New Cricut Cartridges (and a new way to look at them)

Five new Cricut cartridges were announced on Thursday - the first of three "Hello Thursdays" for the month of June. There is also a new way to view and evaluate the cartridge releases that I think many people will find quite helpful. 

The five new cartridges are 

9 Months  

Love You a Latte  

Recess

Sweet Shop

(these are Lite cartridges)

and County Fair (this is a full content cartridge which will be exclusive to HSN). 

If you click on the colorful names of each cartridge, the link will take you to the "Look Book" for the cartridge.  You will see images of the assembled cuts from the cartridges, the "Cartridge in a Minute" video introduction and some still images of the projects featured in the video.  (These are flash based and may not be viewable from all devices).

You should also visit the Official Cricut Blog to see more information and projects featuring the new cartridges.   Click HERE to go to the post for Hello Thursday.

The first four cartridges are already available on the Cricut.com site for $39.99, click HERE to go to the page. 

You can see even more projects on the Hello Thursday blogs - Joy and Melanie had projects up late Thursday night and these links will take you to their posts.  I'll add direct links to Robyn and Tammy's posts  and the Mixology blog whenever I see their Hello Thursday posts (most likely on Friday).

Joy's blog 

Melanie's blog

Robyn's blog

Tammy's blog 

Mixology Crafts


Speaking of Fall and Opposites Attract will be retiring, so if you were thinking about either of these you should try to get them now before they are difficult to find. If you click on the names of these cartridges you will go to the Cartridge Library on Cricut.com where you can find PDFs of the full handbooks so you can see everything on the cartridges.

When I checked Thursday night, the new cartridges had not been added to the Cartridge Library and there was not an update for Design Studio to include them.  I hope these will be added soon.  You can see the tri-fold guides and sample sheets for the Lite cartridges on the Official Cricut Blog HERE.

The new cartridges are all similar to existing cartridges with some slight differences.  For example, there are already quite a few baby cartridges, however, 9 Months is focused on the pregnancy and has some unusual images, such as an ultrasound.  I'll have to take a careful look to see if there are enough images on any of these cartridges to justify adding them to my already full shelves!



link to Discussion Day #5 - Life is too Short...


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Discussion Day #5 - Life is too short...

Our morning newspaper always has a "Reflection for the Day"  and sometimes the thought is something that strikes a chord with me.  On Wednesday, the quote was "Life is too short to finish every book you start reading," attributed to Dr. Jeffrey Bernhard.  You can see the archive of daily quotes at the Reflection for the Day website HERE.

This quote made me think about all of the creative things I'd like to do and whether it is realistic to think that I could or even should try to finish everything I start.  Most crafters are full of ideas and love to see and learn about new techniques and products.  They often have the supplies for various projects stashed in their home just waiting for the time to come when it is possible to spend the time to try something new.  Sometimes, you can accumulate a huge amount of material only to find that your interests change or a new craft or product comes along and captures your attention.  Then you have to decide what to do next and what to do with the inventory of items you have for a craft that is no longer your primary interest.

Do you have supplies and tools for crafts you are no longer interested in pursuing?  Have you progressed in your level of ability from a basic creative level to a place where you want to go further to explore and master a craft at a new level?  Are there activities and crafts you used to enjoy that you no longer find interesting?

How do you decide that it is time to move on and try a more sophisticated version of your craft?  If you are a knitter and fascinated with yarns and fibers, do you start spinning and weaving your own yarns?  Many quilters I know end up getting involved in dying their own fabrics to get just the effects they want.  If you only use the commercially available ingredients to create your projects will you be fulfilled or will you find it limiting and ultimately frustrating?

When is it OK to just let the old materials for the craft you are no longer doing move on to someone else?  Do you have trouble getting rid of things if you don't think they are going to a "good home" with someone who will enjoy and use them?  Were you brought up to believe that it is wrong to "quit" something?  If you find a better or different way to do the crafts you are interested in should you "convert" completely or just add another set of tools to your inventory?  I am curious to know if you have any thoughts about this - and whether you have let go of the materials and tools that no longer fulfill your creative goals.

Please leave a comment with your thoughts if you'd like to join in the discussion.  I'll be sure to add a link to this post at the end of each post for the next week or so in case you want to think about the topic and evaluate whether there are some things that you should just stop doing to make room for other things that you find more intriguing...

Wednesday was the Senior Prom night in our town and I went to a neighbor's home to watch a large group get ready to leave in a huge limo together.  The girls all looked lovely and the boys were quite handsome in their suits and tuxes.  I took some photos of the flowers in the flower boxes as well as some of the corsages. 

I edited a few of my flower photos and added them to a quick page incorporating the Reflection for the Day.  I may use these flower images for a new project I am working on - more about that soon. I think I will be letting go of some things at our neighborhood yard sale this weekend...

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Wedding Thank You Cards

Every bride and groom will need plenty of thank you cards.  Our son and soon to be daughter-in-law will be leaving tomorrow to visit more friends and family on the East Coast.  They wanted to keep up with thanks yous for the gifts they have received so I designed a thank you note with them using my Creative Memories StoryBook Creator Plus 3.0 software and we had them printed today.

