the trick. I still had to pop out the name from the material but it was simple.
Once I got all the names cut forward and backwards it was time to glue. I ended up running up to Hobby Lobby again to get craft glue because, of course, mine was dried out! I choose to try the clear gel tacky glue because you can't go wrong with clear glue! It worked great. I let them dry overnight.
The last thing to do was dress it up with a cute charm and a swirly hook. I loved how they came out! Hope the students love them too!
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