CARTRIDGE EXPLORATION
I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday. December 25th turned into a stressful, crazy day because my dog decided that was the day she was going to have her puppies. After all the stress and labor stuff, my dog was just too small to have the puppies naturally and we ended up at the pet medical center for a C-section. Now I have a healthy momma and three little puppies, two girls and one boy, that are all doing fine. Right before the holiday came, I managed to squeeze in some playing time with my Cricut® and Craft Room™. Yes, I have discovered the wonderful Cricut Craft Room and even though I have gone through a few bugs in using it, I have found that I really enjoyed how easy it is to use.
I find myself picking up my laptop all the time and diving into Craft Room to create a quick project that I can save to cut out later.
 If you haven?t heard of Craft Room or explored it, then you must check it out. Go to www.Cricut.com and click on the Craftroom tab. Did you know that you can also review and purchase our Digital Image sets? They are located under Craft Room Exclusives. I ended up purchasing the Movie Night pack and used it to create a personal ticket for our ?Polar Express? movie night. As a family, we all got together and watched this movie and then acted out some of the parts during the movie, including punching the train ticket, drinking hot coco, and handing out a bell at the end. Other packs that I played with were the Holiday Gift Tags, Jewish Icons, and the Mustaches and Glasses. You can also review the images by going to Cricut.com, clicking on the shopping tap, and then clicking on Cricut Craft Room Exclusives link under the search box to see the colored finished samples. I can?t wait to play with the 3-D Bows and 3-D Chinese Lanterns.
This week along with finishing my cards and presents I was able to explore ?Ribbons & Rosettes?. I can tell you that if you haven?t looked into this cartridge then you must check it out. I have added it to my list of favorite cartridges because it is so adorable and easy to use. I love rosettes and this cartridge makes it easy to create small or extra-large rosettes. I had a Christmas party and needed a center piece, so I make a rosette Christmas tree (see photos for how I created the tree and the result). Let me point out a few features that come with this cartridge, you have the Rhinestone/Medallion Shadow, Border 1?x3?, Border 1?x 6?, Border 1? x 11?, Border 2?x3? and 2? x 6?, and Border 2? x 11?. Not only can you cut out rosettes and make them into whatever size you want, but you can also cut out the centers (which are great for when you glue them together).
The Rhinestone feature provides you with a variety of patterns so you can lay down rhinestone patterns on whatever projects you are working on. I love to add extra bling to projects and enjoy using the rhinestones that you can iron over and the ones that you have to glue. The patterns included are the full alphabet, plus a bird, swirls, ocean wave, butterflies & Dragonflies, key, heart, diamonds, and three or four border styles. If you need a shadow for the Medallion then you need to make sure that you press the shift key with this feature.
I hate it when I want to cut a border and in order to keep it small the border is too large to fit the whole page. I usually end up cutting a bunch of the small borders out to cover my full scrapbook page. If you can relate with this then you will love the rest of the creative features that are included with this cartridge. The variety of border designs are wonderful as well, and now you can cut the border in whatever length you want while keeping the size of the border at the same time. I love this idea, and how easy Provo Craft has made it for me to cut borders for my scrapbook pages. A few other ideas that you could use these borders on are cards, picture frames, and as a banner that would fit in between the medallion shapes. Yes, you can easily use the medallion shapes as the background for a banner.
Some of the medallion shapes that are included are: Star, Flower Petal, Scallop, Floral, Flower, Heart, Crown, Butterfly, Fence, Stamp, Bird, Flame, Tulip, Zigzag, Loop, Grass, Lattice, Circles, Bracket, and Spider. Along with these medallion shapes, you can also cut the rosettes with each of these different shapes, plus additional flowers, and scallops designs.
Here are a few tips on working with the rosettes. I used Cricut Cartridges as a base when assembling my rosette tree. After I hot glued one rosette layer to the dial, I then hot glue a ribbon to the dial, place the cartridges in place and then hot glue the next rosette layer into place. For gluing the rosettes together, make sure to use hot glue, but be careful of your fingers. When you glue the full rosette circle together, the hot glue makes it easy to stick together and you don?t have to sit there and hold it forever. Before flattening the rosette cut a small circle that will go on the back of the rosette or you could cut two of the medallion shapes and use one of these for the back. Now when you flatten the rosette make sure you are looking at the back of it and place a huge dollop of hot glue on it and then quickly place the medallion shape on top of the glue. Hold the medallion shape in place over the glue until it cools. Now flip the rosette over and hot glue the medallion onto the front of the rosette. The next tip is that each rosette will require at least four die cuts of each design, if you want the rosette to be bigger then you will need to cut more of that design. In my exploring with the rosettes, I found that if I used a thicker cardstock then I would need more of the die cuts, where as if I used a patterned cardstock then I didn?t need as many of the die cuts. The main reason is that when you are gluing them together and then flattening the rosette the thicker cardstock doesn?t want to stretch as well as the pattern cardstock. You can also use the Cuttlebug to add a pattern to each of the die cuts before you glue them together ? the effect looks great.
This wraps up my exploration. Happy New Year?s everyone!! See you next week.
Crafty Kimber
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