Grumpy?

Hello there

I certainly was grumpy at 4.15 this morning when Chris's phone made a noise which woke me up! Why was his phone in the bedroom and why was it on? No reason whatsoever!! Which didn't make the situation any less irritating!

It's 20.21 on me typing this and I'm rather tired as I couldn't sleep after that and decided to get up at 4.30 and get ready for work, as I have to get up at 5 on Mondays and Tuesdays anyway for work. I was at work by 5.30 and did a very busy eight hours.

Despite this story of woe of mine, I'm now rather happy. One of the very first UK Cricut Iron-on purchases was made by me on 19th July from cuttingedgecrafts (free postage on all orders!) and it arrived today! The Americans have had it since April but it was only available in this country from last week.

In a nutshell it's vinyl which is usable on fabric - visit their site if you want more info than that, as I'm too tired for indepth details and they can do it so much better than I.

Imagine the possibilities to personalise all fabric projects! I foresee me using this to sell items. Which items and for how much and how I'll market them etc etc are questions for another day. 

Progress not perfection.

This is how the image started off on Cricut Craft Room.
Since the vinyl sits on a clear transfer layer, you
need to flip words, so that they appear the
correct way round after being transferred to your fabric

This is a real close up of the finished practice piece.
As you can see my iron was rather too hot.
On my next practice piece I will start the iron
alot cooler and then get it hotter if required.

There are full instructions in the packaging and there are videos and tutorials available, which makes it a good thing to have not had the product until after America; as now we have all the resources to help us out :-)

The settings for each Cricut machine are clearly shown in a chart on the packaging but I had to use blade depth 3, pressure 3 and speed 2 to get my Expression machine to kiss-cut as required (you don't want the clear carrier layer to be cut as well as the vinyl). The suggested settings said blade depth 2.


The instructions state to use the highest heat on your iron but like I have said, I definitely recommend that you use just a small practice piece of the vinyl first and also use a lower temperature setting on your iron, so that the vinyl doesn't shrivel up on impact like mine did :-) Also use a scrap piece of fabric, so that you're not worried about that either.

My transfer might not be perfect but it is definitely secure to the fabric and has helped me to see how easy it was to peel the vinyl off the carrier layer, with a bit of 'weeding'. It's also opened up yet another world of possibilities for creating projects to sell or just for me!

I'm off to bed at 20.48 as I'm well and truly finished for today but I'll go to sleep alot happier than I woke up :-)

Take care out there

Music No.2

Hello there

Oh dear my subject title reminded me of the song 'Mambo No.5 - I'm now singing in my head with a bit of a body wobble :-) - such a happy song though.

Here's the second of the scrapbook pages I've created using the freebie Music layout pieces and the cut-file, as described in my last post.

There are more photos and the journalling on the tags behind the
raised photo

The stitching work and the inking of
the letters with a Spectrum Noir pen
make alot of difference

Putting the layers at different levels
yet connecting letters to those,
made it flow so well

I really like how easily these came together. I've never done a double
page layout of any kind. With several photos for one event, I
could definitely be persuaded to try this again. 

If you're into your Cricut, I'd recommend keeping an eye on Cricut Craft Room in conjunction with the project page on the Cricut website, to give you ideas for what to do with the cuts.  I saw on Obsessed with Scrapbooking's blog that they have got two new layout based cartridges out which look great, so I'm going to have to be quick to get these preview type cuts done quickly before I have to buy a cartridge :-)

Take care out there

Music

Hello there

This layout was done after I got inspired by a Cricut Craft Room cut-file from the Cricut project page. I found some free cuts on CCR which are items for various layouts but I needed to see an actual example of what those cuts could create and I loved the example using the music layout on that project page, so I promptly imported the cut file and got using the free dies - all FREE I say - how brill!

Sorry about the poor light but our weather is so bad, I can't expect it
to be much lighter during the day. I've used my daylight lamp, so
that stops the photo being yellow in tone but it's given alot of shine on
the M and U

The journalling is on a tag behind the photo

The background paper is fab; it's from the Stampin' Up Tickets and tags kit I think. The lines on it made it so easy to line up, as often my lining up is far from perfect. I also think it fits this theme/photo to a tee with it's grungy feel. Most of the papers are from Heidi Swapp's Sugar Chic pad; it's perfect for the colours and patterns in the photo. The silver/grey marbled effect paper has been in my stash for a long time; I hadn't thought it would die-cut very well but it was easy peasy and looks a treat.

The machine and hand sewing was great fun too and the washi tape, well, it just had to be done :-)

I'm going to have to get a few layouts done quickly whilst this is still going for free, as there are more photos of this night I want to capture and some other photos of another 'gig' my daughter went to a couple of months ago. I could do a double page layout of this night using the same papers as this and mixing it up a bit with the die-cuts and design.

Let's hope I get time, as 'him indoors' is back tomorrow from a holiday he's been on with his mum, so I might have to forego some crafting. How bad am I, that I am reluctant to give up that for a catch-up evening with Chris?! Don't get me wrong, I love Chris but I'm also a tight mare and don't want to give up the chance of using a freebie :-)

Take care out there

Freebies

Hello there

Last week on Cricutcraftroom they had another pile of free images on there just for a week; every week there's a different cartridge/range of images that you can cut for free. I didn't like the actual images they had on there but my eye was caught by the photo mats, which have the slits cut out for you to fit your photo/topper in. So I got to cut out a pile of left over card in a couple of colours. Today's layout uses the cut outs and the negatives from that. 

