Catching up!

So I have been very busy getting ready for the Craft Show that I had to take 2 weeks off from classes, and unfortunately, I forgot to update my blog as well. So here I am once again trying to play catch up!

First I want to share with you some exciting things going on…I got a new cutter and I’m loving it!!! It is called a Zing, and it is like they say AmaZing! It cuts so much faster than the Cricut, and it uses the software Make the Cut so cutting titles are no longer dragging slow. The cuts are so clean and crisp, I used to have to poke out and then file pieces cos the Cricut never, ever cut clean even with a new blade. So I used the Zing for this weeks class, did a Giving Thanks layout and it is adorable…I don’t think I’ve ever made my paper doll pieces this large before, unless it was a snowman or something like that…so these came out really cute. I used again Treasuerbox Designs svg cutting files.

I also purchased the Cricut cake machine and hoping I can post a couple of projects in the next few days. My sister and my niece live in Seattle, and so this is something we can do via Skype…it is so much fun being able to do this with them, it’s another way for us to almost be together. I want my little niece to know and love her Aunt, and because we live at opposite ends of the US, this is one way she can get to know me, by doing some little crafts via Skype…we laugh and have a great time. So hopefully next week we can show our projects.

Here is a cute little lantern that I made to show some other things you can do with your cutting machines besides scrapbooking and cardmaking…I love this little lantern, I bought some little battery operated tealights at Walmart and they flicker making it look like I have a real candle inside, I fooled my husband, he was quite concerned that I had a candle inside of a paper lantern…hahhaha.

Here’s another project and craft that I made for the show…I sold all of them on my first day so I had to make more and sold almost all of them at the Craft Show. These make great gifts for Teachers, co-workers or that family member that has everything. I thought these came out really cute.

Here are some lamps that I made for my friends stores…all these projects were made using Make the Cut and either my new Zing or the Cricut.You can find these cute little light boxes at Re*Imagined in downtown Houlton.

Here are some windows that I made with Vinyl, I love how they came out…taking orders if anyone is interested, I have a few windows left that I could make any of these designs or a design of your choice.

Here is a layout we did before the Thanksgiving break,

Family Is Everything….this one is with Christmas paper

Here is my youngest student Gabby, she did such a good job! I believe she is only 5 or 6, she takes turns with her brother, they come every other week and we are enjoying having these kids come and learn how to take care of and preserve their pictures.

Ok, I think I’m all caught up…I have to finish my hunting page as I made this same layout a couple of years ago, but now my husband and my son hunt, and they both got a moose this year so I need to get their pictures on the page and then I will post them. Thanks for looking at our blog, hope you enjoyed seeing what we do here.

Halloween Layouts

It’s that time of year again when the Creepy, Ghouly, hilarious, kooky, cute characters come out. So we had to do more that one layout so we can scrap all our pictures. So enjoy the layout…files are from Treasurebox Designs and I used Make the Cut to cut all my files.

Spookville Layout

Here is this weeks layout for Halloween! This was my sons favorite holiday…He would say what other holiday can you get something from perfect strangers…go to there house, walk up and knock on their door and say a silly saying, and they give you handfuls of candy! He so loved it! He didn’t even care if he had a costume…he just thought it was cool to get free candy!

Tonights file comes from one of my favorite sites…Treasurebox Designs she has some really neat cut files. This one is Spookville.

This layout was so easy that I had a seven year old do one with his mommy tonight, it was there first time so I am going to post his layout. Enjoy!

This is Isaiah and his mom Rachel and this was their first time scrapbooking…So glad you could come tonight and you did a fantastic job!

All files were cut using my favorite program Make the Cut, so love this program. I am currently using it with my Cricut, but I can’t wait to get my new cutter and get better cuts and the ability to cut some other things. See you next week!

Cutest Pumpkin in the Patch

Here is another fun layout using Treasurebox Designs files and Myscrapchick and my favorite software Make The Cut. Wow, this was a lot of cardstock, a lot of cutting and a lot of fun to make with friends. Enjoy!

ARE WE THERE YET?

Here is another Treasurebox design…how many of us as parents has heard this from our children as we take a trip whether it’s a short trip or a vacation where we travel all day? I do believe that all four of my children have asked the question at least a few times along the way! I haven’t put my pictures on yet, but I plan to post it when I get them on..this is a trip that my daughters took using my car and they would pretend that they were speeding(yeah right, we know they were) or they would take pictures to pretend they were texting, they were just trying to tease me. (They succeeded)! So I will post the pics later..but here is the layout…enjoy!

