One of Those Projects

So often I make things as gifts for others that I can't share on the blog because, well, they would find out before I'm ready. One of "those" gifts last year was for my hubby for our anniversary. We are blessed that both our parents are still with us, but it's been a long, long time since we had good pictures taken of either set. I know better than to ask my mother because she would far rather be behind the camera than in front of it, but I thought I might be successful with his parents, and I was. I lucked out with a great Groupon for photos and sent my in-laws, with the caveat that I get the photos and they had to keep a surprise until our anniversary. Armed with great photos of them together, I tried to set up time to work on the book, but things seemed to conspire against me. A whole day of crafting to myself during a camping trip turned into a hot mess. The time had planned for myself during another crafting trip was interrupted too. Every time I tried to work on it my craft room, dear hubby seemed to wander in and I had to scramble to make sure everything was hidden. But, despite the interruptions and changes to my plans, I still managed to get it finished and it remained a surprise until our anniversary. But I still couldn't share it because my in-laws wanted to use the pictures at Christmas. But now, all the surprises are over and I wanted to share some of my favorites. The album is one that fits inside it's own box. I bought the whole thing (including all the paper and stuff inside) for only $6 at the CKC Convention a couple of years ago. It's been sitting on the shelf waiting for the right project to come along, but the outside is pretty plain. I pulled out all my love, wedding and family stamps for this project and found that my favorite was a Heidi Swapp stamp of the word "love" that I picked up on clearance at Target in Minneapolis, MN several years ago on a work trip. I scanned the stamp for a page that I'll show you later and then decided to see if could cut it out of vinyl. I enlarged the image in SCAL and, sure enough, it cut pretty darn well with the Cricut. This shot is not my absolute favorite, but it's definitely close to it. They just look so happy together. I love the vellum on this one. I punched out the heart strip with my EK Success punch. Then I laid the punched strip over the vellum and traced the edges. I love the way the cut-outs show through the vellum on the final page. This next picture is probably one of the better shots of my father-in-law smiling.

The only thing different on the page was the hearts on the picture. I needed something in that corner to balance the picture and I just thought I would use a little white Staz-On ink, but that just didn't look right when it was done so I colored it in with red ink. It turned out perfect. It's unfortunate that this next picture turned out so dark because I really did love it, but unfortunately there wasn't much I could do to lighten it given the restrictions on the CD that the pictures came on. (After the fact I realized that I should have printed it, scanned it and then tried lightening the scanned version, but I didn't think of that at the time). But what I did love was the effect of the stitching and the chipboard flower. The stitching was a piece of cake to do using my Stampin' Up paper piercer. I had nice straight, perfectly placed holes to run my DMC floss through. The chipboard flower was easy to cut from a cereal box using SCAL. I love getting to recycle packaging in my scrapbooking. This next one is certainly not my favorite picture. But I love the "love" embellishment. I scanned the Heidi Swapp Love stamp, turned it into a SVG and using SCAL and my Cricut, I cut it out just a bit larger for a shadow effect. It's a fun technique.

Last but not least is this page, which is probably my favorite of all of them. First, I just love this picture. I think it's probably my favorite of all of them. But also because I love the background paper. I've read about this technique many times, but I had never tried it myself until this page. It's the technique where you stamp your own background, which I did using the Heidi Swapp Love stamp in Versamark then embossed with a clear embossing powder. It's quite subtle but very beautiful. A few Perfect Pearls in the shape of heart on the mat along with more clear embossing to finish it off.

Sassy Lil' Sketches - Sept. Week 1 Card

I'm slowly but surely making it through my list of cards to make for upcoming events. It seems like work birthdays are always clustered together and I'm entering a new cluster. Fortunately, Sassy Lil' Sketches had a very inspiring sketch here. So dug into my scrap bin again, designed some "flames" in SCAL by creating a union of a triangle and ever so slightly offset circle and finally tried the rolled candles I've seen when trolling the blogs for ideas.

