Scan N Cut Success

Hi everyone.

I hope you are well and if you are in the UK, enjoyed the warm weather which finally arrived and the greater freedoms we are having. Make the most of them while they last!

A couple of years ago, as a present to myself for a rather Big Birthday, I bought a Brother ScanNCut CM900 cutting machine. If you are not familiar with electronic cutting machines, they are a desk-top sized machine that allows the crafter to cut out virtually any 2D shape in a wide variety of materials including paper, felt, vinyl, fabric and even wood or leather.

The Brother ScanNCut may well be the “daddy” of them all as it has a built-in scanner and so many other functions including giving you the option to draw your own images with the machine and you can even foil and stamp with it. Although the machines are primarily aimed at crafters, they are great for artists, designers, sewists and model makers too.

My Brother ScanNCut CM900 Cutting Machine

I had never owned an electronic cutting machine before so although I did get the machine out of the box within 20 minutes of it being delivered and started cutting basics shapes and then slightly more complicated ones pretty quickly, I really struggled to get to grips with the machine. Although it’s not really all that complicated to use, I somehow never quite felt I could master it and was very envious of all the amazing projects that I saw other people creating.

To be honest, after about 18 months, I felt that I had made a mistake and was even considering selling it on Ebay. But that well-known proverb "If at first you don't succeed, try, try again" kept going through my mind and I decided to keep at it. 

I set myself the goal of working my way through cutting out most of the built-in patterns that come with the machine by just doing a few each week. Then, earlier this year, I treated myself to a commercial USB that had more intricate designs on it in the form of SVG cutting files.

Creatures I Created From Built-In Patterns

Once I was able to see what amazing projects the machine was capable of producing when using SVGs, I turned to sourcing free SVGs from the internet and even designing my own. This opened up a whole new world to me as there are so many SVGs available and I even discovered I already had some on my old crafting CD-Roms.

Card I Created Using A Tattered Lace USB Design

Finally, I plucked up courage to enter the exciting world of BrotherScanNCut CanvasWorkspace. This is a free, cloud-based application that allows you to design or enhance your own designs on the computer and then transfer them to the machine to cut out, as well as giving you dozens of free projects to create.This was the real game-changer for me as being able to design or create on the computer screen and then see my projects come to life by cutting them out on the Brother ScanNCut made me feel happier than I had done in ages!

Wall Plaque I Created In Canvas Workspace

I've kept a portfolio of many of the things I've produced and I'd highly recommend doing this as it's been a great way of seeing how far I've progressed from cutting those initial basic shapes.

Of course, I still have lots to learn and I know there are many more things that the machine can do which I’ve not even started on yet but I’m so, so pleased that I kept trying and didn’t give up. Proverbs can be useful!   

Please Note: Since purchasing my machine in 2019, the Brother ScanNCut CM900 machine model appears to have been discontinued in the UK and some other countries too. When I last looked on ebay, there are still some used models available but to buy new, you will probably need to go for the more recently launched SDX1200 model.

Motivation, Motivation, Motivation

Hi everyone.

What motivates you?

One thing I've discovered through the long, weary months of lockdown is what doesn't motivate me. 

For example, looking like the Wild Woman of Borneo because I haven't had my hair cut for over 12 months isn't going to motivate me to make a hair appointment any time soon, even though (thanks to the government's "road map") hairdressers are allowed to open in England from tomorrow.

Following the Government's Road Map

And being able to trace not just my name but my entire family history in the dust on top of the piano is not going to persuade me to switch off Netflix and get jiggy with a J-cloth and a bowl of warm water.

But if I analyse those examples, I know immediately what it is that is standing in the way of me accomplishing two things which actually I'd really like to get done. 

Anxiety about catching Covid, despite being vaccinated, is definitely one of them and a perceived lack of energy as in "What's the point? No one but me is going to see it anyway." is another.

Still Anxious About Covid

Maybe it's a lockdown thing, maybe it's a menopause thing (don't get me started on the "M" word) or maybe it's just a getting older thing but wanting and even needing to do something doesn't seem to work for me as a motivator any more.

So it will be interesting to see, when two out of those three things hopefully come to an end, whether or not I'm motivated to do things again even if I'm not motivated, if you know what I mean.

But for the time being, I'm going to try not to be too hard on myself and accept that these are strange and not very wonderful times. I really hope you are motivated to do the same.

The Mail On Sunday v Meghan Markle

There comes a time in the life of a writer, unless you are JK Rowling of course, when you have to accept that the book you’ve been working on for a really long time and which you were counting on for both personal and financial gain, might not actually get published.

It’s a really unpleasant moment and it happened to me a few weeks ago while I was still basking in the euphoria of having finally finished writing My Dear Elsie, the non-fiction book I’ve been writing on and off since 2012.

