Yudu Review

I went and tried out the Yudu on Sunday at the Scrapbooking Expo at Southbank Brisbane. The machine is very cool. We were shown the new machine by Provocraft's Noralee Peterson. She also designs the templates for the Cuttlebugs.

We were first show how a new screen is made. It is just a matter of sticking on the green emulsion sheet, placing it into the machine with your design and exposing the emulsion to light. The machine does everything for you.

This is right after exposing the screen, where the light gets to the emulsion it goes blue and hard, so you then gently wash the emulsion from the other areas, your print, until they are clear. You then place the screen in a little drawer in the machine for it to dry.

This is one she prepared earlier! We only got to use the existing screens they had there unfortunatly.

This is the board that you use to place your fabric, paper or shirts on. It has an adhesive sheet that sticks the fabric nice and tight to the board to stop it from moving.

Areas on the screen which you do want paint on get taped up with cheap packing tape that washes off later.

Then the paint is applied, this lady wanted some coloured stripes, interesting ...
Then you use your plastic squeegee to flood the screen with the screen still up on an angle. You the place the screen directly on top of the fabric and squeegee again, pushing to paint through, onto your shirt.
Da Da! This shirt was printed with a background print first and then the colours over the top.
This is the shirt i did - very boring and slightly ugly.

I was disappointed i had to use their screens as i thought all the designs were a bit gay, but i got to try out the machine. I thought the price that i paid would mean i got to try making my own screen, $45 just to use a bit of paint is a bit steep, though she did say they had troubles getting the American machines to work with Australia power. So maybe that is why. if that is the case i think they should have given us a refund or something. This is another ladies shirt with the same design. The print alone works well with the grey.


We also got to use some Fabrico Pens, they sell them here at Oz Quilts. You use them like normal textures but you can heat set them on fabric to make them permanent, only of the ladies used them to colour in her design - very cool! You could do so much with those i reckon.. if you could draw :-) (Which i can not!)

Overall, it was great to use the machine, and see how easy it is to use, but what we got to actually do was a bit lame-o.

Prices aren't out yet and they are waiting on a certain number of orders before they bring them out here, so you have to go to your local scrapbooking store and get them to put your name down, they were able to even give us prices on the day. But i reckon if it is less than $500 and each new screen costs less that $25 to produce i will buy one.

Summary
Machine:- Very easy to use! I love it!!- 4.5 Stars
Tutorial Day:- Very disappointing - 2 Stars

The Yudu Website is here.