Personalized backgrounds paper for layouts

Oh my goodness, I was so excited to do this layout for my friends who come to my class. Although it was a lot of work to do each of them, I think everyone liked them. Each one emailed me with their child’s name, teacher, grade, favorite color or any other information they wanted on the page…I then used my most favorite tool in scrapbooking and that is Make the Cut, and created their background pages. I then used one of my favorite diecuts from Treasurebox Designs, the little Pocketpal kids, and her school supplies, I believe this is from School Days, or Back to School pattern pack.

My layout that I made is of my son Chris, this is very special to me as we don’t have many pictures of him in the 8th grade as he passed away shortly after the school year began in his gym class from an unknown heart condition called Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy or HCM. This is a hard time for our family as it is now 10 years since he’s been gone, and so I hope that if you are reading this, that if you have children, that you mention this condition to your pediatricians and have your child screened. This is also known as the “silent killer” because our children never get screened, nor can doctors tell about this condition unless Electrocardiograms are done. We never knew he had a heart condition, and I’m a nervous Nelly, always took my children to the doctors for any ailment they had.

I’m hoping anyone reading this page that this would be just another way to bring awareness, make sure your schools and gyms have AED’s, and if they play sports, get them screened. Ok, here’s the layout, Enjoy!

OOPs

So last week I posted a layout with a school theme READING, WRITING, ARITHMETIC! I then wanted to add this weeks layout to it, and by mistake, I totally erased the whole post uggghh! Your comments are still there, but with a totally different post.

I had written that it had been a while since I had scrapped because of going through some difficult times. Last June I lost my mom and it was such a sad, hard time for me. Then we were worried about my dad, being so far away from all of us and being alone. Then my dad was diagnosed with Cancer and a very bad heart, and things went so wrong so fast. He was diagnosed in February, and he died in April. Less than a year apart, I lost both parents. I miss them so much. I just didn’t feel like doing anything for so long. We have had such a horrific year, with some other tragedies in our life that scrapbooking or any type of crafting just didn’t feel right. Then the first of July we received a phone call and they had found my mother-in-law dead, she died in her sleep. We have just been so numb with all the losses in our lives in such a short amount of time. Due to where family members live so far apart, we didn’t even get closure to losing our loved ones until this past August. I think our parents would’ve loved the services that we held in honor of them. We shared laughter and tears together. I am so blessed to have such a wonderful family and friends who have been there for me and for all of us. Our Church was there for us also, we thank them for their prayers and for gifts of food and for coming to help us say our goodbyes or rather we’ll see you soon to our parents.

But last week, I decided it’s time to get back into it and be around my friends. Although it so happened that no one was able to attend, I sat down and did the layout, and felt so good when I got it done. So here again is the layout, Enjoy

Another Layout for Back to School with Treasurebox Designs

This was another fun layout that I did this week using one of my favorite cut files from Treasurebox Designs….I love the details that Dina puts into her designs. I also love, love the new face stamps, so my girls don’t have to draw the faces anymore, they just don’t like to try drawing them, and if I use the cut out pieces, I tend to lose them and have to cut extras. I just love the ease of stamping the face, but with that said, I also like the piecing of the face to give it some dimension also. So here’s this weeks layout using TBD file,  Enjoy!

I am going to add photos in the bus window of my children so they look like the driver of the bus

MTC 3.3.3 released!!

The new MTC 3.3.3 version is released! I have been using it for well over two weeks now and I have to say, I LOVE IT! One of my favorite features is the ability to have lines turned into dashed lines, why I like this feature you ask? I can create a small shadow around my object and turn it to dash lines and put my pens in my cricut and now I have faux stitching. This would be nice for cards or layouts where you would use your gel pen and now your lines would be perfectly spaced and sized.

The new update will still work with your Cricuts as long as your previous version was 3.2.1.

Another neat feature is the link to Lettering Delights, now all the files you own can show up when you click on the icon. If you have to purchase, you can either use my links or you can purchase within the software and a small fee will go to Andy who is the creator of MTC.

Another wonderful feature is that if svg files are created in color, most of them will now open up in MTC in color now and all you have to do is send them to their own layer, so much easier.

To do this, click on the layer box so that it selects all the items, then right click, TO EACH IT’S OWN, this will put all the reds in one layer, all the browns in one layer etc…this file is from http://treasureboxdesigns.com her new file Bushels of Fun.

Another new feature is when you choose your fonts, you can now see the style by checking the  show face box…this makes it easier to do your text and find the font that you want. This is a feature I like especially for doing my vinyl wall designs, Andy didn’t really like the idea of having this feature, but It has been requested by quite a few people so I think that’s how it made it in the new update. He has the option of checking the box in case you don’t want to view the font.

You can view the fonts as they will appear without having to constantly click on the font to view it.  Just click on a button and "show face" and as the fonts show up on the drop down menu they show up as they would appear.  You can also edit right in the texting box, either by line, space, you can split right there before placing it on the mat.

