Hi everyone! I’m writing from the heat dome here and thinking of the folks on the gulf coast of Texas hoping everyone is safe. I dread summer but am grateful for the comforts of air conditioning and ice cream!

We did a lot of experimenting this weekend. Some of it went well, other parts were a complete flop but that’s what we do here-we LEARN!

This first video is our first foray into foiled card stock. It’s a heavy weight but is mostly made of paper. You’ll see how stiff it is below. This product cuts very cleanly and renders a result as good as any commercial greeting card. I’m going to sell some; ping me if you’re interested. Prices will range between $4 and $7.

I get all kinds of ideas and cajoled Cameron into exploring aluminum foil, not knowing what would lie ahead. But we not only learned some things from our failures but we ended up buying a diode laser with in infrared module that may solve this problem. More on that when it arrives and we have it up and running. I wanted it for working at lower power settings on more fragile substrates. A 100 watt CO2 laser just can’t power down low enough for some projects.

The following is an unedited/real time video of everything we tried, the low speeds, high power settings, the tricks we tried-learn from our failures! If you’re not interested in methodology this will bore you; feel free to scroll down.

You’ve probably read about accidental discoveries and inventions. This is an accidental discovery that needs a little editing to get just right/perfect, but it’s awesome (IMO). While the laser was cutting a design out of the gold foil card stock one of the little cutout pieces blew into the laser’s path. What we ended up with was a clean scoreline on another piece that was under it. And voila! A way to add dimension to mirrored foil card stock! The lotus flower immediately came to mind so we tried it. The design below has double lines that form the petals which, for this application need to be redrawn as single lines. You may recall this design from the wooden notebooks we did last year.

I’m sharing the designs I’ve come up with so far in holiday themes. You’ve seen my other summery blanks in a recent post; I will be making quilted holiday cards too but this is where I am at this moment. I have Halloween to tackle too!

Whew! This post is a lot longer than usual. I should have invited you to get yourself a beverage and find a comfy spot before viewing! I’m interested in any input you have on the card designs; I never know what will resonate with folks. Thank you for keeping up with us and our ever expanding factory; I won’t live long enough to execute all the projects I want to complete but I’m going to give it a go!

Stay cool and safe out there and, go make something!

Dana