Baby Dresses

Lately, I feel so out of sorts so I decided to make a to do list for scrapping. One of my items was to learn how to use inkscape to make my own SVG files. If you don't know what SVG files are or what you can do with them, look it up on Wikipedia. If you don't want to know THAT much about it, then just understand that you can use SVG files in SCAL to cut images. Now, my only limitation is my mind when it comes to what my Cricut can cut.

This one is a simple baby dress. I dressed it up with stickles and ribbon. When I can figure out how to share files ( better put it on my "to do" list). I'll start sharing my SVG files.

Mamma- Mia

Can I just say I was wrong? My husband is 11 years my senior and while I am a child of the 80's, he is a child of the 70's. So there has always been this struggle in our car...which IPod to hook up. When he wins, he plays ABBA. I cannot stand ABBA. To me, it has a real disco sound to it. I don't like disco.

Years ago in Canada I saw a billboard for Mamma Mia and I wanted to go until.....I found it was based on ABBA songs. Yuck. But on the Eve of Christmas Eve, I begrudging ling agreed to rent the movie. One week later...I have been converted!!

I HAVE SEEN THE MOVIE 7 TIMES AND I HAVE LISTENED TO THE SOUNDTRACK COUNTLESS TIMES!!! If you haven't seen the movie....go right now and get it....go...go...I'll wait.

It is so upbeat and Meryl Streep is amazing. My only downside is Colin Firth. I love that man. I love him for the characters he has played..Darcy in Pride and Predjudice. The amount of love that oozed from his presence around Elizabeth is amazing. And I loved him in Bridget Jones Diary. I imagine him looking at me that way. So I was a bit perturbed when they took my perfect man and made him gay. Not because of social issues but because.....hey leave someone perfect for us women.

Get the movie...you won't regret it.

Christmas Cards...finally

I can't believe it is the 16th and I am just finishing my cards. Well I am not finished. I have to wait for the stickles to dry, then I have to attach these to the front of the cards. Hopefully, I will be able to do this tomorrow.
I have to thank Tim Holtz for his Twelve days of Christmas. I took one of the ideas for the tags and just made a bigger version. I then expanded it to a stamp that I bought last year and never used. On the card with the Virgin Mary, I used a technique I learned at 2Peas to make the heart stand out. I had to look all over town to find the blending tool from Tim Holtz. Now, onto homemade decorations.

Let it Snow, Let it Snow, Let it Snow

Can you believe it snowed? I can't. The first time I saw snow I was three years old. I didn't see it again until I was 19. Then after that, I was 34. Now again it is snowing. Just to give you an idea of how south I am, you see that leaning tree in my front yard? Well it is from Hurricane Ike. I live less than a 1/4 mile from the water...the bay. We had so much fun in the snow. We made snow balls, watched our dogs try to eat it and just enjoyed it. There were kids outside with their parents. What a magnificent sight for everyone.

Almost Famous

Ok, I have a confession. Ever since I was a little girl, I had this small thought in my head. "If I do it well enough, they will put me on TV." I don't know when it started but it continues to this day. I have to say it takes a lot of energy to live up to that thought. For instance, the other day I was driving down the street and I stopped at red light. I was the first in line and I made sure I stayed behind the white line in front of our lane. I turned on my right signal, looked both ways and proceeded slowly forward and to the right. I wanted to make the perfect turn. Because in my mind, if I do this well, someone also waiting for light will work for company that makes those movies you see in driving school. You know the ones. All the actors look straight out of the seventies in their huge vehicles. Each looking straight into the camera as they slowly approach the stop light. Their window is down and their arm is dangling out the window and resting on the side of the car. As they slowly come to a complete stop, they turn towards the camera and say "Remember, stop slowly and gracefully and behind the white line. Leave room for pedestrians to travel safely across the street." I mean who talks like that besides the people in educational videos.
Ok where was I? Oh yeah, so as I make my turn, this person that works for an educational video maker, flags me to pull over and says, "Hey, I loved the way you made that turn. It was perfect and we would like to use in our next video. Do you think you would be interested?" And I would just say in disbelief, "Gosh, Mister, I would love to be in your video. I never thought this would happen to me. You can count on me." And I realize, I am beginning to sound like the others in those videos but I don't care because I AM GOING TO BE ON FILM!!!!

Well that is how my mind works. One day I shared that intimate thought process with a friend of mine. While in a specialty shop, she found this miniature wine glass and the tag says "Almost Famous". She immediately thought of me. As soon as I saw it, I knew it was me also. I couldn't wait to get it home and to fill it with beads from Robins Nest.

