My five year old daughter is starting kindergarten next week and she is so excited! She’s been working on her reading skills, memorizing our contact info, and shopping for school supplies. As part of our back to school preparations I made her a set of laminated alphabet flash cards with some paper from the adorable new Jillibean Soup Alphabet Soup 2 collection and…wait for it…my Heidi Swapp Minc tool!
Did you know that the Minc Foil Applicator can also laminate? Pretty awesome, huh? I love finding multiple uses for tools. More bang for your buck–yes! Huge thanks to Heidi Swapp and her awesome team for sending me this addicting machine, and what fun that I bumped into my friends at Jillibean Soup recently and got my hands on their new back to school paper collection–match made in heaven.
While the products for this post were given to me for free, my opinions are all my own and my thoughts are shared in all honesty. I’ll walk you through my creative process while sharing some tips and tricks for using your Minc tool for laminating, though results may vary.
One thing I’ve learned as a mom is that if your child shows an interest in reading, run with it! Right now my pre-k child loves reading, so it was the perfect time to make these alphabet flash cards for her. I started by cutting apart the flashcard patterned paper from the Jillibean Soup Alphabet Soup 2 collection. These 2″x3″ cards are the perfect size for her little hands, and they’re ideal for carrying around in my purse to keep her busy in long lines at the grocery store.
Next I placed the cards in a Scotch Thermal Laminating Pouch, leaving space in between the cards for trimming. Each card needs to have a thin laminated border around it so that the seal remains intact.
I turned on my Minc tool and selected 5 for the heat setting. Anything lower isn’t hot enough to seal the laminating pouch. There’s no need for the Minc heat sleeve–just run the laminating pouch directly through the machine as you would the heat sleeve.
Once I laminated the cards, I cut them out leaving a thin border and then punched holes in the corner of each card with my We R Memory Keepers Crop-A-Dile. It’s easy to punch each hole in the same spot using the measurement guide on the tool.
Then I slipped them onto a 1″ book ring in alphabetical order. Easy peasy! And my daughter loves to look at them. Doesn’t the B side of the Jillibean Soup paper look perfect when flipping through the flash cards? I love using double sided patterned paper for 3D projects.
I’d love to see what you create with your Heidi Swapp Minc foil applicator. Share a link in the comments below!
I'm so glad I found this post. I was just telling my husband how I wanted to make laminated flash cards of family members for my toddler to help identify people and I thought "I wonder if my MINC would work?". So excited now to take on this task. Thank you!
Thank you. I have just read several posts saying you have to use the minc sleeve.