Tuesday, November 20, 2007

Trimming the Moon

Bought this Fiskars rotary trimmer at Costco about a month ago, and finally got around to using it. After a little fiddling (duh, there is a lock for the sliding cutter), I got the hang of it and trimmed up the collaborative Halloween storyline deck (artwork similar to this deck shown but with a spooky story card too) in virtually no time at all. This was the first time I attempted to trim my cards with anything but scissors, and I was much happier with the results. Not as wonky or iffy around the edges.
The surface is smooth and slick, the measuring markings are clear, and the cutter moves easily. The little feet on the bottom held the whole shebang in place really sturdily on my table too. It came with an extra blade too, I don't know how long the blade will last on this gizmo.

But after trimming this deck, I was again disheartened by how completely off a lot of the measurements are in these collaborative decks. They are supposed to be 3x5". Seems pretty clear huh? But only about half of them actually were. Most of the errors were pretty close and I didn't lose too much of the image or the words. But some were off by quite a bit. I hope that the future decks tighten up on this. Especially for the useable decks like the tarot one!

Now to trim the two copies of the recent tarot Carnivale Mystere collaboration. That's a lot of cutting to do!

I was recently struck by the view of the half moon and the cloudy sky/silhoutte of my house and trees. So I'm sharing here my two best pictures which kind of captured what I saw.

1 comment:

Suzie Ridler said...

I love those moons pictures! I'm so glad that you got that tool, it makes such a difference doesn't it? It takes a little while to get used to but it looks like you're getting the hang of it.