You hear about lots of fun craft machines on various blogs, I don’t know if anyone has done a tutorial on one my favorites – a laminating machine! (probably because there’s not some giant marketing push, but I love mine no matter that – love love love laminating!) So I want to show you How to Use a Laminating Machine, or how to use a laminator. It’s super easy!
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I got mine last year for Christmas from my mom – – probably because I kept borrowing hers for long periods of time. It’s so fun – once you try it, you’ll want to laminate everything in site! I just laminated a bunch of placemats for our nursery at church, and some Valentine bookmarks – everything’s better laminated 🙂
How to use a Laminator
You’ll need:
—laminating machine
—laminating sheets
–whatever printable that you are laminating
I occasionally teach preschool (it’s a coop so we rotate homes, etc) and was making this cute Shape Bingo when I thought that it was so cute that I should laminate it so we could use it again and again. And I took pictures as I did so, just for you! Here we go:
First plug in your machine and turn it on – it takes a few minutes to heat up.
Next open a laminating sheet – it’s like a thin folder with the hinge on the top.
Lay out all the printables you want to laminate inside it and set the top back down:
Feed the hinged end into your machine. (If you put the other end in first, it might wrinkle as it gets to the hinge end. ) Once you push it in far enough, the machine will slowly pull it in on its own. I held up the other end because it was hanging off my counter and I didn’t want those loose papers to drop out of the sheets:
Here it is, feeding the sheet in, and then when it comes out – love it!
Once it has come out of the machine, just cut around your printables. That’s it!
Get yourself a laminating machine – you’ll wonder how you ever lived without it 🙂
And then you’ll laminate everything in sight – once you start, you can’t stop!
hi there 🙂 do you know how thick paper can be so that a laminater still works ok? I don’t know, I keep having problems with mine, it’s munching up the sheet or makes bubbles 🙁 any ideas what I’m doing wrong?
Hugs,
Mickymunchkin
Hmmm, I’m not sure – I’ve run construction paper through and it worked for me… sorry I’m not more helpful!
What brand do you use? How pricey are the sheets?
Looks wonderful!
Love your blog!
Thanks
I’ve been tempted to get a laminator off and on. When I see a deal come along again i think I will get one
I just found some sheets on Amazon – they are anywhere from $10-$15 for 100, so not too bad. I’m not sure what brand mine is, but I’m sure it’s just a regular, unfancy machine.
I love my laminator! And once I’m working on my machine, my 5 yr-old loves to find more things to laminate from her ‘craft stash’ 🙂
I have a cheap $25 laminator from walmart and love it. I think they are definitely underrated. To the person who commented on the paper thickness: I have done flash cards that were basically 2 index cards back to back, and they are like a light cardstock, they ran through fine but sometime I would have to run them through a 2nd time to get them a little better around the edges of the paper.