WishBlade Happiness

Back in March, after I cleaned out at the Lewisville Scrapbook Warehouse Garage Sale, I used my earnings to purchase a WishBlade. It FINALLY arrived yesterday (no, there wasn’t a Xyron wait list that long. It was a comedy of errors that caused the delay). After setting it up, and installing the software necessary, I spent a good deal of time (errr… make that wasted a good deal of time) playing with and getting to know my new cutting friend.

What a nifty piece of machinery, the WishBlade is! For those of you who are not familiar with its awesomeness, let me elaborate.

There are many manual die cutting systems available on the market. My favorite is QuicKutz because of its size and portability. Second is Sizzix because it’s so widely available, and because it is able to do cuts larger than QK dies allow. Other systems include the Sizzix Sidekick, Zaz, BossKut, SpellBinder, Wizard… the list could continue on indefinitely. All of these systems require manual dexterity and dies. Interpreted, you must purchase shape dies (alphabets, shapes, tags, etc) for each size and style you wish to cut. Then, you need to cut your paper to a size that your machine can use. Finally, you press, roll, or crimp your paper with the die together using a machine to actually cut out your shape.

The WishBlade totally changes all of that. This handy machine connects to your computer via usb port. Instead of purchasing dies, you can download fonts (in .ttf format) from what seems to be an endless source of sites, and the WB will cut them out in the size YOU want. That’s right, no more purchasing dies.

Basically, after you’ve chosen whatever font you want to use, you open up the WishBlade software, type in what you want it to type, and in what font. Then, press CUT… and it does just that. It cuts out the font, in the size you want. You can find grundles of dingbat fonts to have awesome die cuts (a fun Mickey Mouse one immediately comes to mind or the funky Elsie Flower font on TwoPeas). It’s VERY easy to create what you want to cut, if you don’t have a dingbat available for it.

Though the WishBlade is a hefty investment (approx. $450), in the overall scheme of things, it’s the cheapest and most versatile route to go. Alphabet die sets have a hefty price of about $100 (without a coupon), and that’s for one size of one font.

Anyway, was there a point to this post?? Hmm no, not really. Other than to say I’m having a great time with my WishBlade!

Stay tuned for some of the things I created last night as I played!

~heather

1 comment:

monicaintexas said...

so glad I could enable =)