New Favorite CTMH tool

I just got the little gum eraser from CTMH and I love it!  I still haven't used it to erase pencil marks yet but it does so much more.  It took the hard to remove sticky off my scissors.  It prepped my stamps to make them ink better.  But most of all, if I Cricut some letters and run them through the Xyron sticker maker, it picks up all the residual sticky from them which is my favorite use for it!

Handbook Help!

Here's a trick to help me navigate the image-only handbooks. I label each pair of pages with the keypad row number and button number.  This bee on Create A Critter is row 5, button 5 from the left.
Remember the game Battleship?

This is so helpful on Animal Kingdom, Create a Critter and the 2 Paper Dolls cartridges.
I hope this helps you too!

Guest Post by a Junior Designer

Here’s a cute little post by my first “guest designer.”  This was a card my little guy made for his Papa (Grandpa)  this week for his birthday.  He had to have the pumpkin.  Knew exactly which one (Stretch Your Imagination). He picked all the papers, the card base and the eyes and picked the two sizes himself.  No, he didn’t want to use a rubber stamped greeting.  He wanted it done on the Cricut too—on white paper.  He did all the gluing except for the stem.  And then he wrote his name!  All.By.Himself.  For the first time in pen.   He’s been writing, just not any type of paper that could be saved.  It was awfully hard sending that one out the door so I took lots of pictures.   

Inking Pink Blog Hop!

There’s still time to join the Pink Blog Hop.  It’s thru 10/31, with drawings on 11/1-3.  There’s more than 2 dozen gals who have partook in this hop.  may have blog candy this week!  Have fun & don’t forget to check your girls this week!  Click on the logo to start the hop or this link below: 

http://pattyandcharlie.blogspot.com/2010/10/inking-pink-blog-hop.html

Getting into the Spirit of things

I’m testing my new blog publishing software using Windows Live Writer for the first time ever. I hope I can be better at updating my blog if it’s easier.  Here’s a card I made last year around this time for Christmas. 

This is from the Christmas Solutions Cricut Cartridge.

Hip Hip Hooray birthday card

One extra fold added a lot to this card. It made it nice and dimensional without hardly any effort.

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Used the flower that was cut from the hippo's bum to add to the inside of the card for a nice touch.

My son has informed me just now that it's missing something.  Googley eyes!

Butterfly card

This was such a simple card to make, especially after I tossed all the
detail cuts for the dots on the wings and just used bling. This was a card
that went with a present. It would be very chunky to mail.
I think everything was purchased at Joann's. Coor-dination's paper and some
really old flower bling from the dollar bin.

50 Bites

Made this for my sister's 50th birthday last year.  I wish I would have picked better contrasting colors but it still looked great in person.  My flash washed out the colors.  50 flowers on skewers with a bite of chocolate in the center of each one.  All flowers were done with a Cricut Cartridge.

The Happy Birthday and 50 Bites were with SCAL

Princess birthday card

You can't have a frog without a princess! Natalie's card was made on the Gypsy because the crown is from Gypsy Wanderings. Used the shadow feature for the base paper and the regular feature for the front. Stickles filled in the crown to give it some sparkle.

The Happy Birthday Natalie is a combination of the Gypsy Wanderings font for the upper case letter and Plantin Schoolbook for the lower case.

The lighter pink is some eye-popping pink from an old paper pack from ages ago. The front page is DCWV Winter or Spring cardstock stack from just over a year ago.

Once again, I cut the base paper 6x12 and then joined it end to end with a double sided tape. This was cut on the 12x24" mat in one piece.

Hoppy Birthday Jacob

I created this card using Design Studio and the frog from Paper Dolls. He's the princess' frog on page 47. By welding the frog I was able to eliminate the detail cuts. I also hid the eyes so they wouldn't cut by clicking hide. Hoppy Birthday is from Lyrical Letters. At 1 inch this was way too delicate to work with. I'd prefer a more sturdy font in the future. The front of the card is the same frog glued over the base in the pearly green textured paper.

The base of the card is made with a green paper I had on hand out of a unknown pack. The front was made with Core-dinations from J's. Gemstone's "Jade" I cut the base paper to 6x12 and then used double sided tape to make a strip of paper 6x23.5" long. The entire folded card was cut out at one time. The Cricut cut through all the layers pretty cleanly.

A couple googley eyes and an upturned smile that I filled in with a marker turned him into a very happy frog.

Shaped Cards

I made these two cards in design studio last summer. My husband's brother and his wife have birthdays 10 days apart in July. Todd received the cowboy hat. The hat is from PDDU, Howdy is from Storybook. I welded the design and added a second hat on top of the first, hiding the contour of the edge of the hat and didn't weld that one so the detail cuts would cut. See my pumpkin example earlier in my blog to see what I mean. Capadia Designs also has some wonderful tips on this.

The princess card was for Shonda, Everything was from Storybook. The light pink paper is the pearly paper from Core-Dinations. This was just a few weeks after Joann's started stocking it so it was fun and exciting to cut with it.

I'm having fun with shaped cards. I'm working on some more that take a 12x24 mat and a single 12x12 piece of paper as the base. I can't wait to finish and post them.

Butterfly card

Inspired by the butterfly on the Cricut cake cartridge (You can sneak a peek if you have the latest Design Studio libraries loaded). I made this card in SCAL for two of my beautiful nieces. One turned 14 today and tomorrow the other one 27. Oh my, I'm feeling old now. They both love butterflies, green and black.

Shadow box Baby Keepsake

The best of both worlds. A Cricut Cartridge & SCAL.

Using SCAL and a free font called "Little Lord Fontleroy" I cut vinyl and adhered it to the glass. I covered the velvet backer board with some scrapbook paper via Scotch double sided tape in several place. Added the cut from A Child's Year as well as the baby stats. A bit of ribbon was added a the top. The hardest part was cutting the baby stats down and then creating the right size of matting. I am not well practiced at this.
Using SCAL 2 is great for the title. You can center align the two rows effortlessly and size it exactly. I cut the vinyl, weeded it and transferred the whole thing using transfer tape in 1 step. That way there wouldn't be any uneven lettering. It may seem like your not conserving vinyl but you are after you throw out a couple pieces due to mistakes!
A very simple but remarkable gift. This shadow box is only 8x10 which is a great size. If you put paper on the back, you don't have to layer or splice two sheets and hide it with ribbon.