AFTER THE FAIR IS OVER
Getting The Most Out of Your Lunchtime

As a child, the county fair always signaled the end of summer and a last hurrah for children before the new school year began. Attendance at the fair was mandatory for any self-respecting munchkin. Riding the carnival rides, splashing around in the water attractions, visiting the animal exhibits, partaking of the delicious fair cuisine, and attending the rodeo were all paramount features of a proper, well-rounded experience at the county fair. My parents were always sure to take pictures of us enjoying our action packed day before heading back to school on the following Monday.

So the fair is over. Your kiddos have gone back to school. Soon you will have a little more of the lunch hour to yourself to catch up on leisure activities with a bit more peace and quiet. What will you do with all that extra time which you previously would have spent chasing the kids around? You’ll need to make the most of it before they come home and need your help with homework and school projects.

Don’t plop down in front of the television and veg the hours away. Be constructive! Now you can hone and refine your crafting skills when you visit Provo Craft online crafting classes? It’s harmless and it’s a wonderful lunchtime activity.

Did you know you can also check us out on Facebook? An admired crafter will be profiled each day this week. They will share tricks of the trade with you and influence you to broaden your crafting horizons. Each will offer practical crafting tips as they apply to today’s Cricut crafting.

Be sure to check out Crafty Kimber's cartridge exploration of the Splish Splash, Carousel, and County Fair cartridges in today’s Chirp. Read about helpful Cricut tips and glean great crafting ideas from Cricut message board members in this week’s newsletter.

As always, I wish you success in your crafting adventures!

Lonna Joy Smoot- Editor, Cricut CHIRP!

ANNOUNCEMENTS

TIPS TREASURE CHEST

Today’s tip comes from Cricut Community Moderator, Chris. Thanks for the tip!

Pattern caching is the ability to store (or cache) a pattern from one Cricut Imagine cartridge in the Cricut Imagine memory so that it can be used on an image from another Cricut Imagine cartridge or any Cricut cartridge. You can store up to three patterns from any Cricut Imagine cartridges.

You must have Version 96 or greater of the Cricut Imagine firmware in order to use this function.

Steps for Caching a Pattern

1. Select Print and Cut from the Main Menu.
2. Insert the Cricut Imagine cartridge that contains the patterns you want to cache.
3. Select any image and edit it by clicking on the pencil icon to go to the Edit screen
4. Find the pattern you want to cache, select and hold your stylus down on the pattern.
5. A small box will pop up saying, "Cache Pattern." click on the Cache Pattern box to cache the pattern.
6. You will see an hourglass symbol for about 10 seconds while it caches the pattern.
7. Drag the pattern scroll bar until you can see the cached pattern to the right of the cartridge color pallet. You will see your cached pattern.

Steps for Using a Cached Pattern

1. To use your cached pattern select the image you want and edit it by clicking on the pencil icon to go to the Edit screen.
2. Select the cached pattern and it will be added to the image or layer you selected.

Steps for Deleting a Cached Pattern

1. To delete a cached pattern select and hold your stylus down on the cached pattern
2. A small box will pop up saying, "Clear Pattern." Select it and the cached pattern will be deleted in a couple of seconds.
3. If a small box pops up saying, "Pattern in Use," you will not be able to delete the cached pattern because an image in your queue is using it. Delete the image in your queue and then delete the cached pattern.
4. Also, simply turning off the Cricut Imagine will delete all cached patterns.

CUSTOMER SPOTLIGHT

Name: Lisa Marie Parkerson

About Me: I am a mother of the best five-year-old boy there is, and his father and I have been happily married for 7 years this August. I work full time for Simmons Bedding Company in Sumner, WA as a Customer Service Representative. I've been with them since 2003. I began scrapbooking after my son was born, and have LOVED it ever since. I really enjoy using my Cricut and just LOVE the products!

Instructions: Use 4 8x8 shadowboxes. Cut out the coffe pot, mixer, blender, and toaster from the "From My Kitchen" cartridge in "retro" colors of turquoise and pink. Cut out the corresponding words "Coffe", "Mix", "Blend" and "Toast" in complimentary colors. Mount the designs and the words onto "retro" looking color back-grounds, using gingham check prints. Embellish with some raised glitter dots.

