I'm a sucker for sales at the grocery store. Especially cake mixes. There are so many different kinds of cakes and flavors from which to choose. I just buy them all. My problem is this. I have quite a collection now and need more room in my cupboards but I want to avoid the "moment on the lips forever on the hips" phenomenon. I live in a good neighborhood with kind neighbors. In the winter, some of them don't really get out of the house that much to be social. Sooo, my solution is this...I'll make a cake every week and bring it to a neighbor as a friendly gesture of goodwill. It's a win-win situation.

No doubt, a homemade Cricut card will accompany my cakes. While the cake is baking in the oven, I and my Cricut pal will bake up a card. You know Cricut cartridges are a lot like those mixes. There are so many different kinds, there's something for everyone, and they're oh so delicious too. Love it, love it, love it!


Happy Cricuting :-)

A: Felt 101

I experimented with cutting felt this weekend and these are my notes, if you have other advice, please post it here so it can stay together.

1. You need a VERY sticky mat. Even stickier then the new mats. Remember that felt leaves behind fibers, so you will need to wash the mat and remove the fibers when you are done.

2. It doesn't always cut all the way through the felt. The way felt fibers are webbed together, makes it difficult for the blade to separate them, however; it does cut through enough to where you can use scissors to separate the fibers with little effort.

3. The stiffer the felt and shorter the pile (depth of the fabric) the better the cut. I found that the pre-cut sheets on the craft shelf are too flimsy and slid all over the mat. The pre-adhesive backed felt was also a bad idea. The paper backing has to be removed, because as it cuts the paper slides all over the place jamming the blade. If you remove the backing the adhesive also paralyzes the blade. If you place the adhesive side down on the mat, the blade gets caught in the felt fibers and jams.

4. I purchased felt off a bolt at a local fabric store. It was short piled, and stiff. If I added the Ultra Hold iron-on adhesive - Heat 'N Bond to the back of the felt, and cut the felt upside down, so that I was cutting directly on the backing it did a better job. Still didn't cut all the way through, but the blade didn't get hung up in the fibers, and the felt didn't slide on the mat. Make sure you remove the paper before cutting. The white interfacing that looks like white felt cut the best! Also remember that if you cut the image upside down and you are cutting letters, you need to reverse your image in DS before cutting.

5. Simple designs work the best. The bigger the design the better it worked as well. Solid simple fat designs are the best!

6. Cutting directly from the Cricut seemed to work better as well. DesignStudio overrides the settings for speed on the Cricut. When cutting directly on the Cricut - I set the Speed to 1 and the depth to 4. When I used 5 it seemed to jam. The felt caused a greater drag on the blade at the deeper settings.

This week I have been caught up in creating crafts. I even dreamed of crafts last night. I have so many plans that can utilize the Cricut and the new Yudu Silk Screen machine. I need to find some time in my busy schedule to create everything I want too. Last week I explored the Calligraphy Collection Cricut Cartridge. I went over what was in the cartridge and explored one of the Creative features, the Matrimony. The other creative features that come in this cartridge are: Gratitude, Celebrate, Inspiration, Shadow, and Inspiration Blackout. In this article I will explore the Inspiration and Inspiration Blackout features.

To review what comes with this cartridge: both upper and lower alphabets, full set of numbers, some symbols, phrases, and some images. When you push the Inspiration button you can cut all the letters any size you want, as well as a flower, heart, and sunshine. Phrases that you can cut are: "because of you", "Shine", "Happy", "Heartfelt", "Cherish", "Dream", "Lead with your heart", "priceless", "Enjoy today", "You're worth it", "hope", and "One of a Kind". Shapes that come with this features are: an oval, square with some added swirls, ovals with extra special loops, straight swirls, and extras fancy swirls. To describing this font is difficult with words, but I will try. This font is two thin straight lines with curves on each end of each letter. It's really pretty and elegant; now add the blackout as a background and your phrase or word changes (see photo for idea of font style).

The Inspiration blackout is the same outline of the Inspiration font but instead of being hollow the letters are sold, there are still curves at the end and beginning of each letter. You could use the Inspiration Blackout as its own set of letters or as the background for the Inspiration font. Note that with the Inspiration blackout you also get all the above phrases and shapes, but in sold form.

Some examples of this cartridge that I really like are found on the www.cricut.com website. I've chose one or two that really impressed me.

Nancycs created a wall decor that I thought was really clever (picture located above is her project).

ScrappinCricut did another layout that I really love. She sent it to me this picture and instructions so you all could make it if you want (see wwww.scrappincricut.blogspot.com) It's called the Irish Layout because our next holiday is Saint Patrick's Day.

Check out next week as I tackle cutting material using the Cricut. I have these great pillows that are on my bed, they need some Cricut images added. Happy Cricuting!

Crafter Kimber

A: Paper Saver mode will "pack in" any selected cuts to optimize the space needed. This may result in an inaccurate "negative" image left in the paper, but if you don't need to use the negative cut, this mode works great. The tail on a lower case "y" usually encroaches into the paper below the rest of the letters selected, indicating accurate read-ability. With Paper Saver mode, the Cricut will automatically raise the "y" up into the same channel the rest of the letters will cut out from.