I bought an A3 laminator from Aldi a few months back to use in conjunction with a laser printer for the purposes of foiling. Now, foiling has been a rollercoaster ride of a craft hobby, so I'll cover that separately, but I just had to share with you the fabulous, consistent and easy results I've had using my laminator with fabric and heat transfer vinyl (HTV) cut with my Silhouette Cameo.
Chrome HTV
I tried applying gold chrome HTV to card ages ago and it worked well, but when I used it with an iron, the card curled massively and no amount of time under heavy books would fix it.
Well, as the saying goes, necessity is the mother of invention. I was having a drama with a leaving card that I designed to be foiled and I needed it for the next day. I had no self-adhesive gold vinyl, but I did have some in heat transfer vinyl. I decided to give the HTV a whirl and as my laminator was already up and running, I figured I would run it through and see what happened.
Gold Chrome HTV card applied with a laminator. Free Sheep design by Phil Laver at The Noun Project
I was chuffed, it applied perfectly with just one pass through the laminator and unlike with foiling, I was able to use very thick, textured card too, which I thought suited the sheep!
Why Not Just Use Regular Vinyl?
It seems barmy to use a laminator when you could just use regular self-adhesive vinyl , but I find it is actually a good option for a few reasons:
- I can buy one product and use it two ways
- I use HTV more, so I have a big selection of colours and finishes to choose from.
- I find it easier to source unusual finishes such as chrome, glitter and flock in HTV rather than vinyl and they are often available in smaller sizes, such as 30cmx50cm sheets from MDP or even A4 sheets from Crafty Cutter
- No need for transfer tape as HTV comes complete with a low-tack transfer sheet. This has just the right amount of stickiness to hold the design in place but comes away easily from the card without ripping or leaving marks.
- Applying self-adhesive vinyl is a right-first-time type gig, but you can take your time aligning or moving the HTV before passing through the laminator.
Using my Liberty London Fabric Stash
I have already attached fusible stabiliser to my Liberty Tana Lawn fabric for my applique onesies , so cut out some more shapes to use on cards. For the mother's day card, I applied the fabric directly on the card. As the sentiments above and below were done with sketch pens, I also drew on the card where the fabric MUM letters should be placed. I made sure the pen would be covered by using a 0.1cm internal offset. The word MUM uses Clarendon font and the wording above and below uses the Sketch Serif Font from the Silhouette Design Store
Mock up of my card in Silhouette Studio. Use the Internal Offset trick to help align the fabric shapes
The Silhouette is so versatile, it cut the fabric, the card and also sketched the sentiment
For passing through the laminator, I held the fabric in place with a piece of HTV carrier sheet that I kept from my last project. If you don't have any, kapton (sublimation) tape would also work - eBay and Amazon sell it for a few pounds.
Try adding dimension
I normally like to have a little dimension in a card, so decided to apply my fabric to some brown Kraft card. As the fabric and Kraft card pieces were small, I fed them through the laminator sandwiched in some plain copy paper and then attached to the card with foam squares. The Kraft card was cut with a 0.25cm external offset to the fabric L.
Fabric with a HTV Border
Just as I combined fabric with a HTV border for my applique onesies, you can do exactly the same for cards. I used my favourite elephant design, and the bloom font to make a new baby card.
I couldn't bare to waste the elephant shape that I weeded from the HTV, so decided to make a second card. All I needed was the wording and water splashes, so used up a scrap strip just 3 by 9 cm and got a totally cute card made out of scraps and waste!
Future Projects
I plan on making big versions of the Kraft card and Liberty fabric letters strung together to make pretty bunting for a new baby gift.
I was also thinking that I could make a baby mobile, with lovely fabric shapes. I plan to cut a front and back piece and give it a nice plumpness by sandwiching a smaller piece of felt inside or maybe use some wadding. If I was using wadding, I'd maybe use a pair of straighteners instead of the laminator to nip the edges closed, like a very pretty Cornish pasty!
As my laminator is A3, I can do some nice big wall art for my hall that I'm currently decorating too :)
I was also thinking that I could make a baby mobile, with lovely fabric shapes. I plan to cut a front and back piece and give it a nice plumpness by sandwiching a smaller piece of felt inside or maybe use some wadding. If I was using wadding, I'd maybe use a pair of straighteners instead of the laminator to nip the edges closed, like a very pretty Cornish pasty!
As my laminator is A3, I can do some nice big wall art for my hall that I'm currently decorating too :)
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