  Now one less thing I have to create in another program before importing it to MTC. 

Backyard Fun Layout

So last night we did a layout featuring one of my favorite Designers, Treasurebox Designs by Dina, and I love her files…I wanted to have this page look like it was a continuous layout so I made the file a tad bit larger, did the first page, and I had it overlap a tad, and then I snipped it off and added it to my second page. This is a fun technique as it causes your eye to follow what is happening on the page. As always, I used my Cricut, Make the Cut, my dimensionals (pop dots), white gel pen, black fine tip marker, Colorbox chalks, a tear ruler,we also used some new Diva Pearl Pens, and oh I can’t forget, my awesome 12x12 HP printer, I used this to print my cloud background page. Paper used was from I believe a DCW book School Days…love it! Mats are 4x4 and 4x6. I hope you enjoy todays layout.

Love that SMILE layout

So I have a new group that started coming on their lunch hour, they give up eating to come SCRAP….love it. We had a good time…I hope it wasn’t too stressful for you, trying to get done in an hour. Hopefully, we can have the layouts uploaded prior to class so you can precut your pieces and just add your add-ons. It may have only taken them and hour to get their page nearly finished, but it took me 3 1/2 hours to create the layout…I couldn’t get it the way I wanted it, the way I visioned it in my head, LOL. So Enjoy!

Buttons were made with Martha Stewart punch and they have dimensionals under them to add a little dimension to the layout.

So I think my girls are beautiful and love them so very much. The blonde is our neighbor and part of out family also. 

Feel free to leave comments and let us know what other kind of layouts and or techniques you’d like to see.

I’m the Big Brother, or I’m the Big Sister Layout

A couple of weeks ago we did an adorable layout entitled I’m the Little Brother/Sister and it was just so darn cute. After we finished the class, those who attended had mentioned other siblings and so we decided to do another layout entitled the Big Brother/Sister. Due to different circumstances, some of the ladies were unable to attend and so we had put off holding the class until last night. During the class I introduced another new product to the girls. ( I have been called the Queen Enabler) I wear the crown well…so we used the IROCK and Rhinestones! It was a lot of fun. I created a small adornment in Make the Cut using the rhinestone feature, set the size of my rhinestones and cut it out with my Cricut. I think it came out so adorable. One of the ladies opted to put her rhinestones across the center of her page.

I wish I had my pictures on my layout so you could see just how cute this page turned out, and also where I’m putting my journaling. So Enjoy!

Recipe for the Layout…

3  5x7 CS in Pink for Girl or blue for boy

3  3x5 PP in choice of color

1  3x5 CS in the pink or blue

1  1x10 1/2 strip of pp or cs

1  1x7 strip of pp or cs

1  1x11 strip of pp

1  4x12 strip of pp

2  12x12 CS for background

1  2 1/2 white CS for journaling strip

My faces came out a little funny, I didn’t have my glasses…oh well I still like the page…hope you do too. Love reading all your comments.

Rain Rain Go Away Layout

Well it seems that no matter where you live in the US, there is a lot of RAIN. So last week our layout was to reflect just that, it’s time for it to GO AWAY! I hope you enjoy this layout. We had a small group, but it was a lot of fun putting this layout together.  Hope you Enjoy!

“Eggstra Day” Easter Layout

What a fun layout to make, bright colors and an adorable little bunny and chick…this was such a cute layout, it just makes me smile. I guess cause I’m thinking about the pictures I plan to put on them…My adult son and his fiance! Yes, we had an Easter Egg Hunt for them following our church service, where we hid eggs in only our livingroom and hallway. Each egg was valued at a certain amount…example, pink eggs were .25, green eggs .50, and purple eggs $1.00, now here’s where the problem begins, I didn’t do the math when we hid them. LOL, so they made out really good….They made $35 hunting for Easter eggs, plus they got the chocolate! I grabbed my camera and took pictures of them on the hunt. Enjoy!

I’m the little brother/sister

Here is a fun layout that we did Monday evening. It was so nice to be back home and to enjoy a night of scrapbooking with some friends. I actually was able to make two layouts on Monday…one for my son and one for my daughter…I think this layout is so darn cute. The file is from Little Scraps of Heaven Designs and cut with Make the Cut . I hope you like it. Enjoy

Reposting on how to clean your Cricut mats

I have been asked serveral times how I clean my mats and so I thought it would be good to repost my quick tutorial on this product that I use and recommend, saving you lots of money. Enjoy

Make the Cut Tutorial/Resizing

Here is a quick tutorial using files from http://treasureboxdesigns.com using the software Make the Cut. I love how easy it is to resize files and have them fit regardless of the size we need them to be. Please leave a comment and or request for future tutorials. Check out Treasurebox Designs for more adorable files.