True to the saying, March is going out like a lion...a big fat, three ton, hairy lion. April is just around the corner along with all of the showers that will bring those long awaited flowers as well. I confess that I miss playing around in the puddles which Spring brings.

As a small girl, I owned a nice button up raincoat made of thick transparent plastic and a matching umbrella. The ensemble was decorated with colorful little flowers which I often closely studied as I walked along in the rain not watching the path but only the floral designs on my "rain outfit". I felt so pretty and I just knew, that everybody was watching and commenting on my lovely attire and umbrella as I skipped and occasionally tripped past each house. I am a little too old to go running around the neighborhood in my beloved designer raincoat and umbrella. I outgrew them. There is something I will never outgrow. Crafting!

Rainy days are a perfect time to go through old photos in search of inspiration for your next crafty project. Sometimes, a photo will spark a happy memory of something you had long since forgotten with a recollection so clear and vivid that you can hear, smell, taste, touch and see the event all over again. If this happens, quickly write down the details of your memory. Then scrap it...the Cricut way!


Happy Cricuting :-)

A: I just put mine under running water and if necessary gently rub the paper particles off. Then I let it air dry and it is sticky again.

This week the weather has been so nice, all I wanted to do was work in the garden and clean up all the old dead leaves. Then, later in the week, the weather changed so all I ended up doing was staying indoors and playing with my Cricut. It's not a bad thing to play with my Little Eddie (aka my Cricut), but I so am ready for spring and wanted to work in the ground--I even bought some garden gloves so I could get started. Oh well, know it's time to play with my little Cricut. This week, I decided to finish up exploring the rest of the Creative Features from the Sports Mania Cricut cartridge. I have explored most of them but missed two that I think are a wonderful addition to this cartridge.

To review what comes with this cartridge: a variety of sport themes, sayings, and images. The creative features are: Layer, Frame, Border, Background, Shadow, and Blackout. I have explored all of the features except the Border and Background features. The Border feature takes the image of your choice and triples the image when you cut it out. You could use DesignStudio to weld a few of these border images together to cover one whole scrapbook page. If you didn't want to use DesignStudio, you could cut out the design of your choice multiple times and then glue them together on your scrapbook page. Some of my favorite images that make a great border are: soccer balls, hockey players, hockey puck, ice skating, volley ball, tennis racket, basket ball hoop, football players, football, football helmet, baseball glove, baseball bats (these also look like a fancy diamond design for a scrapbook page), swimmer (this would make a great accent for a scrapbook page of someone in a triathalon, and a golf ball design. Any of these border designs would look great cut out of vinyl and placed on a wall as well.

The Background feature is a one that I haven't ever seen on another Cricut cartridge, and believe me I have explored a ton of cartridges. I love this concept and wish that I had kids to scrapbook with all these fun sports ideas. (Do you think I could add some of these accents to my dog scrapbook pages? - that is something to think about.) This feature lets you cut a background for each of the different sports that are on this cartridge, which is great for those scrapbook pages. Creating the background is always the hardest part for me. Now all I have to do is cut my background out and lay my photos and journal tags down. WOW! What a quick way to scrapbook. For example, I am a big fan of hockey, and love to go to the games. Now I can finally scrapbook my photos of me and my friends at the game. I have three choices of which background I want to use: there is a hockey stick image scattered all over the paper, one with the hockey score board in the background, and one of three hockey helmets going down the page. Something to note with this feature: you only get the one image. What I mean is that most buttons with the feature gives you two images or maybe an accent for the main image. With the Background feature there is no extra image when you hold the shift button down. The running background has a design of the track field, and the second background has the finish line at the top of the page.

A lot of these images can also be used as a journal tag to tell you story in the scrapbook page. For example, the clip board would be great as a tag, flag, corner football, basketball, or baseball image. Any of the t-shirts would be wonderful to write on for your scrapbook page, or many other shapes that are placed throughout the cartridge.

Well, that wraps up this cartridge. Check out next week as I explore the stamping supplies that you can use with any cartridge and your Cricut.

A: We have software called DesignStudio that can update your Cricut Create machine firmware and make that error with Makin' the Grade go away and never happen again. Here are the steps to do this:

(You will need to load this software onto a computer that has Windows XP or Vista as an operating system.)

1. Go to this link on the Cricut website: http://www.cricut.com/cds/DesignStudioTrial1.aspx. Enter your name and email, then continue to download the trial. (The trial is all you need to update your firmware).

2. Run that software. It will install Cricut DesignStudio.

3. There will be a DesignStudio icon on your desktop to select. Double-click on that icon and the cartridge will load. Then select to option to run with trial. When DesignStudio has loaded up fully, go to "Help" on the toolbar and then down to "Update Firmware". On the Update Firmware page, it will tell you what you need to do. Follow the instructions to the letter. You will need an a/b USB cord (most printers have that cord so you can just take that for this update, and then hook it back up to your printer). After this update, you will be all done and your machine and cartridge will be ready to go.

If you are still having trouble, give us a call at 1-877-727-4288 7am to 6pm MST Mon-Fri or e-mail us at support@cricut.com and we will be happy to take you through some troubleshooting to find the source and fix the problem.