I got my layout inspiration from a Basically bare blog entry. Although after saying that I just went with the creative flow really with the materials I wanted to use and what I have/found, which I find to be so satisfying.

I wonder if you noticed the dribbles again - my Stampin' Up ink
is going to get lots of use, me thinks! :-)

I had intended on using some wire to replicate the swirls on the float but whilst I was searching for it (I still haven't found it!) I came across this punch; I keep them at the back of a shelf as I don't really like them but oh boy, was I pleased to find this one at this time - it was meant to be! :-)

Yet again, I used the cut outs, and the negative and I also used sections of the die-cut as a stencil for the background. The only reason I used the top right hand corner negative piece though, was to cover the spraying mistake I made there. Happy accident!

Sarah Hurley and Serif also saved the day with the postcard from her digikit on Daisytrail which I found whilst looking for a postcard on CraftArtist.






Yay- another great creative morning!
Now to wait for the text from the school saying that it's closing due to the snow. Some schools have shut already but thankfully my daughter's school aren't soft!! ;-)

Take care out there in whatever weather you have, as I know that Sydney have had over 45 degrees today, so that won't be any fun either, as it can cause bushfires.

Freebies AND hide contour

Hello there

Well you know how it is? You get landed with the job of making a pumpkin design at work and before you know it, you're learning things about Cricut Craftroom? .... No? Never?! How strange! :-)

I don't really celebrate Halloween but I've never been against my daughter doing little things for it or going out with her friends trick or treating. In regards to the pumpkin,I got myself involved in creating a pumpkin design for a little competition we were running at work to raise funds for a local charity; Jump. I looked at a few places online for designs and printed a couple off but then they were too big for the pumpkin and my printer software isn't working properly to allow me to change their size and I couldn't be bothered messing with that. In the interim I saw a post on the Cricut EU site which showed a pumpkin design which could be downloaded and used in Cricut Craftroom (CCR). I had heard of digital cartridges but had never ventured forth, so to speak.

The page which had the design I liked is here. I was very excited when I very easily opened it in CCR (thanks to tips from Joy on Obsessed with scrapbooking ) and was able to do exactly the same as I can with every other design I use on there. Unfortunately I should've realised that I had to own the cartridge that design came from, which is October 31st but there's no point in me owning that as I don't do enough halloween stuff.

To resolve the issue, I just hand drew the design on paper, cut it out myself and then blu-tacked it to my pumpkin and used one of the tools my friend had lent to me, to prick the design out.

I then cut the design out with the little saw tool and hey presto, a pumpkin design was before me.

Then after all the looking at blog posts which were halloween inspired AND most of all learning about free cartridges which are only available for a week on CCR, I had to make a decoration with one of the free images on the Thanksgiving free cartridge for this week. The image I chose was a pumpkin with swirl decoration and then put the standard pumpkin to layer the image. Yet another thing I had learnt about CCR was that there is now (or I've never noticed before) a 'hide contour' function. This is brilliant and was one of the things I missed from my Gypsy when it broke. It enables you to not cut certain parts of an image. To try to help explain this, here is an image.

The lower two images come as one cut/image on the free cartridge. That doesn't suit me at all, as I don't want the stem to be the same colour as the pumpkin. So I hid the contours of the pumpkin itself, so it didn't cut at all and hey presto:

So then I copied and pasted the single stem and cut them, as I was making two.

This is what the final decorations looked like.

 

 

Not a great photo with all the reflection but I think they look sweet

Take care out there

The journey is often most of the fun

Hello there

Today's card is yet another example of me using some recent papers from the Craftseller magazine. The papers are still sat on my desk, so the plan is to use them all up. I've no idea how long this'll take though, as I'm not the quickest at the best of times. I may well have hit upon a design I'm happy to duplicate, probably with little tweeks on each one to make them feel different.

Firstly I selected which papers I would use together. I placed them on the card blank I made to fit into the envelope I wanted. The card I saw which struck me to get me properly started was on particraft's blog. My card ended up being quite different to that indeed but it sparked my interest and gave me a focus on what elements I needed.

I then went into Word and typed out the sentiment in a colour I thought would match some of the circular images in the bottom patterned paper.

Next I went onto Cricut Craftroom as I knew that Ornamental Iron2 cartridge would have a frame type that I wanted. Sure enough it did. I made sure the frame was the right size to fit around the sentiment; which is one of the joys of CCR. I just happened to have a scrap of card, almost exactly the right size for this cut. I just LOVE it when that happens!

I thought that the sentiment wasn't quite right. So I searched for which leaf cuts I had on my Cricut and used some of the decorative paper (glued onto thicker paper, as the paper itself doesn't cut well at all without the extra support of more paper underneath it) to cut them out.

What you see in this photo is the decorative leaf pattern I inked along the inside bottom of the card. I used dusty concord distress ink on my craft mat, with a few sprinkles of water thrown in. I dabbed a small section of my old bath sponge and used the negative of the leaf die cut as a stencil. I also LOVE doing this!


 

Even more use of leftover die cuts was made on the envelope. I coloured the frame leftovers with dusty concord.

 

 

The final version is totally different to my original inspiration but that's how it is for me usually. I take it along the path which is open to me; which papers I have, which equipment I have, how much time I have. It's a creative process after all.

Take care out there