Cricut

finished this one before that.

And then you'll notice none of them have eyes because kind of how I strategically like market prep is I will make everything and then I'll pick one day where I just take my Cricut out and I cut out eyes and then I start gluing and attaching and sewing and whatever I have to do.

So it kind of makes it easier.

I did the math.

I think art should be accessible to anybody and everybody.

And so I thought about ways that I could use the Cricut, for example, to cut out some vinyl decals, but also use materials that are very accessible like paint markers to go in and to fill a large space.

So after they gave me their blessing, it took me a couple of nights, but I stayed after school two nights to get everything ready for back to school.

And doing that gave me an idea of what it would be like for the kids to work at such a large scale, but also like what were some of the conundrums that I encountered as I went and how could I use that in order to kind of coach the kids on what they should expect working through this process.

This is all my sewing stuff.

Then you got all my Cricut stuff.

Then you got all the crochet stuff.

What's

the Cricut stuff? What does that mean?

I have a Cricut machine.

I clearly

need another desk because

Sure.

So I use a scan and cut, but there's Crickets, there's Silhouettes.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Very cool.

black paper against a backdrop could conjure ghosts and goblins.

Today's DIYers use either dark cardstock or removable vinyl cut by Cricut machines, then tape it to the glass with a clear adhesive that won't scorch under LED bulbs.

A steady light source behind the silhouettes, usually a low heat lamp or paper lantern, creates that classic silhouette effect without risking fire.

A pivotal player here was the Biesel Company, founded in 1900, which launched a line of Halloween decor in the 1920s that turned simple cutouts into mass market staples.

Katari does that a lot, you know, where they kind of publish whole booklets about, you know, how they did that unfortunately once again that's a workload thing that i realized i couldn't keep up with as much as i like but to to illustrate the products i'll often include a lot of the the same you know photographs i used to research the markings and things like that so that they're sort of model i'm assuming modelers are already familiar with those sorts of things you know but they're nice to have there in that way well what's your favorite cutter right now for the hobbyist You know, that's one of the most popular questions.

Should I get a Silhouette? Should I get a Cricut? Might be worth just kind of rolling through my opinions on those.

Personally, I find myself using the Cricut much more right now because, again, the vast majority of the cutting I'm doing is very simple cuts for these test fitting processes.

And I like the Cricut for that reason because if you're doing really, really just basic mass cutting, It's definitely the easiest machine to get to work that way.

I think one of the big downsides of Cricut is it doesn't have a lot of manual adjustments that you can sort of do some mad scientist modeling if you want to play around with stuff.

Silhouette's much better for that.

But if you're just like, I need to cut some paint masks out of a known material that Cricut knows, or a mask or something like that, and I just want to press the button and get the thing cut, it's a really solid choice for that reason.

And the Cricut's also, you know, they're nicely, they're a little heftier and they're nicely put together and stuff, so it's just kind of a nice machine that way.

... that type of vinyl?

They go out and they'll buy, like, a Cricut 'cause they're just starting out-

Yeah, yeah

... and they wanna make their own T-shirts.