Sympathy Card Using Cut Files Made For My Acrylic Stamps

A co-worker's father died this past week. While I have a stash of sympathy cards, I had bookmarked one on Michelle's I Stamped That blog a short while ago so I decided to scraplift it for a new card. I also used the card as an opportunity to try using my cricut to cut shapes to match my stamps. This is what I got:

While I'm not overly enamored with this card, I'm so excited about the flowers on it because I cut the shapes to outline a stamp set I own using my cricut (I only wish I was better at centering a stamp on a cut image). It was quite a challenge to come up with the cut pattern to match my stamps. If you try it, I would really recommend using a stamp with clean lines for your first try. The distressed stamp set I used was really challenging. After several attempts to figure out how to do it with this distressed flower stamp set, I finally found that scanning the carrier sheet for my pattern worked better than trying to stamp the image then scan it or trying to draw around the outline to make up for the distressed nature. Then I followed Creations with Christina's steps in Photoshop from this video, but found I had to do a little extra clean up due to the distressed nature of the stamps. But even then, the cutting lines were still a bit too jagged when I tried to import it into SCAL. So this evening I found that I could solve that problem by saving the Photoshop image as a bitmap then importing that into Inkscape. There I traced the bitmap to smooth the cutting lines as if I was trying to make a piecing file from an image. Once the bitmap was traced, then I could save the file and open the svg in SCAL. It took me several hours of trial and error, but eventually I had a SCAL file with cut files for all eleven flowers in my stamp set. Now that I've done what's likely to be the most challenging sets, I'm excited about the possibilities that this opens up.

No camping, but big fun anyhow

So camping didn't happen after all. Despite leaving early for the weekend, it apparently wasn't early enough and every single camping spot in the 'non-reserved, first-come, first-served" portions of all three parks we went to were full. Well after getting over my disappointment (and unpacking the RV and truck), we "camped" at home. Now we've had wine, frozen lemonade, margaritas, more wine, smores and truckload of camping snacks, ate dinner out with the family on Friday night, watched 8 hours of Real Housewives, two hours of Intervention, four hours of Hell's Kitchen, two hours of Master Chef and three hours of Glee, shopped at Michael's, Craft Warehouse and Jo-Ann's, picked up gorgeous flower baskets at the nursery, saw Cowboys and Aliens, oh, and made a new cork board for my sister (something we couldn't have done camping since the one thing I didn't pack was my Cricut). It turned out so adorable that I just had to post photos even though she's concerned that someone will copy it so it won't be one of kind. Personally, I know it will be one of kind because even if someone else tries to make it, they won't pick the same paper, cut it at exactly the same dimensions or place the houses in exactly the same way. So we found an image on Google image that she liked, traced it in SCAL, then moved the window to a place that she liked better, then cut them out of two colors of glitter card stock, then found a font she liked and welded the words and cut them in SCAL on the Cricut. So then it was just a process of taking out the backing and glass from the frame, inserting the cork board and putting the backing back on the frame, then gluing down the cuts we made. So here's a shot of it all put together (we left the corner protectors on so that it will transport safely back to her house): She bought the paper at Craft Warehouse. She carefully picked out cute glitter paper and found some coordinating card stock for the words. What she didn't know was the card stock she carefully picked out for the bluish gray color on the back was Black Magic card stock by Coordinations. So when she pulled it out today, I explained to her what she had bought and that changed the title all around. Instead of being the solid blueish gray, we ran it through the Sizzix with Script Texture embossing folder then sanded over the raised texture to bring out the blue text. You can see some of that dimension in this close-up:

So I had forgotten to turn off the layer with the house in it when I cut the words and ended up with this extra house. We used it as a test for the texture. The house turned out so cute that I had to use it somewhere, so I made this simple little card using some scraps from my scrap bin of Orbit paper from the Cosmic paper line I got from the Paper Loft. I have no idea what the striped paper is called, but I'm pretty sure it's from the same line at the Paper Loft. I just used some plain paper I bought in a ream at Paper Zone called Nekoosa Linen to make the card base and also to cut with my Sizzix Bigz Top Note die. I used a little bit of Offray gros grain ribbon and some pop dots to finish it off. A simple little card, but it was loads of fun to make.

Anyhow, now I'm going to finish watching this last episode of Glee with her. She had never seen it before and now I have her totally hooked on it with just the first episode. I knew she would love it. I'll make a Gleek out of her yet.