The book is based on a collection of old letters and postcards I found in the back of my late mother’s wardrobe and they are not just any old letters and postcards. They were written to my maternal grandmother by a friend of hers called Ethel North who was employed as lady’s maid to Lady Winifred Burghclere, the sister of the 5th Earl of Carnarvon, from 1919 to 1933.

George Herbert, 5th Earl of Carnarvon (Public Domain)

Ethel travelled all over the world with Lady Burghclere, including to Egypt where they were shown around the tomb of Tutankhamun by Howard Carter who, along with the 5th Earl, had discovered the tomb of the boy Pharaoh in 1922.  

The letters are full of fascinating stories about life as a domestic servant, foreign travel in the heyday of the steamship and gossip about “celebrities” of the period such as King Edward VIII and Sir Winston Churchill. You can find out more about them here:

https://ladyburghclereandethel.com

As soon as I discovered Ethel’s letters and started reading them, I knew I had discovered something really special. My intention was to get them published in book form as I felt strongly that I wanted to share Ethel’s fascinating story with the rest of the world and this seemed to be the best way of doing it.

Unfortunately, I was already several years into the project when I found out that the law on copyright infringement applies to old, unpublished letters in exactly the same way as it does to other “creative” work such as art, literature or music. In other words, although I own the actual physical letters and postcards, I don’t own the copyright or “intellectual property” on them. That still belongs to Ethel, the original writer of the letters and as she has only been dead since 1960, she retains the copyright, or at least her estate does, until 70 years after her death. That means they won’t be in “the public domain” until after 2030.

Ethel in Egypt

However, there are some exceptions to this law and until very recently, I was under the assumption that I was covered by one of these exceptions. This is something referred to as “criticism, review and new reporting” and allows for relevant sections of copyrighted works to be reprinted for comment.

Unfortunately, the key word here is “reprinted” as I have now discovered that the exemption does not apply to unpublished works (such as personal letters) and is also not intended to cover use of a whole work, only extracts, and I am using at least 90 per cent of Ethel’s letters in my book.

Ironically, it was the reporter who wrote a feature on Ethel’s letters for The Mail on Sunday newspaper who convinced me that I was covered by this exemption. The paper recently lost a high court privacy case concerning publication in the paper of extracts of a “personal and private” unpublished letter that the Duchess of Sussex, Meghan Markle, had written to her estranged father.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/feb/11/meghan-markle-father-duchess-sussex-mail-on-sunday-wins

Although the judge’s decision was mainly concerned with the alleged breach of privacy, he also ruled that the paper had infringed Meghan’s copyright having “copied a large and important proportion of the work’s original literary content”. In other words, he did not accept that the publication of the letter was covered by the “criticism, review and new reporting” exemption.

One of Ethel's letters to my grandmother

Of course, I am well aware that publishing Ethel’s letters is a very different proposition from publishing a personal letter from a prominent member of the Royal Family. Nevertheless, I’ve decided I can’t go ahead with publishing the book until I have done all I can to obtain permission from the copyright holders.

I am already in contact with one of them and they have kindly agreed to try and get in touch with the others (there are about half a dozen altogether as far as I can work out) and in the meantime, I can only sit back and wait. The book is finished, the illustrations are more or less resourced and I am ready to go. But will I end up actually being able to publish it? Only time will tell.

  

 

 

 

Happy New Year 2021

Hi everyone.

So I think it's fair to say that 2020 wasn't exactly the year that we'd all been expecting and as I type this, 2021 isn't showing too many signs of being all that great so far either.

But we must have hope! "Things can only get better" as the song says and with the Covid Vaccination Programme well underway and a much-needed changing of the guard in the USA, there is a chink of light at the end of the tunnel which is hopefully not yet another train coming.

Although it surprises most people when I say this, January is my favourite month and not just because it's my birth month. One of the reasons I like it so much is the "clean slate" feeling you get at the start of every new year. However challenging the previous year was and let's face it, last year was extraordinarily challenging, there is always the opportunity to press the "refresh" button and start again.

That's why we call the goals we often set at this time of year our "New Year Resolutions" and not our "Halfway Through The Year Resolutions". We use the impetus of another fresh start to motivate and inspire us, even if we don't always keep that motivation and inspiration up much beyond Valentine's Day. 

There's no doubt though, after all that has happened in 2020, my feelings this January are pretty mixed to say the least. That is why I have designed this slightly sardonic digital print for my Etsy shop, a parody of the famous Nina Simone song lyric. 

But "whatever" it is that you are feeling at the moment, I just want to take the opportunity to say that this is OK. We're all currently living through "unprecedented" times (to use the Word of the Year for 2020) and pretty much anything goes on the feelings front. Despite that, I do hope you manage to find some peace and joy in 2021 and I wish you all a very Happy New Year.

Stay safe and well.

Melissa x