Awesome Provo Craft opportunity for Cricut Crafters!

Provo Craft in honor of releasing their 100th cartridge is giving away 100 cartridges over the next 5 weeks.
Their 100th release was Winter Wonderland and you can see the cartridge here: http://www.cricut.com/shopping/ProductDetails.aspx?id=361&s=1&sc=2
It's a great themed cartridge and even has 3D houses! You can read about the promotion on the message board (including how to enter) here: http://www.cricut.com/messageboard/tm.aspx?m=5248058&mpage=1

Cards Update.... Since I've been lazy

Wedding Cards... This first one I made for a girl's wedding that I went to high school with, my mother was the organist for her wedding. The inside sentiment I found online and was a recipe for a good wedding cake, including love and commitment. I really like "recipe" style cards, as you can see this is the second I've done (the first was for the diaper cake).

I've started stamping my email on the back of cards, incase people wonder where they come from/who made them. :) I got the rubber stamp for FREE from VistaPrint.com (they've got tons of great stuff, I've also had business cards, return address labels, and custom ink pens made too, they have great high quality stuff and amazing prices).

This was a wedding card that I made for my mother to give to someone at work.

This is a trio of birthday cards that I made for my aunt and her two daughters, their birthdays are all in June and July.

Indie Art Book Update~

This is the link to the .cut file, and the 2 PDF versions of the book, 1 as the regular 1 pager per page book, and one that is 6 pages on one 8.5" x 11" page. http://www.mediafire.com/?sharekey=4f6878ef07276a0690a82c7bb0fad7ad75e0a27e5adc17e9c95965eaa7bc68bc
I used George for the rectangle and Celebrations for the holes for the dots. I cut my paper to 7.5 x 5 so that all I had to do was flip it over and reinsert it into the printer to get the back to line up, you might have to do something different with your own printer.
I used 6mm PVC plastic coil to bind this, which I purchased from http://www.bestbuybinding.com/41_spiral__coil_sample_pack.htm (that specific link sends you to the sample pack that the white was from) They have TONS of different options available for binding products.
I hope that you all enjoy this, and I HOPE to one day have some free time to start on some of the other solution's cartridges... but since I don't own them (Other than Stone Script) it is not a number 1 priority for me. But I know that some of you out there would really like them.
Take Care!

Rocky Horror Floorshow Corset

I needed somewhere to stick a few photos of corsets, so here they are.

The first one is exposed correctly, the second two show an estimate of sequin placement and variety of colors.

Diaper Cake!!!

So I made a diaper cake for a diaper party, 280 diapers, 5 packages of wipes (hidden inside), a bottle of baby powder (also hidden inside), 1 set of J&J First Touch, and a cute pink poodle toy. It took me about 6 hours, and it was a great show piece at the party. :)

I cut all the parts of the tag with my Cricut, the basecard from george, the skull from indie art, the bow from Hello Kitty greetings, and the name from Stone Script. The flower that you see is from Hello Kitty greetings that I welded an "I" into from George so that I had someting to tie the bow around.

I got the poodle at Wal-Mart, and printed the back of the tag on lazer vellum and put on it what was "in" the cake and who it was from (as 8 of us went in on the supples for it together).

All of the colors were chosen based on the rest of the colors for the Baby's room so that she could use the die cuts for scrapbooking or the ribbon for other crafts.

Dani with her real cake that "Mama Rita" made and it is zebra and says "Diapers for Isabella" since they wanted something a little wild.

Indie Art Book

So the Cricut solution's cartridges don't come with books, just this little insert where it is REALLY hard to see what the pictures are.... so I made my own book.

I laid everything out in Photoshop and then printed the odd pages and then the even so that I could manually duplex each page. I then figured out using design studio how to cut the page to the right size with the holes so that I could us PVC binding to bind it off. I'm pretty happy with how it turned out, it's only taken me 2 months to find all of the time to lay it all out and and a few hours to print, cut and assemble.

Baby Isabella Word Book

(The rest of the photos are at the end)

I did this for the same girl whose invites I also made, I have a ton of other stuff to do for her (all the baby bedding, two diaper bags, and were making the cakes for the next 2 showers) but I couldn't just show up empty handed to the first shower.

The poka dot paper is from the Nana's Kids stack, the "BABY" is cut with Mickey Font, "Isabella" is off of the Calligraphy collection, and there are super tiny hearts that make up the holes for the binding from Doodlecharms (the shift border for the mailbox, as well as a ducky and a bear), as well as other things from Stretch your Imagination (Baby, Baby Stroller) and other assorted stickers that I've picked up along the way.

