On my last entry I said I'd re-applied the adhesive to the embossing mat.  The difference it made is amazing :D.  The cuts are much cleaner now and we've made a few things with no problem what so ever.

The other day, surfing through my blog roll, I found a link to a very interesting box, called impossible box.

The original box is a jpeg file for a square box (the black one with the read trim in the picture).  When I first imported the file into the software, I tried to vectorize it.  Eventually I gave up on that idea as I was getting a lot of round corners.  Since the box is basically straight lines, I used it as a template and did all the lines again.

After I was done with the first one, I began wondering if other shapes would work as well.  When J got home, we began talking about it and eventually came up with the pentagonal one.
In theory, any polygon will work.  The only problem is finding out the angles to make the lid collapse properly.

J changed the bottom, so they look like a flower (as seen on the blue one).  I think, with a little manipulation, a similar effect can be used on the lid.

Yay for tips!

Even though I didn't find much about the PI before we bought it (truth be told, I didn't go looking) and damaged the mat that came with it, I paid close attention to the many tips I read ever since.

One of the first tips I read had to do with cleaning the mats. Some people recommend baby wipes, so today I gave it a try.
My results are as follow:

1. the original mat: I was amazed at how much cleaner it looks now. I rubbed the wipe lightly over the mat and when it was dry it became sticky again.

2. embossing mat: It did get clean, but it took longer to dry and the adhesive came out - it's possible this happened because I scrubed a bit to hard.

I've also read about re-applying the adhesive, and knowing we would eventually need to do it, we already had some spray adhesive at hand. I used quilting adhesive because I read about it here.

Now I'll go try them out and see how the work :)