Craftings of The World

Craft vinyl is a very flexible material for crafting and scrap booking. Craft vinyl is made of three components, a colored soft PVC film, an adhesive film layer, and a removable protective paper backing. Craft vinyl is available in many different varieties. The most common vinyl available has a solid color with a matte or gloss finish. There are also many vinyl films available with special characteristics such as holographic imaging, thermal transfer film, and other specialty type films.

Vinyl film has been used for many years in sign making shops. In recent years the equipment has been scaled down and made more affordable to the home crafter. With the advent of these smaller machines has also come the craft vinyl sheet or mini roll. These sheets or mini rolls of craft vinyl have made the vinyl film much more usable and affordable to the home crafter as well. Sign making shops typically purchase very large and expensive rolls of vinyl film. The home crafter doesn't need such a large quantity and therefore typically will look to the craft vinyl sheets to meet their needs. These sheets are available in several sizes, but commonly come in a twelve by twemty-four inch size. Your machine may use a smaller size than this but you can always cut them down to work with your machine.

While all vinyl films will basically do the same thing there is much to know about which craft vinyl film to use for your project. Most any vinyl will work well in an indoor application; however you may want to think twice about using an outdoor type of vinyl on a wall in your home or for a scrap booking project.

The first thing to consider is the adhesive. Most vinyl that is more well suited for indoor applications, like Oracal 631 (this is the same material that Provo Craft uses for the Cricut machine vinyl), will have an adhesive that is water based and removable. This type of product will almost never damage a wall and is great for scrap booking. The catch is this type of product doesn't hold up well to extreme conditions like you would have outdoors. That doesn't mean that it cannot be used outdoors, it just means it will degrade more rapidly than a product better suited for outdoor use. Oracal 651 vinyl is considered an outdoor grade of vinyl and has a solvent based permanent adhesive. This adhesive isn't permanent like a sharpie marker or anything it just has more bite and cling than a water-based removable adhesive. This type is not recommended for scrap booking use, and will likely damage a smooth wall when removed.

The other factor in vinyl films is the actual vinyl material. There are basically two type of film, calendared and cast. For most crafters a calendared craft vinyl film will work very well. The process that is used to manufacture the film is what makes the two different types. The differences go on for awhile and aren't really important it is just a bunch of science type stuff. All a crafter needs to know is that a calendared craft vinyl film is less expensive and well suited for 99% of all projects. The cast films are more expensive and only perform better in long term outdoor applications. If you are doing an outdoor project that you expect to last more than five to seven years you will want to look for a cast vinyl film, otherwise calendared will suite you just fine.

That is probably about all you will ever need to know about the basics of a craft vinyl film. Good luck and happy crafting.

Source : ezinearticles.com