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PhoenixRisen
21-03-2010, 11:10 PM
Hi - I'm Mal and go under the name of Phoenix - I already have details put up by my original registration but lost my login info! Alzheimer's !! :? So I have reregistered and hope to be of help somewhere.

AJLA
22-03-2010, 02:21 PM
Good name ,welcome back!

Justin
22-03-2010, 07:29 PM
Hi Mal,

Welcome to the forum. PM me your original login and I'll get rid.

Justin :D

PhoenixRisen
25-03-2010, 08:05 PM
Hi Fellow Enthusiasts, my name is Mal but I go under the name of PhoenixRisen (formerly The Phoenix) on this forum. I come from Sunny Scunthorpe but now reside in Wednesbury, somewhere in between Walsall, Birmingham and Wolverhampton.

My speciality is vinyl cutting. I am not a professional but have been involved in vinyl cutting since 1997 ish. I started vinyl cutting because I wanted a graphic doing for my car. I was somewhat disappointed in the end product but seeing what was needed I bought my own cutter - a Roland Camm-1 24". It came with PostCut software which was very primitive. I used Corel Draw 3, Corel Trace, PostCut, and Font Creation Program, all in varying degrees to get a result. Gradually I improved and bought EasySign, a professional signwriting software. In my normal work I used to work 15 out of 16 days, 12 hour shifts, as a Maintenance Electrician helping keep the plant running. It was a very adrenaline fuelled job and I used to go home on a high and unable to sleep. The graphics was my way of bringing myself down again - it was a complete contrast to what I normally did. My learning with vinyl cutting was that if asked to do a job, I said "Yes", then had to work out how to do it.

In time I bought an OKI printer and added car number plates/ reflective house numbers / small hard signs and plaques to my graphic ventures. The laser printer can also be used for printing stickers which can be contour cut on the Roland. The next thing I bought was a Janome MC10001 sewing machine/embroiderer and Digitiser Pro digitising software. Embroidery, although computer assisted, did not come to me as easily as the other activities. :( I also have limited space for setting it out. I did manage to embroider my logo onto a shirt and a tie - so far that is all. I definitely need to spend some time on the embroidery.

In keeping with the idea that I could put some mark on just about anything I bought dye sublimation equipment. I have a mug press; a multi unit that has a swing-away head plus adaptors for mugs, plates, and caps; an Epson D120 with CIS but gave problems within a few months; a Ricoh 5050 which appears to be more reliable than the Epson; It took 7 mugs before I got the timing off and have enjoyed a bit of success with getting my images sublimated. I have also done some lanyards, not forgetting a t-shirt for my brother. A trial also saw me sublimating an image onto a cheapo tie from Asda with good result.

As well as working as a Maintenance Technician (loads less hours than I used to do) I am attending a BSc Web Computing course at the Wolverhampton University as I want to initially professionally develop my own website. It is under construction and likely to be for some time to come but it is live and has a bit of a gallery in it. http://www.PhoenixGraphix.co.uk When I started a basic course I discovered that much more knowledge was needed to make a really dynamic site .... :ugeek:

Software I use for the various graphic activities I enjoy include: Dreamweaver (website design), Photoshop, EasySign, Digitiser Pro, Inkscape (vectorising bitmaps), Font Creator Program (making my own dingbat fonts). :geek:

I am not an expert by any means, but I do have some experience which may be of assistance to others. Hopefully I can of help, and may be included as a friend to some. ;) :D

AJLA
26-03-2010, 10:11 AM
I'm glad you're here ;)