Crown Gift Card

Back in August, we celebrated Angie and Rose Mary's birthdays. Yes, I am rather behind sharing with you. Sorry. Anyway, here's Rose Mary's card.


This test cut shows it a little better. There's one base cut with tic marks to make folding easier.


Then one crown to layer and bling up.


I stamped Happy Birthday with a CTMH stamp, outlined the crown with Stickles and added gems. Just perfect for our Glitter Queen.

Because of the size of the crown, this one has to be cut on an Expression. However, it is set up to use either George or Plantin along with Happily Ever After.

Crown Gift Card

Maybe you have a little princess in need of a gift? :o)

Jill

More Cards w/ Argyle

I hope you haven't given up on me yet.

You might remember when I posted my Mother's Day card that I said the base could be used for any occasion. Well, I've managed to use it a few more times.

Another cousin's daughter had a precious baby boy a few months ago and I needed a card for her baby shower. Then my son's best friend got married and I needed a card to send with their wedding present.


I love the little monkey on Sweethearts and thought he HAD to be used. It's a Boy came from Wild Card, but I wasn't totally happy with it. To give it a little boost, I added a signboard from Storybook.


Congratulations came from New Arrival.


In the photo above, you can see the layers used to make the monkey. I just love layered cards.


Again, I added vellum to the inside and cut an envelope. Remember that this envelope can only be cut on the Expression.


Then it was Josh's turn. Sweethearts came in handy once again with the wedding bells. I used an embossed vellum to cut the top layer of the bells and chalked the clappers. The card had to be turned landscape so that everything would fit properly. I like the change.


Best Wishes was cut from Cuttin' Up. I should have been pickier about where the pop dots went, but I thought the vellum would cover it up better. I was at a crop when I made this card and didn't have the vellum with me.


My friend Kay also used this base to make a baby girl card. I don't have pictures and only created a basic cut file, but I will share the file with you. We used the onsie from New Arrival and the scalloped circle from Mini Monograms for trim on the onsie. I believe she also turned hers landscape.

Monkey Card
Wedding Bells Card
Onsie Card

I hope these give you some ideas and I'll try to do a better job at posting more often.

Jill

Merry Christmas!

Wishing you and yours a very Merry Christmas and a Safe, Healthy and Prosperous 2010.

Love,
Jill

Race for the Cure

Wow! What a month it has been! On top of preparing for our Race for the Cure, I also had a weekend crop with the Divas at Ferncliff the week before the Race. Entirely too early (our fall crop is normally in November), but we had a great time and a beautiful weekend.


However, the weekend did end on a bad note for me. Not a mile or so down the road, a deer hit the driver door of my car. I was able to drive home (cautiously as I had no side-view mirror and my Pilot was crammed full of everything from the crop) and I was not injured, but it meant over a week in the shop. It just so happened that my uncle had gone to Memphis for two weeks and left his car keys at home, so I was able to borrow his car while mine was in the shop. The deer got up and ran off, so I have no idea whether he lived or not. Since then I've been seeing deer EVERYwhere and it's really made me rather skittish.


And last weekend was our Race. The morning started out rather cold, but the clouds eventually cleared and we had another beautiful day and a great turnout. We're still waiting on the final numbers.

While in Branson in August, I made a couple of luggage tags/keyrings using the Pink Promise cartridge. I made one for me and one for my friend, Dianne, who is a Breast Cancer Survivor.



Soon after giving Dianne's to her, her purse was stolen. Among dealing with canceling credit cards, closing and opening checking accounts, etc., she was really ticked off that they got her keyring. But I promised her a better one.


In the meantime, I have made several more for our 2009 Race Chair, 2010 Race Chair, our Affiliate staff members, a dear sorority sister who is also a survivor and a couple for our sorority alumni Make It, Bake It, Grow It, Sew It, Sell It fundraiser.



I also used this cartridge to cut several signs for our Race Space. Kim said they looked great, but apparently the damp (we've had ENTIRELY too much rain) got to the paper and it refused to stick to anything after several days. I haven't gotten into cutting vinyl yet but plan to work on that before we open next year.

This file is set up with a few variations. The Size and Designs... tabs are basically there for preview. Cut Backs tab will cut 4 backs; copy, paste and move or delete as you need. I use 2 backs per tag. Cut 2 Designs... will cut 2 sets of ribbons, a Race for the Cure and a Survivor with shadow. Cut Survivor Designs... will cut one ribbon with shadow and one Survivor with shadow. The ribbon is smaller on this cut and the next because I added the recipient's' name on some. Cut Race Designs... will cut one ribbon with shadow and one Race for the Cure.