The one tool every papercrafter needs...

It's starting to become quite a tradition to make a card on Friday night. I'm becoming addicted to watching Creations with Christina's Stampin' on Friday videos. The cards are always so cute and inspirational. Now usually I don't have the products she shows and today was no exception. I don't have the cute little ticket die or the stamps, so I made a ticket using Sure Cuts a Lot. Once I had the basic outline made, I copied it, shrunk, put the new image on it's own layer, and used the program to center the smaller one in the middle of the bigger one. I then drew the smaller outline using my Cri-kits pens and then cut the larger outline to get my "ticket." I chose the word from the "Warm Words" collection from Stampin' Up because I need a thank you card to send to a woman who provided us a lot of help in a recent project at work. I used the paper scraps from the birthday card for my mother-in-law last weekend, and some plain grosgrain ribbon I picked up at Dollar Tree. So, unlike how nice Christina's looked, mine still looked a little plain to me, which is odd because normally I really like a plain style. But this time, it needed something. So I added a mat with DCWV card stock, a little pierced line using my Stampin' Up paper piercer and added some Cotton Candy Stickles to the centers of the big flowers.

Now it looked better, but something just wasn't right, which brings me to the one tool every paper crafter needs: the Cricut Spatula. Now you may be thinking, really? I don't even have a Cricut. Or maybe, I have a Cricut but I rarely use the spatula. How can it be that important?

Well let me ask you this: Have you ever taped down a piece of paper on your project and realized it's not straight at all or you don't really like it there only to discover that the paper has adhered enough that you can't really move it? Okay so you all may be perfect, but it happens to me all the time. Like tonight on this card where I realized that what was wrong was the ribbon knot was too messy looking. Of course that meant I have to take up the paper. So I slipped the thin blade of the spatula under the paper and used the blade to separate the mat from the patterned paper. The tape sticks to the spatula and can easily be rubbed off the metal surface (you can still see a little on my spatula in the picture since I hadn't really cleaned it yet). It worked like a charm and I've done it probably hundreds of time now. Once they were apart, I tied the ribbon again to get a neater knot and then re-taped the paper with my ATG gun.

So that's it. Now I'm happy with it.

Happy Father's Day

Today this post is going up as we drive to the restaurant to share a meal with both my father and father-in-law. It's wonderful that I still have them both in my life and that they live close enough that we can spend time together all the time (like on Friday night when we called my mom and dad on the spur of the moment to see if they could have dinner with us). I know that I'm very lucky in that regard.

So today I want to share with you the father's day cards I made. I was trolling the blogs on Friday night when I came across a video posted on My Creative Time about using punches on a card. Well, of course, I didn't have the right size of punch, sheer ribbon, a cute little charm or anything like that, but I did have my imagination. I cut the squares, the used my Sure Cuts a Lot program to cut a scalloped mat that I found on the DoodleLicious blog, then cut the charm out of the Fabulous Finds cartridge and stamped it with this stamp from the "It's All Good" set from Stampin' Up. The charm wasn't exactly what I had in mind, but it gets the job done. I used regular ribbon instead of sheer. The best part about it is the whole thing is the paper. I had this little 6x6 Mini Deck from the Cosmo Cricket called Wanted that I won at a Cricut class at Craft Warehouse some time ago. The paper has these little cowboys on it. Since my father-in-law worked on a dairy, I thought it was perfect. The sentiment on the inside says "Happy Father's Day to a true cow-boy."

My dad's card was inspired by a post I found on the Paper Zone blog. It wasn't so much the twisted easel format, but the argyle design. I immediately thought back to this whole pack of paper I bought at CKC this year. I just LOVE argyle, especially this argyle paper from Fancy Pants called Recess in the All Fall line. I immediately thought of that paper for my card. So while I wasn't up to trying a twisted easel, I did get my inspiration from their project. I made a little square ribbon slide on Sure Cuts a Lot, used my Cri-Kit gel pens to write the sentiment (although it does look a little fuzzier than I would like. Then just matted the paper with some card stock from DCWV and made the card body with kraft paper from The Paper Company. At first the ribbon slide seemed a little too stark. It was a much brighter white than the argyle paper. So I used a waded up tissue with little Stampin' Up Old Olive ink to give it a little more color to match the bit of color in the argyle paper. You just can't really see that detail in this picture.