The design is very simple.  I did have to do a few slightly tricky things to make this work out.  The font Will and Kelly have chosen for other wedding items is an Open type font not a True Type font and it would not appear as an option when I wanted to enter the text.  To work around this problem, I printed the two sections of type ("Thank  You" and "Kelly and Will") using another program, scanned them and saved the scan as a jpeg, and then used the magic wand tool to drop out the background and create images of the words to work with for the design.

The design needed a little something to add interest and we chose this type flourish from the Black and White Tie the Knot Digital Additions to use as a corner element in the design.  We changed the color to a shade of blue similar to the color of the dresses the bridesmaids will be wearing.

To add interest to the simple notecard, we used the same flourish on the back of the card, creating a mirror image and changing the color to white on a background of the same shade of blue.

Here is a view from the top so you can see how the printed card back looks.  The option of printing a pattern on the back of a card is something that has become popular on wedding stationery sites.

To give a little more personality and sparkle to the card, a tiny gem sticker can be added to the flourish.

Here is a closer view of the flourish with a gem sticker.  I think they will probably use the note cards without adding the stickers - there is always a risk of the gem rubbing through the envelope in the mail and it adds an extra step to a very busy schedule!

It is very hard to get a photograph that clearly shows the effect of the printed back when the card is inserted into the envelope.  A very subtle damask pattern appears through the envelope.  This would be more pronounced with thinner envelopes.

I actually use my StoryBook program more for this type of project than I do for creating scrapbook pages (but I hope to get back to making more pages soon!).

A few more items of interest...

Letraset is offering a great giveaway to celebrate reaching 1,000 Facebook Fans.  Click HERE to go to the Letra set blog and leave a comment - you could win one of three sets of twelve ProMarkers.  Winners will be chosen  Friday (10th June) at 12 Midday (GMT) - remember, they are in the UK so adjust the time accordingly for your location.  Good luck!


It is getting harder and harder to keep up with all of the message boards, blogs and facebook sources of information from ProvoCraft.  In case you missed it today, I want to pass along the link to the "Cricut Classroom," a video library of online classes that can be viewed for free!  Just click HERE to go to the page.  I haven't been able to watch these yet so I can't really tell you much more about them.


Our son and his fiancee leave for New York today.  It was great to have them home and we really packed a lot into the days that they were here.  Things should get a little more normal around here - at least for a few days.  I am working on finding things to included in a neighborhood yard sale this weekend.  This would be an ideal way to clear up some space around the house so wish me luck!


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About those cakes...

Several people asked for more details about the cakes I showed yesterday.  The vegan chocolate cake was made by my younger son and his girfriend.  They found the recipe on the allrecipes.com - here is a LINK to the page.

They made a double recipe in two round cake pans.  The recipe calls for 45 minutes of baking but their experience is that about 30 minutes is long enough.  You just need to check it with a toothpick to be sure it has fully baked.  They also added delicious chocolate chunks to the batter (you can see the bumps in the finished cake above).

Instead of frosting between the two layers, they did a filling of strawberry jam - with lots of strawberry chunks.  (The waxed paper is on the cake stand to protect it from frosting and jam).

The frosting was made with confectioner's sugar (about 4 3/4 cups), Earth Balance buttery spread (6 tablespoons), vanilla extract (1 1/2 teaspoons) and rice milk (about 1/4 cup).  They added fresh strawberries on top just before serving time.

The cake was delicious - and if you didn't know it, I don't think you would guess it was vegan.

Grandpa's cake was made by a local bakery.  It is a specialty cake called Gateau Concorde which is a chocolate mousse cake with a covering of chocolate meringues.  Eating this "cake" is like eating frosting with a crunchy topping - very rich and so delicious.  I don't have a recipe for this and it is probably a lot trickier to make.

The engagement cake was a sheet cake from Costco - you can't beat their tasty cakes at a great price.  I really liked the lattice and heart design and I am working on a paper version to use for cards. Once again - you can find inspiration for paper crafts from so many places.

We spent most of the day resting and clearing up from the party - a big gathering is so much fun but there is a lot of preparation and it can take a while to get things back to normal.

This evening, I was able to design the thank you cards for the happy couple to get started on their notes promptly.  They will be printed tomorrow and I'll share some details about them when I have the final version here to show you. We have some more wedding plans to work on, but I'll get back to posting some paper projects in another day or two.

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Cake and punches

The weather was perfect and we had a great celebration day on Sunday.  It was wonderful to see some friends that we haven't seen regularly since our sons were in high school. 

Yummy Vegan chocolate strawberry cake for graduation

We had cake, cake and more cake - one for each of the events we were celebrating!

Engagement Cake

Grandpa's Birthday Cake

I actually have several new projects to share but I have had no time to photograph and write them up - family first this weekend!  I thought I'd link back to another post explaining how to use the Martha Stewart Punch around the Page sets.  I like the quick and easy way the punches work but I also use the Martha Stewart Cricut cartridges (and other cartridges with borders) when I want to make a custom design that doesn't fit into the formula for the Punch Around the Page dimensions.

 This LINK will take you to the step by step explanation on how to use the punches.  (The giveaway is long past, but if you click "newer" post - way down at the bottom on the left - you will see six more cards made with this set.  Just click "newer" post at the bottom of each post to move through the days to see them all).

Have a wonderful Monday - I will catch up on the challenges and discussion days this week!

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