My New ARTHaven–The Unpacking Finished

The second of two posts today.

Great news – the boxes are all unpacked! There are a few more bits and pieces which I unpacked into the spare room at the beginning, which need to be carried through, but pretty well everything is now in my new ARTHaven. Of course, it’s all chaotic still, and it will take me months to get it sorted to my satisfaction (if ever!) but it will become workable eventually.

Great excitement this morning – the blind man came! Again, he was well able to find his way and do his job, all without the aid of white stick or dog, and in fact he and his sidekick had my new Venetian blind installed in exactly 8 minutes! Really impressive stuff. It looks gorgeous – a much cleaner, smarter look than the curtains which have now gone, and with the added advantage, of course, of being able to filter the light how I want.

Hard to photograph well, because it’s obviously against the light, but around the edges you can see that the colour is a neutral beige to co-ordinate with the room. I did not want to introduce any colour into the decor of this room as it would compete with any art work I might be doing, or want to display.

After months of neglect, sleeping soundly in her box in the spare room at our old house, Sheba is now sitting on her new work bench! OK, she’s still in her box, but when she is released, she will be placed across the corner, ready to do her stuff, cutting whatever I tell her to cut! She has featured so little in my blogs of late that many people may need to be re-introduced to her – she’s my Cougar cutting machine from Thyme Graphics. (The Thyme Machines forum is so wonderful – despite the fact that I have been such a passive member of late, featuring almost exclusively in the “chat” section and not cutting anything at all, I am still considered a full member! What an amazing group that is.)

Are you ready for this? The next photo shows my main work area, looking organised!! It is really beginning to look like home now. I still need to do a great deal of organising, fixing various things to the wall above the work surface, but you can see the general layout! The little black cabinet in the centre came from Dad’s workshop, and contained his taps and dies. It is very dirty and oily, and one of the small white ceramic handles is missing, but once I’ve cleaned it up and painted it, it will be used to store smaller stuff. You can also see my new Stickles carousel to the right, and Dad’s two pipe racks which now hold scissors, tweezers and pliers. Watch this space to see the organising taking place over the next few weeks. I’ve got lots of ideas!

On the right on the work surface, beside my craft mat, you can see the door plate I mentioned in my previous post. Probably my first project in my new ARTHaven, once I get settled in, will be to make a mould of this, and create more of these beautiful art deco pieces for use on the doors downstairs.

The office section is a nightmare. I can’t do anything in there until it’s organised. There are heaps of stuff on the desk, and piles of packs of paper everywhere, and I’ve had to rethink my storage in there because I am asking far too much of the new shelves, which will not support the weight of all my storage. I am now thinking of storing my paper in the bottom of the wardrobe in the bedroom, and keeping the shelves for lighter stuff and maybe some photos and ornaments to make it look more homely.

Last bits of work to be done in this room: the tiling above the sink has to be done, and the shelf fitted for the microwave, and a small wall unit above the sink. I can’t put my stuff in the cupboard until this is done, but there’s lots of other sorting out to be done in the meantime, and it will happen eventually.

Good news over the last couple of days – my hubby has sold my Cricut machine on Ebay for me! That’s one big box that has left this house and not ended up in the new house! I am delighted that it is now sold, and I hope the new owner enjoys using it. That machine got me going on my cutting career but I outgrew it fairly soon, as I was making demands on it that it couldn’t meet, and I am delighted to have moved on to the Silver Bullet Cougar machine.

Testing Sheba

After rather a rocky start to the day, I began to feel better in the afternoon, so I decided to do some test cuts with Sheba, my Black Cat Cougar cutting machine. I have got various different types of card and thought it would be helpful to test each one, and file away a sample, with a note on each, of what settings I used, and any other useful information.

It was quite straightforward to do, because I didn’t need to have Sheba connected to the computer in order to do this. You just have to set the cutter offline and press the Test button, after setting the origin, and repeat the test using different settings until you get the desired result.

Having taken advice from my friends on the Black Cat Forum, I’ve decided (at least for now) to leave my blade at setting 3 in the click holder (so that the blade tip extends by about a millimetre), and simply adjust the force for different media. Today, I just tested some cardstock samples – I have yet to test my heavy watercolour paper (which is excellent for making paper flowers as it does not disintegrate when wet with ink), acetate, and the dark blue card that I had so much trouble with at the beginning (on top of the orange card in the photo) – I think all these media will do better with the 60 degree Plus blade.