Then I still had to make a card for my mother-in-law's birthday tomorrow. I had just watched a video on a shutter card on You Tube and decided to give it a try. I turned out okay but I did learn that you need to use STIFF card stock for your base. I chose a textured card stock that wasn't very stiff after all that cutting and folding, so it makes the card a little difficult to close back up. I'm pretty sure this was a very old piece of DCWV because I found it loose in my paper cupboard when I was looking for patterned paper, but I don't know for certain. The [patterned paper was also a loose piece in with some others that I found when looking for a coordinating color for the original paper I had chosen, which I abandoned for this one. I liked the butterfly pattern on the other paper, but I couldn't find a coordinating paper that I liked. This one is a double sided paper and I thought both sides were perfect. I also learned that laying out the pieces with the card open doesn't work. I had them all arranged in a way I liked, glued them down and then closed the card and, eeeekkkkk, it looked terrible. I had all the same papers on the front of the card. So I did a double layer of patterned paper on a box on the front to give it a little mix. So if you try the card, don't glue down the paper until you've seen what it looks like closed too. So then I just stamped my front sentiment from the "Lots of Thoughts" stamp set from Stampin' Up and added my inside sentiment stamped from the Stampin' Up "Congrats" set.

I'm thinking that if I try this card again, I might try using pictures where all the yellow paper with the soft blue mats are (the ones you can't hardly see in this picture). These are all hidden when the card is closed but would be something that would be really nice to display for a while for the recipient.

Thank you cards

Even though I still have a few cards left in my stash, today I made a few specific thank you cards using some new techniques I either just learned or had never tried. Last night, when I was puttering in my scrapbooking room playing video games, surfing blogs and watching YouTube, I watched Creations with Christina's Stampin' on Friday video and was very inspired by the cute vintage newspaper card she made. Well, of course, I didn't have the newspaper stamp, the twine, the tiny tags die or stamp, but I figured I could still make it work. Hmmm... thinking about it now, that was a pretty strange assumption - I don't have anything she uses in the card except card stock and yet I still thought I could do it. Fortunately, I have Google. So I searched Google images to find a suitable newspaper image. I substituted embroidery thread for the twine. It isn't quite as cute, but it works:

A few months ago, I was shopping at Paper Zone and bought a little spray bottle of Tsukineko Sheer Shimmer Spritz in a shade called Sparkle. I've never really tried spraying on my layouts or cards but I've really liked when I've seen others using it or similar products. So the little spray bottle has languished in the top drawer of tool cart for probably about three months now. But today I decided it was time to give it a try. First I ran my background paper through the Sizzix with an embossing folder and then sprayed the background (I used my garbage can to contain the spray. It was surprisingly simply and dried quickly. I used some of my stash of flowers, some Irock gems and a little Offray ribbon to finish it off. Yeah for using my stash!

So after Christina's video ended, I started watching videos by 2stampis2b.com. I saw this wonderful video using embossing folders that left a void in the embossing so that you can stamp an image without having the texture where your image is. It's really hard to see, but in this picture, the card stock under the bunch of flowers is flat and all the rest has the texture from the embossing plate. It's a really amazing technique. The video demonstrating it is available here. I just had to try it. So I made my stamping void using a recycled part of an old box that held page protectors. It worked perfectly. Although next time I will probably make the void a little bit bigger. I then colored in the flowers with my Stampin' Up pens and sprayed the whole thing with Sheer Shimmer Spritz in Sparkle (and since that little bottle is running out quickly, I'm definitely going to try her spray that she shows how to make here). I then used Inkscape to make the ribbon slide and imported it into SCAL. I added the words "Thanks a bunch" and used my metallic Cri-kits pen to write it then cut it out. Then just layer the pieces and it was done. The picture shows the shimmer mist really well and the light really reflects off the writing much more in the picture. The shimmer mist is really much more subtle in person and the writing is in much starker contrast.

