Cricut Explore

Yaaaaaay, I got the Cricut Explore! And, I didn't manage to get anything done before my two week free trial of 25,000 images to use in Cricut Design Space expired. But that's okay, the subscription is really reasonable, and you can cut any SVG from anywhere for free... not even only SVGs, I've been using PNGs and they cut just fine. For my first project I did a pennant wall hanging.

Cartridges/images used: Scalloped Edge - Accent Essentials, Floral Lovebirds Pennant - Pretty Pennants, Banner Label - The First Few Years, Font - Don Juan.
Papers used: Best Occasions 8x8 Textured Cardstock - Neutrals, Colorbök 12x12 Cardstock - Neutral, DCWV 8x8 Textured Carstock - Neutrals, Colorbök 12x12 Designer Paper - Joplin, Wausau Paper 8.5x11 Classics Cardstock - Spectrum, Colorbök 6x6 Designer Paper - Light Bright.

Honestly, I don't really know how I feel about it. I'm not sure I like the background color, the scallop color, or if I over/under decorated. I didn't really plan it out very much, so all in all I think it was fairly successful. The cut and write function rocks.

Also, I used the LightGrip Mat for the first time, and it was totally integral for cutting the thin paper (Colorbök 12x12 Designer Paper - Joplin). I would have never got that off the standard grip mat in one piece. (It's the large patterned overlay, lots of small cuts.) The size of the whole thing is 9.5x11.5.

I'm going to put it in the kitchen. :)

Carol's Wedding Card

Andrew's sister, Carol, is getting married at Half Moon Cay in the Bahamas in 4 days! Her color theme is based on a beautiful necklace by Color Obsession.

She also has a painting of a tree with empty branches and I was asked to make leaves that everyone who is attending the wedding can write their names on. So I used 6 colors of paper to match the colors of the hummingbird above and sewed the edges by hand with complimenting thread. I think they turned out pretty nice!

So of course I wanted to stick to the theme when making a card.

Used Cricut Stretch Your Imagination cartridge on blue, green and white paper, a little ribbon, some tiny star brads and some darker blue thread. (Now how am I going to make an envelope the right size?)

Card for Ilka

Well, today was my first Monday in the pharmacy without Ilka and to be honest, it was not a good day. The morning was busy, taking breaks in the afternoon put even more pressure on the two techs not on break, and the evening just isn't the same without Ilka's presence. (She helped me keep my sanity after Kristen leaves.) Instead of having two of us proficient at doing data entry, now it's just me. On top of that, I have to place the order while doing drop-off and answering everyone's questions about "where is this drug?", "this patient said that the price should be different," "can you call this doctor/insurance/patient?". (It really shows my "controlling" side when I can't delegate tasks to others because I'm convinced it will only waste more time.) Scott and I were watching the Colbert Report not long ago and there was Nicholas Carr, author of The Shallows, speaking about how multi-tasking is a bad thing and that people who think they're good at it are actually bad at it. All I know is, I miss my boo already. So, I made her a card.

I cut the letters in SCAL and the rest with my new favorite cartridge - Create a Critter. The glitter glue really isn't as sloppy as it looks in the picture. That's just the lighting. I'm sure my photo-guru Danh could school me in that.

A Boot for SCAL

Occasionally I get on a kick where I just want to make something for the sake of making it. I have absolutely no use for a Victorian-style paper boot... but I thought it was cute and I wanted to cut it. So I opened up Photoshop and turned a picture of some boots into more simple shapes and imported the bitmap into Inkscape where I turned it into a vector file to use in SCAL. (Easier said than done... it took over an hour before I was satisfied with the vector file.) Then I was ready to cut. At this point I discovered that my Cricut will not use the 12x6 cutting mats... it rotated all over the place in the machine. Frustrating, but eventually I got the thing cut and finished.

Apparently Blogger doesn't like SVG files, so here's what I used saved as a PNG.