At times, we crafters can find ourselves at a loss for ideas. When this happens, we make use of our senses to help us get through the "crafter’s block" and get on with creating.

Everyone has their favorite smells, sounds, and tastes which are often associated with fond memories or pleasant events. Some of my favorites are the sounds of little, fat feet pitter-pattering across a wood or tile floor; the smell of lilacs and the air after a thunderstorm…raindrops on roses, whiskers on kittens, and all that sentimental jazz.

Little things like this can be fun inspirations for crafting and scrapping projects. What simple pleasures inspire you?

Today’s Tip comes to us courtesy of message board member treacletart . Way to think outside the box!

“NA's Pregnant Mom is not just for baby pages - you could do Christmas, birthday, Halloween pages, cards etc with her, and many more! She is so versatile!
Just give it a go, its great fun.”

Click here to see some of the many ladies of the New Arrivals Cartridge.

I've been exploring Plantin Schoolbook for quite some time; there are still many features that are fun and exciting about this cartridge. I love playing with the different types of box you can make using the features keys, see example from web http://www.cricut.com/messageboard/tm.aspx?m=772493 . The certificate button is so much fun and you get so many different types and sizes also using the features buttons. Plus, when you use the award button and include the different features you get 4 different styles of awards to use with the certificates you are making. I decided that I needed an award so I made me one to pull out whenever I need a pat on the back- hehehe (see picture).


I love the angle of the letters, the artist Cecelia Harris did a really good job of creating this cartridge because the letters are perfect for any type of project, scrapbooks, banners, posters, bulletin boards this is a fun cartridge and it comes with so many different ideas. The brackets button can be used as a frame for pictures you want to accent or a border to go around the page of your scrapbook. With the different feature keys: Tall Ball, Italic, Roly Poly, & Shadow you can create different types of shapes for whatever type of accent you want. This cartridge come with grass, that when used with the Tall Ball feature there are some flowers added to the grass-sweet! When the Roly Poly feature is used you get a mountain landscape- wow. With this same key using the landscape part of the button, you get different kinds of city landscapes; the Italic landscape is my favorite and will work great for my camping pictures.

In exploring the zigzag button I found that it makes a cute accent to whatever scrapbook page you are working on. In my exploration I discovered that unfortunately the larger the size of the zigzag the wider the image. This is ok, but when you want something is real life like you want a small image. I played with all the different sized but found the smallest size I could make was ¾, ¼, & ½ of inch and that is wasn’t very long. So I just pushed the Quantity mode button and cut 8 out at once then I glued them together to form a line across my scrapbook page (see picture). I used a ruler to help me glue the zigzags straight and made sure that I left some off the page then trimmed the edge with some scissors. You can also change the look by using the features keys, with the Roly Poly button you get a design that looks like water this will work great for my pool pictures. We had a big family reunion last weekend and we all went to this fun indoor swimming pool that had kiddy stuff for the kids to do and a big slide for the teenagers and adults. I think I spent most of the time at the kiddy pool with all my nephews and nieces we even had a 2 week old newborn out there in the pool with his mom, it was great fun and now I can use this water image to help accent those scrapbook pages. The Italic feature button makes a cool zigzag but it won't glue straight on the page (see picture) but it is defiantly a very unique design. You can also use this image like a frame to go around your pictures, but only with the italic feature. This zigzag is the only one that will fit around like frame. The smallest size ¼ of an inch is really hard to glue but it’s not impossible.
 

Check out next week when I pick another Cricut Cartridge to explore and discover something new for the scrapbooking world.

Crafty Kimber

A: Solution 1: If you have already tried to load the paper at least once, you’ll need to press Unload Paper first before attempted again. The machine “thinks” that the mat is loaded the first time.

Solution 2: Try pushing the mat slightly in the rollers as you press the "Load" button. This is best done my holding and pushing the mat on the side nearer the front of the mat.

Expression Information:

Q: What is the Fit to Page feature?