So now I just have to make a sympathy card and I can get back to my layouts. Oh, and I have to actually mail a whole bunch of cards that I'm behind in mailing out too... Oh well, better late than never I guess.

What a weekend!

It's been such a fun weekend. Friday night, the hubby took me on a date to see Xmen: First Class. It was good, but it drug in some places. When I have time to start thinking about things about the movie, such as how Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick really do go together as a couple, and if January Jones was pregnant when they were filming this or that came after, you know that they didn't do quite a good enough job.

Then yesterday morning we got up at the time we normally get up for work (no sleeping in, boo), but that was to meet Mom and Dad for breakfast. Then hubby, Dad and I took the boat out fishing. It was about a twelve hour jaunt. They (because I drove the boat all day and hardly ever touched a pole, let alone had the privilege of reeling one in) caught as many as they threw back and we still reached our limit. Those fish are already on their way to the neighbor's smoker, but boy was I tired today.

And speaking of smoke, today I got to play in my craft room (after I cleaned it up) because it's close to the laundry room and I spent a good portion of the day working on the laundry. I've been working on the same page for nearly a week. I "finished" it, but it still doesn't look quite right. So I set it aside to work on another project I've had in mind for a while: replacing my old 20 bumper sticker that we bought at Fontana back in 2007. So it still says Tony Stewart, even though that hasn't been his number for quite some time now. Unfortunately when we went to the race in 2009, they didn't have a bumper sticker (or maybe it was they didn't have one I liked). Anyway, at the Creating Keepsakes Convention (back in February!!!!), I got the idea to cut my own out of vinyl. So today, I searched the Internet high and low for the Clarendon Italic font, which I'm pretty sure is the one for the 14. Well, the only places I could find it wanted over $20 for it. Sorry guys, I'm a cheapskate so that wasn't going to work. So I did a Google Image search and found this one I liked that had the 14 and his nickname Smoke at the bottom. I really liked and the image imported into SCAL beautifully. I was all ready to cut when I flipped back to it for a second and realized that it's a bumper sticker that they are selling now. Well, if I'm going to cut this thing myself, then I want it to be custom, not just something any old person could buy off the web.

So then I flipped over to Tony Stewart's web page and saw that the website had this cool image of the 14 in a circle with flames coming out either side. Now that was cool, but it was in a place where you only get to see it for about two seconds every 20 seconds or so, and you can't copy it. So I grabbed my camera and snapped a picture so I would have a reference point. I started building it myself: number 14 in white taken from first project, check, outline number in black, check, red circle outlined by white circle, check, circle sized so that the letters are just as big as the outline, check. Okay so now flames. Well, since I couldn't grab the image, I was going to have to come up with flames on my own. So back to Google Images. I found some I liked and played with them for a while, but it wasn't quite right. Then I found the half-circle of flames and immediately knew that my image wasn't going to look like the one on the web page, because these flames sparked a new image in my mind of the flames cupping the number. But even then, I knew that I needed something more on the flames. So I went back to the original image I had started with and grabbed the name Smoke and plopped it on top of the solid part of the flames, added a black outline to the name and knew it was perfect. Now this is no bumper sticker. It's my new, original, car tattoo:

A few cuts later, a little cleaning of the back window and on it went. Unfortunately, it was already starting to get dark outside, but I still think the picture came out pretty good.

Looking for a new cutting machine...

Provo Craft (PC), the makers of Cricut, is shooting itself in the foot by suing the makers of Make the Cut (MTC) and Sure Cuts a Lot (SCAL) to force the companies to make their software not compatible with Cricut. If I remember correctly, it's about the same thing that happened between Apple and IBM. Apple limited the development of compatible products by competitors and IBM did not with their personal computer format. As a result, IBM's format became the more widely accepted format because there was more available for it.

PC should well remember that its target market is people who are crafters. These are people who are artistic and creative in our own way. Many of us don't want to be limited to what PC decides we should have available to us. Just look at some of the blogs out there. There are so many ways that they take products meant to do one thing, and use them to create something entirely new. These crafters will always find a way to stretch the limits of their imagination and that's what products like MTC and SCAL allowed them to do with the Cricut.

