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Digital Die Cutter


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Old lady- go to etsy and do a search on thermofax. You will see all the fabulous stencil screens being made with the machine. They can supposedly be reused repeatedly. I really want one to create my own designs and patterns but I searched and found some on eBay for a mere $1500! Yikes!

 

T

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Sorry to dispute you here on Corel Draw, or Suite. However, Corel Draw has been an illustration program from its inception. It is very good at all vector graphic manipulation. It is also considered to be much easier to use than Illustrator. For further information, unbiased, check out this link that compared the top programs.

 

http://illustrator-software-review.toptenreviews.com/

 

best,

Pres

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I have used the Adobe products since 1988 and I am so hooked. Perhaps I need an intervention. I have been paying $50 a month for years to have the whole package. I don't know how I would work without Photoshop, Illustrator, Lightroom, and InDesign. But then again I don't buy wine and don't have TV cable which I am sure everyone else I know is spending way more than $50 a month on. We all have our own priorities. But whenever I hear people complaining about the cost of using professional tools as if they are poor I think, there is not one potter in this country who is not richer than more than 90% of the worlds population. (little rant over, please pardon). 

The thin foam is sold at Michaels and it works just fine on the Silhouette for clay texture mats. There are lots of youtube videos with instructions for setting the blade depth. You can do test cuts to get your depth right by just holding the blade assembly in your hand and rubing it over the foam, adjusting setting till it cuts all the way through without maring your sticky backing sheet.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I use a Cricut explore Air, I use it to cut pattern templates into crafr foam which I then roll into the clay.  Its wonderful.  I use mine with Adobe Illustrator,  which while an industry standard, is a far cry above what you need.  Cricut's design studio,  included with Explore,  has basic editing and scanning It may be all you need ,  but have a look.  After that I could check with one of the lesser and less expensive vector programs. ( Make sure its vector, I noticed earlier someone comparing photoshop to Corel Draw. Comparing apples and Toyotas. Corel Draw is a vector editing program an One thing to be away of is the file type that whatever die cutter uses for an upload. 

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If the cost of purchasing software is an issue, the combination of Gimp (similar to Corel)  and Inkscape (vector graphics like Adobe Illustrator), or in some cases just Inkscape, will do an awful lot of what the commercial products do without spending a nickel.  Both are FOSS (Free Open Source Software), and run on Wndows, Mac, and Linux.  If you're going to learn something from scratch anyway, this is a great option for cost-constrained folks.  There are active community forums for support (like this one!) and YouTube videos available to get you started.  Inkscape is at https://inkscape.org, Gimp is at http://www.gimp.org/.

 

If you already know other software the price may or may not offset the learning curve (Corel Draw Home edition can be had for about $100).  It comes down to time versus money, and we potters seem to be a pretty frugal lot..

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