Welcome to episode 16 of the LCI Paper podcast. Ready for part 2 of my interview with Amy Rozsak? If you haven’t heard part 1, run and listen to that show before you start this one. Amy is the creator of the Perfect Printing Pouch, a versatile and unique product that helps in challenging printing situations. Now, Amy will talk about her professional background, more uses for the Perfect Printing Pouch, feedback she’s received from people who use the pouch, and her latest projects. Enjoy part 2 of the interview.

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Here is a transcript of the interview:

Are you working on any new products or projects?

Well, I have another product, actually, that kind of goes with the pouch. That’s called the Perfect Cleaning Cloth. And the cloth is for removing the powder. Let me explain it. Most of the time, when you use the pouch you really don’t notice the powder. It is there but you’re putting on so little you don’t notice. If you were to use the pouch on very dark paper, like if you’re using it as an anti-static bag and you’re wanting to put it down on a black card stock and you’re going to use white embossing powder, you’re going to see the powder on the dark paper. So after embossing, you can use the cloth to remove the powder. Or I’ve used the pouch for printing on transparencies like a thirty-five millimeter film negative. And on something like that, again, you see it. Or on a metallic paper… So you could use your cloth and just dab it and it removes the powder residue afterwards. The cloth is also really good for your laptop screen, fingerprints on the laptop, or your scanner bed or your camera lens, or even your eyeglasses because it uses no chemical. It’s just the cloth itself. Of course, you don’t want to use the same cloth on your eyeglasses that you’re using to remove your powder ‘cause you don’t want the powder to potentially scratch your glasses.

But my new product is called Embellie Jellie and that one is very, very cool. Think of a small wad of a sticky substance. Maybe think about chewing gum except for it’s totally not that. And you would take a small pearl-sized piece of the Jellie, and you put it on the end of the wooden wand. And what it’s for is for picking up and placing small embellishments. If you have tried to pick up a gem or a sequin or a punched out shape, and you want to put it down on your card or on your scrapbook page, it’s hard to pick those up with your fingers and if you try with tweezers, a lot of times they go flying out of the tweezers. So you just this little sticky stuff, touch it to your little embellishment, and then you have your glue, glue dot, or liquid glue on your paper, and you just touch it to your glue. The Ebellie Jellie is sticky enough to pick up the object, but it’s must less tacky than the glue so it lets you transfer it.

So my daughter used it last week when she cut out a whole bunch of Cricut letters. And they’re little flat vellum letters. So she just took this. And if she tried to pick it up with her fingers, the letters would crumble and crunch. And so she just took the Embellie Jellie and letter by letter, just put it right down on her poster board. So that’s Embellie Jellie. That’s the newest. And that one also lasts forever. It comes in a small case with seven little strips of this gel.

How do I spell “embellie”?

E-M-B-E-L-L-I-E and then gellie is G-E-L-L-I-E.

Alright and again folks, go to that YouTube video because Amy demonstrates it. And that’s… Just search for Perfect Printing Pouch on YouTube. Also, if people want to read about all of your products again, and read about you, what is your web site?

www.scraperfect.com and Scraperfect is with one “P.” S-C-R-A-P-E-R-F-E-C-T

Before the Perfect Printing Pouch, what were you doing? (laugher)

Well,

Teaching

I was a hydrologist for the forest service for a number of years and then I became a math teacher.

Amy, sorry, what is a hydrologist?

Oh it’s the person on the forest that deals with water, so anytime there was water testing or making sure that pesticides didn’t get into the stream or if there was going to be a cut done on the forest then I would be on the team that would make the recommendations on how they would have to do the cutting.

Being an entrepreneur, has life changed since the Perfect Printing Pouch?

This is totally my first product. I never had any kind of business or sales experience at all. I was always in some kind of human service or public kind of position.

I guess my life has changed in that it’s very exciting to speak to people and have people e-mail me about how cool this product is that I invented. But I don’t really do a full, I don’t know, a good enough job of marketing because most people know about it from hearing about it from Google searches, from their friends and I like the inventing side of this business better.

