This is unusual

Hello there

Yes indeed, I find myself in rather a peculiar mood. I'm going on holiday to Tenerife on Saturday morning. I'm usually a mega fan of going to sunny places, as three quarters of the time I can't stand the weather in this country and how it affects my lifestyle. The weird thing is that I'm not that excited about it. I keep thinking about all my projects I need/want to do. I've been busy with other stuff recently, so my projects haven't been taking pride of place in my schedule, as I'd like them to do. Truth to be told, I'm also not enjoying the mega cleaning I'm having to do, as my mum and step dad are coming to look after the house and the dogs. I feel like stomping my feet and saying ' I don't want to be an adult, I want to play!!'. 

Of course I'm way too mature for that! ;-)

What I'm meant to be showing you (rather than having a whinge about going on holiday?!!!) is the coaster set I've made for Linda of The Crafty Network fame, as she was my first liker of my brand new Facebook page for my brand new enterprise 'A Place to Set'. I was determined to squeeze it in before going off on my jollies and I've managed it! Hip hip hooray! Linda asked specifically for a burgundy red Christmas theme, so hopefully she thinks I've managed that.

Along a similar theme, Linda posted my latest 'A Crafter's Journey' article onto The Crafty Network blog. Nip over there for a read and let me know your thoughts, either there or here. Is there anything you think I could be mentioning in these articles? What in particular do you think is needed on that site or on my page?

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One other project which has taken some time recently is the halloween 'bunting' I've made for work. It hasn't turned out quite how I expected. The main reason for that is that I did some free cuts on Cricut Craft room but then they expired the next day (they give you a week free trial of a cartridge a week), so I couldn't do anymore. I'm not prepared to pay for a halloween cartridge, as I don't really like it. I also ran out of time and also it's for a Sainsbury cafe, so I'm hoping that enough 'official' stuff can be used in there. I had felt sorry for the cafe team leader, when she said they didn't have any decorations for in there and they're not allowed to dress up themselves. The bunting will hardly be visible at all in the large space but hey, at least I've tried to help someone out, which is what life should be all about.

The items are placed onto some spider's web net, which is actually white but I just rubbed a black archival ink pad over it to make it the right colour for the theme.

Now I just need time to nip round with it for them.

The sun is shining now and although I have to get back to the boring cleaning stuff, at least I've crafted by proxy of writing this blog post :-) I'll enjoy the holiday once I get there but it's just all the faff of organising everything before I go and let's not mention what happens when I get back but hey, all you ladies know all about the holiday related stress.

Take care out there, especially if you're going on holidays! :-)

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