I am particularly pleased with how my Core’dinations papers cut – recently I bought some Tim Holtz Kraft Core and Distress Core’dinations which cut beautifully with the Cricut, so I wasn’t expecting anything less from Sheba. My Tim Holtz Idea-ology papers also cut very well.

My plain 12 x 12 cardstock that I got from an online paper mill also cut well. I was very disappointed last year when they stopped supplying 12 x 12 as it was an excellent source of good quality card in the larger-than-A4 size that I often need, but recently someone on the Black Cat Forum recommended American Crafts 12 x 12 cardstock at 216 gsm which comes in several ranges of gorgeous colours – primaries, pastels, earth tones, etc. and, I am reliably informed, it cuts extremely well. I rather doubt if this supply will dry up any time soon, so at least I’ve now got a reliable source of good quality everyday 12 x12 cardstock for all sorts of projects.

I am waiting for Lidl’s to bring back their supply of slightly-larger-than A4 cardstock which forum members also rave about – it’s very cheap, lovely colours, and cuts well.

One of my cards cut surprisingly well. Last year, I bought some unbranded, quite firm black cardstock from a craft show, and it cut like butter! Beautiful clean cuts. This will be great for cutting designs and putting silver or gold behind, and intricate cuts, too. Very pleasing!

Our local copyshop supplies a satin-finished white A4 card, and I bought a ream of this a while back. When I first tested Sheba, this cut very badly, but it was after I’d blunted my blade by using the wrong settings and cutting into my mat, so I was keen to try again with the new blade, but again I was disappointed. Dawn (owner of the Black Cat Forum and inventor and supplier of the Black Cat machines) sent me some basic white card for experimenting with, which at first glance I thought was the same, but it is not quite so heavy. This card cut 100 per cent better than the copyshop card, which I am not going to use with Sheba as the quality clearly isn’t good enough. It will be good for printing backgrounds (it prints well) and for cards bases with other, better stuff on top.

Mirror card cuts well, too. I tried it from the front and from the back. I found the shiny surface tended to lift glue off Sheba’s mat, so I am going to cut it always from the front – I wasn’t sure how the cut edges of the silver foil would look but it’s fine.

I am pleased with this afternoon’s session, as I now have a useful resource to turn to when working on projects. This will be added to in future as I add more papers and cards to my supply, and once I get going with different blades etc.

The result of all this is a whole pile of little rectangles cut in various colours of card, which look too pretty to throw out. Anybody want some home-made confetti?

Silver Wedding Card–In Retrospect

Looking back over my blog posts of the last year, I realised that I never did a post about the silver wedding card I made for my hubby – it was a very busy year anyway, and also, I got so carried away with his present that it got overlooked. I thought you might like to see what I did.

I designed and made my own wedding dress, and after 25 years, there were still scraps of fabric in my bits box, so I decided to incorporate these into the design, along with some embroidery to mirror that on my dress.

Here’s a picture of me on our wedding day with my dad, to show the dress.

(You can see the rest of the wedding photos here.)

The dress was made of white moiré taffeta with pale blue satin accents. The design was inspired by a variety of influences, but mainly Russian. My father made a wire frame for me to construct the headdress around. The detachable collar was inspired by Thai dancers’ costumes, and the embroidery, worked in several shades of blue pure silk floss, incorporated Indian shi-sha mirrors. The band around the waist was smocked with the blue silk floss, and the blue satin “straps,” also embroidered, were attached at the waist only. Under the skirt was a hooped crinoline petticoat with several layers of net, and the sleeves were also puffed up with ruched net attached to the sleeve linings. There was further embroidery in the blue silk floss over the shoulders and at the wrists, and the hem of the dress was finished with a narrow silver braid. The veil was plain white net with tiny silver sequins sewn onto it.

Here are the materials I selected to make the card.

The pieces for the front of the card I cut with Jiminy Cricut, using some dark blue cardstock and silver mirror card, cutting an oval aperture for the embroidery, our initials in two entwined hearts and, of course, the number 25.

I matted and layered the component pieces for the hearts, initials and numbers to form the embellishments for the card.

You can see on the silver mirror card for the heart piece that I have hand-embossed the outlines where they cross, to give the impression of two pieces interlocking.