Cartridge Used: From My Kitchen

MESSAGE BOARD HIGHLIGHTS

This week's highlighted threads are:

• You Take the Cake - Cricut Imagine Layout
• Lights, Camera, Action
• Barber Style Layout
• Sisters
• Minnie Mouse T-shirts

CARTRIDGE EXPLORATION

Since it’s still August and everyone is scrambling to get those last minute vacations or family projects finished before school starts. I thought about my own vacations and projects I use to do when I was young in school. Creating with my Cricut machine I always have time to think and this week I dived into some memories of school, my favorite moments at Elementary school was sitting outside on the playground with my friend eating the lunch we had brought. As I pondered my Elementary school memories, and explored “County Fair” and “Splish Splash”, I also thought about my fun summers going to the rodeos and going to the town swimming pool.

“Splish Splash” is a wonderful Cricut Lite cartridge that has artwork surrounding a water theme. This great cartridge is adorable and perfect for those summer or water photos. This cartridge comes with fifty images that include sea animals, shells, bathtub (which is perfect for a baby/bridal shower) umbrella, sink, perfume bottles, whale, raindrop, anchor, and sea horse. This cartridge also comes with a few borders, swirls, and twelve different phrases. Some examples of phrases are: clean, soap, relax, splash, and wash. As I played with this cartridge, I realized the creative feature is tags, and discovered that each of the images can be cut in a tag. I cut out some images and tags to see how they would look and then I got an idea, what if you could use the tags to write notes on them. These tags could be used in lunch boxes, suite coats (secret note for a loved one), a quite thank you note for a friend, plus use them for gifts. The tags are so easy to cut out and easy to glue together, use an ink pad to add some color around the edges and you are done! So easy and so cute!

“County Fair” was the other cartridge that I explored. This cartridge brought back so many memories of raising animals for the county fair, 4-H clubs, and rodeos. I loved going to the fair to see all the fun crafts that were submitted, and visit the animals. I had a huge passion for sewing and would make something every year for submission; I usually received a blue ribbon which always made me fill great. This cartridge is a standard full cartridge with six creative features; they are Layer 1, Layer 2, Phrase, Phrase layer, Brand, and Shadow. A few examples of the images you can cut are: cowboy, cowgirl, rodeo clown, ticket sub, 1st place ribbon, US Flag, cowboy boots, cowboy hat, balloon, drink, popcorn, hot dog, ice cream, bull, saddle, brand, barn, star, barrow, and pig. I would like to point out you can also cut out phrases, some examples are: “Cowboy”, “Yee Haw”, “Howdy”, “Giddy Up” “Ranch Life”, “Branded”, “Happy Trails”, “Old West”, “Soups On”, and “Wanted”. The more I played with this cartridge I thought of all the scrapbook pages I could use this cartridge with. I have many family traditions that surround the farm theme, I love to go to rodeos and my family and I love to go to the fair every year to get ice cream- all the nieces and nephews come, we have a ton of fun. I can’t wait to scrapbook those memories; I’m so far behind in my scrapbooking. One thing I need to note, when you cut the first image this is your base layer then you need to cut the other layers using the creative feature button 1 & 2 also make sure to use the shift button to get the rest of the layers for your project. This cartridge is perfect for anyone who likes rodeos, fairs- it’s a must have for your cartridge collection.

For my projects, I used the cowboy hat that is connected to the “Rodeo Queen” image I simply cut the phrase off because all I wanted was the hat, and I used the cowboy boots for my other project. I cut these images out of fun girly material and then ironed them onto onesies. Sewed some ribbon on the bottom for a ruffle look and my project is finished. It’s an easy crafty that anyone can, instead of ironing cuts out on onesies, or iron them onto quilt blocks.

This wraps up my exploration- check back next week to see what I explore next.

- Crafty Kimber

HELP FROM THE EXPERTS

Need some help? Provo Craft Customer Support is here for you! Never hesitate to call in (1-888-922-4725 or 1-888-92ccircle for Circle questions); we have people ready to help you! We are currently open Monday through Friday 7am to 6pm Mountain Time. If these hours do not work with your schedule, please send an email to support@provocraft.com.

Have a great week!
From your Customer Support Sweeps:
Mark, Colby, Brittany, and Becky, "The Floor Sweeps"

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

“I seldom end up where I wanted to go, but almost always end up where I need to be.”
- Douglas Adams