I bound it with clear PVC binding, which I keep on hand for word books, and tied green, pink, and purple ribbon to the binding to dress it up.

I cut all of the base pages out of gift boxes and then covered them in pink bazzil cardstock that I picked up Michaels.

For this being a 5 hour project, I was pretty happy with the end result. :)

V-Day Bags and Cards

Back at Valentine's Day we did an all ladies show for Rocky Horror (and two boys since I didn't have enough ladies). I gave everyone a card, and a bag of goodies as a thank you for putting extra effort into the show.

These were just store purchased sacs that I used Doodlecharms to cut out hearts and Stone Script to cut the initial... pink bags were for ladies and red for boys.

This was my card, I cut the Thanks from Calligraphy collection at 1.5 and the heart from the same cartridge. I used the lip print with xoxo (cuttlebug) to emboss the corner, and stamped them with a corset stamp that I found on clearance at Hobby Lobby this past fall.

Baby Shower Invites for a Friend

So between these 3 designs I've made 130 cards in the last month. I did them for a friend who ironically is due on my birthday. I've only charged her the cost of supplies, but wonder what I could actually get for these in today's market. The insides are stamped on white card stock that was glued in with Who, What, Date, Time, Where, Hosted by and Registered at, and she hand wrote in the information.

They were cut using my Cricut, and embossed using a CuddleBug folder.

I've done a bunch of other cards since January too.... but those will have to wait until later. :)

Cricut and Deep Blade Housing, Cutting Chipboard

I kept reading posts about how people couldn't make their deep cut blades work, but still purchased the housing and blade anyhow.

This is how I make it cut with my baby bug.

Tape chipboard or mat board (I like HL Mat board, the huge 36x48" sheets that I can cut down myself) to the mat around the edges using blue painters tape. I use a mat that is no longer sticky because I can't make it stick to even a new mat, so why waste sticky mats.

Load mat into machine.

Set speed to 2.
Set pressure to max.
Set blade depth to 2.5 (in between the 2 and the 3 on the deep blade housing).
Select design and cut.

Now this is the important part!!!
Hit Load Paper
Hit Repeat Last
Change blade depth to 3.5
Cut

Hit Load Paper
Hit Repeat Last
Change blade depth to 4
Cut

Hit Load Paper
Hit Repeat Last
Change blade depth to 4.5
Cut

Hit Load Paper
Hit Repeat Last
Change blade depth to 5
Cut

Hit Load Paper
Hit Repeat Last
Change blade depth to 5.5
Cut


I know that is a TON of cuts, but it allows you to cut layer by layer through the mat board and it produces a nice cut. You will not necessarily have to cut this many times if the chipboard cuts sooner than a 5.5 depth. I do not have to cut the mat board from HL at a 6, 5.5 is sufficient. If you purchase the grey chipboard from the art section with the .04 depth you only need to cut to a 4 and the chipboard with the .055 depth you will only need to cut to a 5 depth... or at least that is my experience.

This is still not a fool proof method, but, it does work about 75% of the time, which is better than 0% that many people are experiencing.

Hope this helps a lot of people who are having problems with their deep blade and housing. It took my BF and I about 3 hours to figure out that you had to go one click at a time.

I welcome questions, and hope that this helps A LOT of people out there who are frustrated with their deep cut blades.

I hope to get some new projects posted and a few other tutorials, tips and tricks that I have discovered recently.

Rocky Horror Word Book

So I've noticed the increasing popularity of word books in some of the scrapbooking magazines that I have looked at or the Cricut forums that I have been visiting. For Rocky Horror we're always looking for new things to give away to the audience, and I came up with this. I don't know how well it will go over with the male members of our audience, but I had fun making it and setting it all up in Design Studio.

Cards: Cupcake and Minature Rose

First of all my rose... I have been trying to think of something to do for Valentine's Day, and this was the first one that I designed that I was super happy with, provided it is small, but that's half the fun of it for me!

And my cupcake, I was thinking about something that could also be used for Valentien's day, but that was standard, typical or expected.

My reason for being... on blogger that is.

So I've decided I want to do something to share what I've made with others, as inspiration or as a what not to do, take it as you will. My friends are always so excited about my new sewing projects or what I've created with my Cricut that I want to share them with more people.