Here is the heart motif attached to the matted and layered aperture of the card.

These are the materials for the embroidery. You can see the central motif in progress.

You can see that I have outlined the central white moiré taffeta shape with chain stitch worked in silver, onto a background of pale blue satin. On the right you can see some Indian shi-sha mirrors waiting to be attached. For this project I used pure silk floss in three shades of blue. This was given to me by someone who got a huge quantity from a convent which was closing down. It is fabulous with a wonderful sheen to it, but absolute murder to work with as the fine silk fibres catch on everything, including the slightest roughness on one’s skin. Sewing down the small mirror fragments with their rough edges was very difficult – I had to cover the edge with a fingernail as I pulled the thread through each time, and there was a risk of the thread breaking.

I then worked three lines of chain stitch in the three shades of blue silk floss to attach the lace to the moiré taffeta for the background, trimming back the taffeta under the lace.

This piece was then laid over a piece of dull silver card and attached around the edges with double-sided tape.

The embroidered motif was attached with chain stitch in silver thread.

The final touch was to add a fringe of small tear-drop shaped silver beads along the border of chain stitch silk embroidery.

Here is the completed card, with the embellishments attached to the front and the embroidery in the aperture. The whole thing was matted and layered onto a sheet of the dull silver card. I stuck on a matching piece for the back of the card, and made a card insert with a verse.

Here is the card with the shadow box I made as a present for my hubby, showing them to have the same colour scheme.

I have made a video slideshow of the construction of this card rather than a video as such, because watching someone doing all that embroidery would be like watching paint dry!

Sheba’s Coming Out Party

Today was the Big Day! Appropriately, New Year’s Day, 2012. Sheba, who arrived in our house before Christmas, was finally let out of her box.

My hubby helped me, and he lifted her out and put her on the table for me.

She’s a fierce black kitty with Claws and Teeth ready to cut anything I throw at her! However, she’s still tied up with cable ties which need to be removed before she will cut.

Here is her control panel. I’ve been mugging up on how she works by watching Youtube videos and visiting the Black Cat Forum (great folks on there, so friendly and helpful – “The only stupid question is the one you don’t ask”!!) and soon I shall be pressing her buttons as if I’ve been doing it all my life.

To the left of her buttons she’s got a neat little box to put her bits in – spare blades etc. On the lid of the box is the Black Cat logo which looks like a very fierce kitty indeed!

This is her back view – not easy to get a very good photo because there’s not a lot of room.

I had this beautiful notebook as a present, and I’ve decided to use it for making notes about Sheba – different settings etc. It’s appropriate that the book is decorated with cats!

The book is kept closed by a flap with a magnetic strip.

Inside the front cover are the most beautiful end papers, also decorated with cats.

The pages are lined, and there is a bookmark.

Inside the back cover is a handy pocket for putting loose sheets into.

I think this is such a beautiful object, quite fitting to go with my beautiful new Black Kitty Sheba.

Finally, here’s the video I’ve made of Sheba’s Coming Out Party.

Jiminy eat your heart out. Time to make room for the Coolest Black Cat on the Block.

Bag Skirts Part 1

So – I’m finally putting you all out of your misery and revealing the answer to the question that so many of you have been asking, “What on earth’s a bag skirt??” It’s an idea I got from Penny Duncan – you can see her mouthwateringly gorgeous bag skirts on her skydrive here.

A bag skirt is basically a rectangle of card folded in half, with a slit in the fold which fits over the handles of a paper carrier bag. It holds the top of the bag closed, and the edges can be cut to whatever shape you like, and of course you can embellish it however you want.

Many of us take several presents with us when we visit family or friends over Christmas, and what better way to present them than in a pretty bag that you have decorated yourself? Gone are the days when I turn up with a grotty cardboard box or a Tesco bag!! If you don’t put the person’s name on it, they can keep it and recycle it next year.

These are the plain brown bags I used:

I got them from Unipack-Worldwide on Ebay, which supplies all sorts of cool packaging stuff, and is post free too! Unfortunately they didn’t come in time for me to use one for the presents for my aunt and cousins which I took up with me to the funeral – I did have one in my stash though, which did well enough, although it wasn’t quite as strong as these. This supplier also does them in plain white, and (I think) one or two other colours like pink, and stripes. You could decorate the bag as well, if you wanted, with some rubber stamping or distress inks. I have decided to leave mine plain, and have chosen colours for my bag skirts which will co-ordinate nicely.

