Better Than Acrylic on the Cricut

I have been very busy in the craft room doing lots of testing on the better than acrylic material and I must say...I am Super Excited!!!  I will share a little bit of my testing finds at the bottom of this post, BUT I have a big one that I will share in my next post.  I will work on it tonight after dinner...otherwise I will lay awake all night... working it over in my head. :)  Do you do that too...stay awake all night dreaming up craft projects with an idea you haven't had a chance to try out?  Maybe I'm weird, LOL!

On to the project... see how pretty the snow globe cut out on the Cricut! :)  It cut perfectly and the edges are nice and smooth.

I decided to do a shaped card and tested a lot of techniques on this one.  One being the sentiment ...I used brown Stazon ink and stamped directly on to the better than acrylic...it worked!  Black Stazon shows up much better, but the brown matched my card.  Sentiment would have looked great stamped on the inside as well and in the brown color it probably would have shown up better.

The second technique I tried was...Sewing on it.  I am so excited that it was a success.  I had my doubts thinking it might be too slick or the thread might pull out, but it super easy to sew on.  I even sewed in a circle...Wow! :)

Here is a close up.  I decided not to emboss this one, but leave it smooth.  However, I did sprinkle a little snow glitter over the globe. You can add a clear drying adhesive and then sprinkle, but I wanted to try to get it to stick with a little static electricity.  The glitter may move around a bit and you may loose some, but enough did stick to be visible.

Card is from Joys of the Season and cut at 5".  Cut the full snow globe twice.  Once in the BTA (better than acrylic) material and once in cardstock (for me the red and white dots).  Then cut the globe layer in cardstock (snowflakes for me).

To adhere the globes together I sewed 4 or 5 stitches on the top of the globes.  Then I punched a 1" circle and folded it in half.and put over the machine stitching.  I put a couple stitches to hold it in place on the back side of the card and used my ATG to adhere the front.

Today's testing results:

1.  You can sew or machine stitch on the BTA.  Just go slow and it sews wonderfully.

2.  You can stamp on the BTA using Stazon ink.  Just let it dry real good before you touch it.  Approximately 10 or 15 minutes, depending on humidity and conditions.

3.  You can add glitter using a clear drying glue or with the fluffier glitter such as "snow" glitter...just sprinkle a little on and let static electricity hold it.  Yes, eventually most of it will probably fall off, but at least you won't have any glue smears on your project. :)

4.  Here is something surprising that I thought wouldn't work ... you can use hot glue on it.  I have a 2 temp glue gun and had it on the hottest setting.  I was sure it would melt it, but it did not hurt it a bit.  Of course the hot glue will show through the BTA, but you can use it in areas you won't see such as adhering "glass" to the back side of a window or to adhere something that will have cardstock behind it.  Now, I can't tell you how the hot glue will hold over the long haul.  Possibly it might get brittle and pop apart so use at your own discretion.

5.  OMG, this is a good one.  It is so good I must show you rather than tell you.  Telling just won't do this technique justice.  I wish I would have used it on this card, but didn't think of it until it was too late and I thought there was no way it would work, but so far so good on my samples.  I will be working on it this evening and will get it posted... hopefully tomorrow.   Thank you for patiently waiting. :)

For those that have missed my previous posts... go HERE to get more information the the better than acrylic material.