Show Your Work

Spent some time running down that Oramask 813 film, all the reviews seem great so I bought some from Craftvinyl.com since you can pay with Paypal. Finding a reasonable amount of this stuff is tough, a lot of the websites are either in Europe, or they have a minimum buy amount that would require a minimum purchase of $35 - which is three rolls of the stuff. Since I haven't tried it yet, I wants something less. Some user hints I found out: Use a hand roller when you put it down, to get a good adhesion you need more than hand pressure. Roll the edges again after cutting and before painting. If you painted the piece before masking, you might consider using the base color as a primer of the cut areas - bleeding under the mask normally occurs with the first paint coat so the two colors would blend. Use a sharp tool.

And Amazon shows that they have it through a 3rd party, but that is the guy with the $35 minimum and although Amazon says there is one in stock, the vendor says he's out.

Greg, the projects I have in mind are simple - I'm not at the stage (and probably never will be) where I can use any programs you use outside of ipicture......my mind just doesn't work that way and I'm a hobby type vs. a serious type when it comes to this stuff. My first project is a carved sign that I've been asked to make, I'll carve then paint the base, then carve the next section and paint it, then carve the last word on the plaque and paint it after putting tape over the second painting portion. I think it will come out pretty well, and I'm only out a few bucks if I can't make it work.

Hey Bob, You can do the same work with Artcam as you can do with cut2d only Artcam is loaded to the hilt with extras. There are no add on's to cut2d if you want more you move up to VcarvePro either way you end up spending a lot of money and about the same amount as you would adding stuff to Artcam.

The reason I like cut2d is it lets me get right to work with it's very simple interface, they both use a post p file to make the output compatible with the I-carver.

I kind of like Artcam and still might get it later but after using it a little while I found somethings annoying like working with simple text and I wanted to enlarge the text, I had to look all over the program to do that and theen it was tedious at best, to solve that problem of course means I need to buy the $99 text add on.
After trying to do the project for about 45 minutes I finally went back to cut2d and set it up in 5 minutes and went cutting.

Strangely enough I went all the way back to I-picture to give the Navy the sample they wanted, pricing is settled so is shipping all is needed now is a go ahead by the captain of that ship, they are at sea right now so I have to ship the plaques out to them.


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All you do is copy the metric one I uploaded into the post p directory and you can open the directory in cut2d from the file menu, Artcam already has it included.
Cut2d is more of a cut out program Artcam will do that plus cut those 3d picture files, you can do more with the base program of Artcam but its gonna be like learning Gimp all over again.
By the time you get all the modules or programs you end up with both programs being able to do basically
the same thing and you have around 1500 to 2000 in either one.

Both have free downloads so I suggest using each one until you make your mind up.
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Bob i hate to bring bad news but my wholesaler for propane called in a panic wanting to fill out business tanks about 5000 gallons in all because he said the price will be over 4 bucks wholesale by next week!
Also our food prices are soaring!
The wholesale price for ground beef this week is 3.94, I would suggest buying now because it takes a few weeks for inventories to work out the old stock.

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Rick, yes the retired and fixed income rule applies here as well, we just spent 6 grand in the fall to install a new more efficient furnace and a/c if we had not done that I'd hate to see what the bills would be. You are in Indiana as well aren't you, I am far south IN and we have been hammered most of the winter, we just recently had what the weather service described as 1" snow and 1/4" of ice last week but I had the scrape and shovel it off my drive and walks and it was solid ice 2 1/2" thick.

The frame in the farm pic was created in GIMP with the plug-in called GIMC, I had to look that one up and install into the program, don't know but maybe it comes with the latest versions now. It is found at the bottom of the drop down menu for filters once gimc is open the is a host of things that can be done and the frame was done from the "arrays and frames"This dished frame was created from there as well.

I went looking for G'MIC and installed it, I thought, into my computer. But now I can't seem to locate it within GIMP2, it doesn't pop up under filters for me.