In this “Part 1” post I am dealing with the first ones I did, based on Penny’s “baroque” design – I took her holly border design and amended it to fit what I wanted to do. I think Penny’s designs may be for quite small bags - she has designed the cut file all in one piece. I didn’t have any paper large enough to cut on the cutting machine for this, so I redrew her shapes to make a front and a back piece with an overlap for gluing, and created three different sizes of each one, to fit the different sizes of bag that I’ve got.

The first one is the bag I made for my aunt, and then (since we got back from the funeral) I have made two more – another large one and a medium one. This is my aunt’s one:

You can see that the handles aren’t quite so nice on this bag, and the paper is a lot thinner, too.

Penny’s design comes complete with poinsettias in the cut file, so I’ve used those, although I prefer her other poinsettia design (she’s done two). This bag skirt uses a combination of drawing and cutting on the cutting machine.

On my aunt’s (Version 1) I drew the design of the holly border using the Cricut pens in the pen holder instead of the blade; I filled the design in quite heavily with marker pens afterwards; here’s a detailed photo.

The holly leaves are actually green, and the berries red, although they look black on the photo. I also added some clear embossing powder to the leaves and berries, which I did not do on Version 2 of the bag skirt.

Here’s a detail of the front panel.

On this photo you can see the detail of the background paper I used for the text frame. This was a background I created from some scans of the ancient parish records from our church which you can read about here and here.

The main paper is some 12 x 12 scrapbooking paper I’ve got in my stash. I’ve inked all the edges of the papers with Vintage Photo Distress Ink.

This is the back of the bag skirt. In this case I’ve redrawn Penny’s holly motif to form a rectangular border to fit my bag skirt, and repeated the framed text, slightly smaller, and without the poinsettias.

You can see the overlap where I joined the two pieces together. On subsequent bag skirts, I’ve overlapped the back piece on top of the flap of the front piece so that the join doesn’t show as much. On this photo you can see the metallic gel pens I used to colour in the design of the border, catching the light.

These are the poinsettias that I made for these bag skirts:

They are very simple and quick to make, and are stuck together and to the bag skirt with hot glue. The centres are yellow Stickles – Penny has created an element in her cut file for the flower centres but I don’t get on very well with these – possibly because the Cricut doesn’t cut them very well. I think the Stickles work really well!

Here’s Version 2 of this bag skirt, complete with one of the new bags.

As you can see, the handles are a lot nicer than the bag I used for Version 1, and I have also used different papers this time. The holly border is different, too – less heavily coloured in, which I prefer. I did the outline drawing on the Cricut with a gold metallic gel pen and then just added the red and green with marker pens afterwards.

Again, the papers are inked around the edges with Vintage Photo Distress Ink.

This is the back of Version 2.

You can see I’ve made a matching tag. I punched a small hole in the back piece through the slit for the handles – I’d originally thought of simply tying the tag onto the handles, but then I thought it would be difficult to remove the bag skirt; this way, the tag and bag skirt come off together, and the tag can be easily removed if the recipient wants to recycle the bag skirt next year.

Here’s a detail of the holly border on Version 2. I think you’ll agree it’s better than Version 1.

Perhaps it would have had more impact with some clear embossing on the leaves and berries as before, but I forgot to do it, and then thought it looked OK without.

Finally, here is a detail of the text on the front of Version 2.

I did the outline with the Cricut, using a black glitter glue pen (this doesn’t show up as metallic or glittery on the photo – just black!) and then filled it in with a red marker pen. If you look closely, you can see a distinct “wiggle” in the drawn line – I think Jiminy Cricut must have Parkinson’s Disease! Apparently the Cougar doesn’t have this problem and will draw nice clean lines. From a distance it’s not too bad, though.

See Part 2 for the other design, and the video.

Sheba has Arrived!

On our way home from my uncle’s funeral, we took a detour to Derby, to collect Sheba, my new Black Cat Cougar cutting machine. We had arranged this beforehand with the wonderful Dawn, who with her business partner Colin, has designed these amazing machines – collecting it in person saved me the carriage and insurance fees even if it did cost us a bit more in petrol. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to meet Dawn in person as she was busy, but we met her husband who had everything arranged ready for us.

