Well folks, we are down to the last few weeks of school before the summer break begins and for some we are counting down till the big graduation day. If I could make a suggestion to those of you involved in graduation exercises this year, it would simply be this. Document, document, document! By this I mean take pictures of the entire event before and after the graduation ceremony. Capture every special moment. You'll never be sorry you took to many pictures, especially now that practically everything is digital, and you'll have preserved many memories to scrap about. Get creative with your Cricut and think out of the box. Make some ceremonial hats of your own and graduate from the ordinary to the extraordinary.

This week?s Tip is sort of an ?un-Tip?. It?s actually encouraging you NOT to do something - and that is to be careful with leaving anything on the cutting mat for too long. Any paper or cardstock left on the mat for even a day or two will become MORE stuck. It?s still possible to remove, of course, but it gets pretty sticky and could result in tears or damage to the paper when removed. It?s always recommended that you clean the mat off and replace the clear protective sheet when not in use.

WOW! Is it time to write another exploration? Where has the time flown by this week? What with gardening, spring cleaning, and playing with my little Cricut bug (Eddie), the end of the week has creeped up on me. This week I continued to play with my special project and also explored the Soccer Solutions Cartridge. I was so excited to explore the Soccer cartridge because I have some nephews that love soccer and now I can finally scrapbook their pictures. Yes, I am one of those aunts that love to go watch their nieces and nephews play sports and I also love to yell for them during the games. This cartridge is perfect for any soccer situation except shin guards...somewhere the shin guards were forgotten in the planning of this cartridge. Besides that, this cartridge has pretty much everything else that you could want to decorate your soccer pictures.

Some of the images that you get with this cartridge are: three different types of soccer balls, grass, bench, flag, sun, cleats, whistle, two different types of shirts, shorts, gloves, stop watch, and soccer goal. There are also a varity of images of Soccer kids in action, playing different positions with a Soccer ball. When you cut the action images you want to plan on using the Shadow or Blackout features. The action images are actually an outline or layer of the child playing with the soccer ball it's hard to recognize what the child is doing with the soccer ball without the Shadow or Blackout image behind it.

Now, you also get a bunch of different types of words or sayings that go along with soccer. You have the names of most of the positions on a soccer field, and you also get a soccer frame. Some of the sayings that come with this cartridge are: "nice pass," "great save," "Kick it in," and a few others; altogether you get ten different sayings that would compliment any soccer picture.

The two creative features that come with this cartridge are shadow and blackout; you also get the Paper Saver and Real Dial Size buttons. For those of you that don't know how the Real Dial Size works, when this button is pressed all your letters or numbers will be cut the same size, whatever size you have selected. The Paper Saver button will let you get the most out of your paper, when I first got my Cricut I used the Paper Saver button all the time, because when you use the Paper Saver button all the letters and numbers a line to one edge. Now when I play with the Cricut, I like to see how the word or phrase will actually look before I use it in my scrapbook layout so I rarely use the Paper Saver button.

In playing around with this cartridge, I've discovered that most of the images will need to have a Blackout or Shadow to compliment the image. Most of the images are straight lines and need the blackout to help pull the image together. This is a great cartridge and will complement the Cricut collection really well, besides complementing your collections if you have a child that plays soccer.

Note: Not quite sure how to store the Solution cartridges? www.cricut.com now has storage boxes that will hold up to 8 Solutions sets in one box. I can't wait to get mine so that I can protect my cartridges a little better.

Check out next week as I continue to explore the Solutions Cartridges. See you next week!
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Crafty Kimber

Q. I am trying to cut vinyl on my Cricut Expression using the 12x24 mat and I am using DS. I changed the mat size in the tool bar to 12x24. When I push cut, I am getting a message that says "the mat size selected is larger than the mat size loaded". I have the 12x24 selected and the 12x24 loaded. What am I doing wrong and how do I change it?

A. You will need to select 12x24 your Cricut Expression as well so that 12x24 is selected on both the Cricut Design Studio and the Cricut Expression. You will want to make sure the machine setting is on 12 x 24 each time you cut even though you have already set it up that way in the Design Studio.