Ah ok, yup. Well, then I appreciate you coming out of your comfort zone a little bit for this little marketing piece, promotional piece.

(laughter)

And what’s next? Are you going to hire Billy Mays to do an infomercial for you?

(laughter) Next for me, actually, is I have with my Embellie Jellie, I am looking at putting it in a kit and developing an adhesive that would go with it. And after that, I have another idea for a stamping product.

But basically, you know, it’s not that I sit around trying to think of what I can invent, it always comes down to when I’m doing something, what problem I’m having and how I can figure out to solve it.

Gotcha.

So I’m sure what my next product… It depends what next frustration I have. Most of my enjoyment comes from figuring out a problem, finding the solution, and then hearing back from all the people that just absolutely think it’s fantastic. It really is unbelievable, but I get e-mails continually from people just saying that they can’t believe what this can do. And many of them started out… The comments I’ve gotten were from designers. They’re in the professional world of this. But I get lots of e-mails from people. One woman said she had a house fire and after she got an apartment this was the first thing that she wanted to order. That was like, “Oh my goodness!”

But what’s interesting is that a lot of people know they have this issue, but they don’t know that there’s a solution and then when they find it, they’re totally impressed. A lot of people don’t think they have a problem. This is just the way vellum is and when they look at it, it’s not that they’re… It’s hard to explain. The difference between using the pouch and not using the pouch is often night and day and that for a lot of people, I’ll say, like when I’m at the trade show, “Do you have an issue printing on vellum?” And they’ll say, “No.” And then when they look at it they go, “Oh my goodness! I didn’t realize I had a problem!”

Ah

That’s the other end of it is. And I’m not trying to convince anybody to use it or to do something differently; it’s just I get e-mail after e-mail from people explaining what they’ve done. And part of the cool thing is that I invented it strictly for vellum and inkjet printers because that was the problem I was having. And the way that the pouch is being used now in so many different applications is because people have kind of had the same freedom that I had where they went, “Wow! I wonder if it’ll work for this?” Like people can stamp on muslin or on ribbon or on twill tape or on popsicle sticks or other wooden objects, tags. People are using it on cork. And again, like even the stamp idea or the markers, that each of these were like from someone going, “Oh, I wonder… I’m having problems with this.” Someone else used it at CHA in a class for a clay and they wanted to stamp on the clay and they used it as a release agent so that the stamp didn’t stick to the clay and then they used it with ink so that the ink would print better onto the clay. And another company, another woman from an earth-friendly company that does inks, they’re using it and just think it’s unbelievable with their product. It’s neat the way people are able to take it and extend it to their own uses.

How do I spell “muslin” that you mentioned, and what is it?

M-U-S-L-I-N

Ok

What is it? It’s a off-white kind of natural looking cotton and kind of like, I wouldn’t say a pillow case, but that kind of… It’s just a cheap fabric. I know on the market there’s like inkjet printable fabrics, but actually, if you just put my pouch on most fabrics, you’re going to be able to print on it anyway.

Wow! Ok.

Well, without it, it bleeds into the fabric, and then with the pouch it stops the bleeding. And I won’t say on anything. That’s the other thing is I never say I know it’s going to work, I just say if you’re having difficulty with an ink, this is the best shot you’ve got, and there’s a good chance it will work.

Yes.

I can use it both with stamping and with inkjets on silk flowers and can print on that. And again, the difference with it and without it is the bleeding.

And folks, if you do want to follow up and leave a comment… I’ll ask Amy to come back and read them, but just visit our blog where this show is hosted at www.lcipaper.com/blog and find this episode with the Perfect Printing Pouch and leave a comment for Amy.

I will definitely check back and read them. And if they have questions, feel free to post a question and I will answer them too.

Recommended Link:
ScraPerfect – The Perfect Printing Pouch

Joshua Birch