I used Cursive 101 for the names that I did but did not include any of them in the file. Enter your name as a single item at 1" and get all of the letters in place and welded. Then resize it using the lower right arrows making sure that it fits in the box for one of the backs.

Those Race for the Cure cuts are very delicate, so be careful taking them off the mat if you decide to make some.

RFTC Tags

Happy Fall,
Jill

Elmo Border

My original plans were to cut this out of glitter paper, but the red paper I had was having none of it. I tried a new blade, the deep-cut housing with a new blade, various settings and a new mat. It might have worked with multicut, but I was already having enough trouble keeping it in place on the mat for one cut. I finally relented and went back to cardstock.


I think the layout turned out pretty darn cute myself. But then, I did have a precious subject.


This file needs some explanations.

I used the baby bug for this file because I wanted the border to be as wide as possible without rotating the images. I created one border and then copied, pasted and flipped it to create the second border going opposite.


Cutting Directions:

Cut 1: Place your paper on your mat by looking at Cut 2. You will want black for the faces and orange for the noses before you start cutting anything. Once paper is in place and mat is loaded, cut Cut 1. This will take a while but will cut all of the details for the faces. There are actually two layers to this page. The only way I could hide the face outlines (and keep them hidden) was to hide another line in each face. Remember that you have to hide two elements within an image in order for it to stay hidden when you save the file. So I did one layer hiding the face outline and one other line and a second layer hiding the face outline and all of the other lines. This won't matter to you except if you start trying to move the design on the mat. Do NOT unload your mat.

Cut 2: Leave the mat in the Cricut from Cut 1. The top section will cut the outline of the borders and you want the noses to cut from the bottom section. Therefore, you will need to hide the eyes. (There was no way to hide them and keep them hidden since 3 elements are required in an image in order to do so.) And cut. Unload your mat and remove paper.

Cut 3: Reload mat with red and white paper and load in machine. This time, hide the noses. And cut. Unload mat and remove paper.

Cut 4: If you want a shadow for your border, cut this page.

Hope I haven't totally confused you.

Here's the cut file.


Happy cricuting,
Jill

Continuing with Elmo

Yep, returning to Maddy's birthday. I can't handle one-page layouts, so Maddy's title page needed another page to go with it. I went to Sesame Street Friends for this page and selected the jumping Elmo. Isn't he cute?


The only things I did to this page was to flip all of the elements since he was jumping in the wrong direction to begin with and rotate the shadow so that it would cut on the baby bug. Everything is placed so that it will cut on any of the machines.

Here's the complete layout. (Click on it for a larger view.)


And the cut file.

Hope you enjoy,
Jill

Visual

Where does the time go? I'd like to say that I'll do better about posting, but our Race for the Cure is October 17. That means that we start processing our teams next week and I'll be tied up with that for about 2 weeks.

In the meantime, Stephanie posted a comment recently asking questions about the wireless connection to my cricuts and requesting a picture. (Here's a LINK to my last post regarding wireless use of the cricuts.) I thought maybe several pictures would help others understand as well.

This is my basic setup. I tried to take one picture or stitch the two together, but it just was not happening with the allowable space I have behind my table. (Remember that you can click on the photo to open a larger view.)


Next is my lamp which sits on top of the hub (Belkin F5L009 Network USB Hub). Set up this way, the hub doesn't even take up any space.


Here's the hub from the front with the lamp moved.


And the back of the hub.


I thought maybe labeling the cords would help a little. The black one is the power cord for the hub; the blue one connects the hub to the bridge; the gray one is the USB cord to my baby bug; and the white one is the USB cord to my Expression.


Remember that Dave attached my power strips and everything to the bottom of my table. This is the bridge (Linksys - Dual-Band Wireless-N Ethernet Bridge. Model: WET610N Best Buy SKU: 9213861) which is also attached under there. You can barely see the blue cord which attaches it to the hub.


This is our wireless internet router (ours is a Linksys) which sits on top of our entertainment center across the room. Dave also has another bridge two rooms over that controls all of his X10 equipment. I'm not sure what all he has connected to it.


On the ladder, you can see the router between the pictures of our respective families a few Christmas' ago.


From the floor, you don't even know it's up there.


To recap from the previous post, my laptop talks wirelessly to the router which talks wirelessly to the bridge. The bridge is attached to the hub and the hub is attached to the cricuts.

If you can only afford one piece at a time, you want the hub first and connect it directly to your internet with a cable.

I'm blessed not only with a wonderful husband, but one that is a computer tech and loves gadgets!

I hope that answers your questions. If not, please let me know.

I'll try to share a file or two with you before we start processing.

Later,
Jill