I attend a monthly Cricut class at a local crafting store. At every class, the instructor makes a project using a cartridge or two, shows off the new cartridges (or new machine) and answers audience questions. A lot of those are about basic use of the machine. There is a wide variety of users at those classes from those who haven't even taken the machine out of the box to a super-user or two and every level in between. No matter that I've had my machine for years and have used it extensively, it seems like I always walk away from the class with a new tip, trick or inspiration, so it's well worth a couple hours of my time.

But now thinking back about that class, it really demonstrates the wide variety of Cricut users. There are people at that class who will never be interested in doing anything other than making what the cartridges allow you to make with no peripheral device. They will never hook their Cricut up to a computer or use a Gypsy. But they will buy every cartridge that appeals to their taste and use it exactly as the booklet shows. They need the instructions and what they see is enough for them. They don't want anything more complicated than what the machine was originally made to do. That's one of the things that makes Cricut so attractive. It's easy to use: set a few dials, push a couple of buttons and sit back.

Then there are those who might take it to the next level and manipulate the cartridge using the Gypsy or Cricut Design Studio (CDS) software . That is, if they can figure out how to use CDS. I was so excited when I bought the CDS software years ago. But once I had it loaded, I was thoroughly disappointed. It was the most non-user friendly software I had seen and, trust me, I use some of the most non-user friendly programs one could imagine. Most of the time I can figure them out without a lot of help or instruction. But this one was truly awful. I finally figured it out with a lot of trial and error because there wasn't a lot of help in any of the materials. I looked at it and thought, my mother, who is pretty good with computers, would still have difficulty with the software because it's not intuitive and they don't provide any real support to get to learn to use the program. For many, it would never work at all. For a company that created a machine that was simple enough that most people could easily use it, how could they create such a poor program to go with it? Because of that, I've never looked at the Gypsy. I'm not one to create on the go and because CDS was so awful, I wasn't willing to spend my money on Gypsy.

But, ultimately, with perseverance, one can learn to use the CDS software and take their machine and cartridge capacity to another level. But, ultimately, one is still limited to what is available on the cartridges the person owns. The problem there is that the cartridges don't always speak to the creativity in us. We all have different tastes. I like clean, graphic styles. Others might see the pages as boring. But that's what's so great about life. We all do have different styles and tastes and get to express them. Unfortunately the cartridges mean that we are at the mercy of the Cricut designers for the tools available to use. While that's great for the straight-forward user, it places limits on the creativity of those of us who have a different vision but not the tools to achieve it due to the limits of the cartridges and the CDS software.

That's where SCAL and MTC came in for Cricut users who wanted to break free of the limitations of the CDS software and the designs on the cartridges. I have SCAL and have loved it from the time I installed it about a year ago. It's let me take my Cricut creating to the next level. I've made word books, found designs that weren't available on any cartridge and created my own. For instance, last weekend when making the card for my co-worker, I wanted a buckle for the front. I pulled out my Fabulous Finds cartridge and flipped through the booklet. I didn't see what I had in mind. There were things that I suppose would have worked, but they weren't what I wanted. So I designed my own in Inkscape, brought it into SCAL and cut it on my Cricut. I was free to follow my inspiration wherever it wanted to go.

PC truly had the best of both worlds, they had a machine for people who needed something simple to use and needed inspiration for their creativity and that same machine could be pushed to the limits of our imagination using outside programs like Inkscape combined with SCAL.

But now PC wants to stop that. Instead of creating their own competing software to allow us to do what others have done, they are simply seeking to stop the others. They have already settled with the makers of MTC to ensure that the future versions of the software will not be Cricut compatible and they have filed suit against the makers of SCAL, likely to seek the same remedy. If PC makes it so that I can only use the Cricut with their cartridges and their CDS software, well, all I can say is that I'll vote with my dollars. Cricut is not the only machine out there and the makers of many of the others aren't as short-sighted as PC. If PC cannot respect my creative drive, I guess I'll go find a company that can.

So if you have use a cutting machine other than a Cricut, let me know what you think about it. I guess I'm evaluating my options.