Site of the Day A few months ago I read about a website Wordle.net. It is a great place to create your own backrounds. It takes whatever text you place into it's engine and it will create a background for you that uses your text. In this example, I took the text from the story above and entered it into Wordle and this is what it created. Pretty cool, huh?

Wall Art with Cricut Expression

I couldn't wait to play with my new Cricut Expression the other day. I have dreamed about making wall art with it since it came out. Now that I finally had an Expression, I bought some Vinyl from Walmart. It comes in an array of colors. However, Walmart only had black. I also bought some transfer paper. The transfer paper allows you to manage your vinyl once you cut it so that you can place it on your wall or wherever you choose. It makes applying your vinyl to your wall as easy as rubbing a rub on. The vinyl comes in 3 sheets to a package and each sheet is 12X24. The transfer tape comes 2 sheets to a package and each sheet is 12x24. I know, I know, I thought the same thing. Why not give the same quantity of both since they go hand and hand? Sorta like hot dogs and hot dog buns, they don't come in same quantities. I'm convinced it is a conspiracy to make us buy more of each. :)

I used my SCAL and used three different fonts. I used the font Curlz MT for the word "My"at 2 inches, the font Pristina for "Reservations", at 4 inches, and for the rest of the quote was done in the font Angelina at 2 inches. You should have these fonts on your computer already. If you don't then you can go to dafont and download pretty much any font your heart desires. Remember, SCAL, the program I used to create my word art, only can read True Type Font, dingbats and SVG files. The majority of fonts are TTF so you shouldn't have any problems. However, think outside the box. When you get to dafont.com you will notice that some of the fonts don't print letters but rather symbols or silhouettes. For example if you go to Christmas Fonts you will notice that some fonts are snowflakes, Santa Claus or reindeer. So you can prett much cut anything! I can't see enough about SCAL. I'll do a formal training on it sometime soon. But once you download your font, you need to install it to your PC. The easiest way to do this is to go to your support and help and type in "add font" or "install font" and it will take you step by step on how to install a new font. Trust me you won't regret it.

However, the flourish came from my new cartridge Home Decor that is a new exclusive cartridge for the Walmart Bundle for Black Friday. Some Walmarts may have some Cricut Expressions left from Black Friday so if you want to buy a CE and you like this swirl, then check your local Walmart or wait for someone to put it up on Ebay. I am keeping mine. I used the "fit to page" feature for the flourish.

My husband laughed as I started to place the Vinyl letters on the transfer tape as I explained what I wanted him to do with it. His originally thought the texture on our walls would prohibit the Vinyl from sticking. But it didn't. He was so impressed that he wanted me to create more wall art for the living room, the dining room, the foyer, the breakfast room, the bathroom and stairwell. My house will become one big novel.

They say its your birthday, It's my birthday too!

Well today, or actually yesterday was my birthday. Where does the time go? I was just looking at the clock and it was 9pm. Now it is 1 in the morning. Well I had to try to take a picture of the sky last night. If you missed it, it was amazing. The Crescent moon, Venus and Jupiter were very close in the sky and for brief moment they were in a straight alignment. No big deal you say? Well if you missed it, you probably will never see it. The next time this will happen is 2052. This was a very rare and beautiful moment.

I would like to think God did it for me. :) Well, it could happen. Today is my birhtday. Which brings me to my second picture, the birthday card. I had so much fun making it. I used my new Cricut Expression. I love this machine! I bought it on Black Friday for only $199.00 Can you believe it? It came with two amazing carts, Plantin SchoolBook and Home Decor which is a brand new shape cartridge that debuted in the Walmart Black Friday Bundle. And to boot, if you purchase a Cricut Expression between Oct 15 and December 15, you can mail off your receipt and rebate form for two additional cartridges for free! All you pay is $7.95,for shipping and handling. Pinch me because I must be dreaming. It does take up a bit more room than my original Baby Bug but it is awesome. I made this card using my new Expression and my Celebrations Cartridge. I am looking for an SVG format of the cupcake so that I can weld two cupcakes together and they become the base of the card. I haven't found one that I like. I don't have Design Studio or I would use it to weld the ones from Celebration cart. But I can't justify in my head to buy DS when I already own SCAL. (Sure Cuts Alot).
If you haven't heard of SCAL or used it then you are in for a big eye opener. It allows you to cut all True Type Fonts on your computer, ding bats and SVG files. You can get Inkscape for free and create your own SVG files or you can Google for free ones. There are tons of free ones on the web.