Taking a Break

Spent yesterday evening just experimenting.  Nice to do something relaxing.  Not sure about the second picture - the balance doesn't feel quite right.

A jigsaw made - but not perfect

I finally got one done but it isn't perfect.  I had to use the Cricut on what is called a multicut and the second cut wasn't completely over the first cut.  I am not sure whether I will be able to achieve anything better with the Cricut machine.  I have spent endless hours on this and used up a fair amount of ink and cardboard.

The original picture wasn't of good enough quality so I put together a collage of birds my husband had taken.  It was quite tricky because the edges of the birds had to remain sharp so no blending, smudging etc:

Here are my findings:

1. I think the card for a jigsaw has to be at least 700gsm thick to fit well together once cut.
2. The card needs to be glossy otherwise the card absorbs the ink too much and is fuzzy.
3. Glossy card really needs to be especially for photos.  The ink 'slid' on the glossy card I had.  In the end I used a plain paper setting and reduced the speed of the printer to allow the ink a little drying time.  It was still not nearly as clear as proper photo paper.
4. Pasting proper photo paper onto card doesn't work - the paper tears when cut which is what I expected.
5. The Cricut is limited in it's ability to cut thick card.  I would say 300gsm max.  If you put card in which is too thick you risk messing up the Cricut machine which I may well have done.
6. I didn't put in enough contrast between the background and the birds.  Easy for me but not so easy for my Mom who has bad eyesight.
7. I would make some of the circles that make up the puzzle inserts bigger so that they don't come out.  I generally did a good job of this but not always.

Is it time to give up?  Would so love to give a decent jigsaw to my Mom.  Maybe some more research.

It's been a long 2 days..

I am still struggling with the jigsaw.  I found a good size thickish bit of cardboard but when I printed on it, the quality was very fuzzy - even with various print settings.  I do think the quality of the picture is not good enough and I needed to try something else.  However, this was when my computer died...

The computer I have has the power switch on top and I have on a few occasions switched the computer off by mistake.  Well this time my foot pressed down on it and closed it off.  Next thing it won't reboot.  Windows has obviously become corrupted and it took me a long day to retrieve the C drive and recover my data.  To be honest I wouldn't have lost a lot because I save little on my C drive but I hate not knowing what I might have missed.  Even when I had repaired Windows it didn't feel right so I reformatted, reloaded....

Tomorrow is another day.

Jigsaw starting to look promising...

I am really pleased with my actual jigsaw graphic.  I  have been testing out cutting a small jigsaw of 12 pieces on ordinary paper and it works well.

I have spent the whole morning trying to cut my jigsaw on different thickness of card with little success.  However, a kind soul answered my plea on a messageboard and suggested I do a 'multicut' (cuts the whole pattern more than once) which I had tried before but with not enough patience!  So I tried again and it worked - it needed 3 cuts!  The card is quite thin but actually quite sturdy and because I am making a large format jigsaw to accommodate my Mother's eyesight I think it will work.  Dare I try the 100 piece jigsaw....

Textured Pictures

Bought some cardboard today ready to test the Cricut tomorrow.  In the meantime, spent time trying out different Photoshop Techniques on my pictures of the Sacre-Coeur in Paris.

Large Format Jigsaw Puzzle

Well, I am making progress on my Mother's jigsaw.  I now have the svg (scalable vector graphic) file created and ready to test on my Cricut.  Here's a view from inside Inkscape:

Tomorrow I will see if I have time to go shopping to scout for some suitable cardboard to test.  Will be interesting to see how thick I will be able to cut with the Cricut.