I have joined the Black Cat Forum which is full of lovely people who are so friendly and helpful and always encouraging the Cubs (as we newbies are called!) to ask any questions we like. Now that I’ve got the machine I have been able to access the user manual which I am going to print out, as it will make good bed-time reading!

When we got home, my hubby carried Sheba upstairs to my ARTHaven and put her big box on the floor.

Opening up the box, I found her nesting all safe and secure:

where she’s unfortunately got to stay until after Christmas! I’ve got far too much to do to be able to play with her for a while – it’s going to be a steep learning curve discovering all her tricks, and I don’t want to rush it, or fall into the trap of thinking I can complete my Christmas projects using her, because this would only lead to frustration if I don’t know what I’m doing.

I am determined to take it slowly, learning each stage step by step before advancing to the next level, and taking the advice of others on the forum, such as keeping a record of every cut I make initially, so that it will be easy to decide what settings I need for each individual project.

Watch this space over the next few months! Although of course I want to be able to cut paper and card with Sheba, she is capable of so much more. I want to emboss and cut metal, and make 3-D objects such as jewellery and hair ornaments, and some new decorations for my wheelchair! I also want to work with leather – I’ve got a big box of scraps of fine soft leather in lots of colours, which I bought as a cheap job lot at the end of a craft show many years ago from a glove-making stand – I’ve only used a very small amount of this and there’s lots I can do now I can cut different shapes more easily.

You can also draw with any pen, but a special pen holder is needed for this. I was not able to get all the accessories I shall eventually want (such as the engraving tool), and anyway, there’s plenty to learn and get to grips with in the meantime, until finances allow me to get the rest. So far, in addition to the basic kit which consists of the normal mat and standard blade, I’ve got a “click” blade housing (something like the one on the Cricut), a blade for cutting thicker media, and the embossing tools and mat, so lots to play with! Also included is a small pen holder which allows you to use a ball-point refill – I think my gel pens should work fine with this for the moment.

I just hope this sleek black kitty will be content to remain in her box for a while and not get jealous of Jiminy Cricut as I continue to use him to complete my Christmas projects!! (He has been told that his days are numbered.)

This is a new adventure for 2012. I’m really excited!!

When we arrived home, I found a parcel of goodies that I’d ordered had arrived:

I decided after all to get the Tim Holtz seasonal distress inks as I need them for the bag skirts I’m making, and I also ordered a couple of distress stains that I was missing. At the bottom of the box is a stack of distress core’dinations papers which are just gorgeous, and then some Tack’n Peel which is a sort of sticky film that you can put on an acrylic block and then use it either to adhere unmounted rubber stamps or anything else you want to stamp with. Finally, the box on top was a free gift, a Martha Stewart embossing kit. There are a couple of small pots of embossing powder, an embossing ink pad (I now have 3… I wonder if I can manage to keep this one clean???) a very nice acrylic block and a sheet of clear stamps, several of which I think will be quite useful.

I’m hoping to be able to make my next bag skirt tomorrow and will be able to use some of these materials. Today I’ve felt pretty wiped out after all our adventures, but this evening I’ve designed the next bag skirt using some ideas of Penny Duncan’s, and also some Tim-inspired shapes! Hopefully once I get going it won’t take too long.

Then it’s present wrapping time again… Is anyone else as far behind as I am??

WOYWW 132 - Bag Skirts and Present Wrapping

What? - we are all saying – yet another week gone by? Christmas is now just around the corner. Welcome to another “What’s on Your Workdesk Wednesday” blog hop courtesy the lovely Julia who organises us each week as our Chief of Desks, so that we can travel around the globe (virtually) to enjoy everyone’s messes and creativity.

Thank you everyone for all your good wishes recently, over my ill health, and over the death of my uncle. The funeral is on Friday, and weather permitting, and my hubby permitting – he says his throat is bad tonight (he had a bad throat recently – the one he was generous enough to share with me, so hopefully he’s not going down with another one…) we shall be travelling up on Thursday (tomorrow) and returning on Saturday. As a result, I doubt if I shall visit many desks this week – when we get back there will be a lot to do. Since I was out of action for over a fortnight with my throat infection, and now having to be away for 3 days, I am seriously behind with everything.

Anyway, to my desk! Here’s a picture of my brown table which is in utter chaos today, with piles of scrapbooking paper and cardstock ready to hand so I could get at it to make my rather exciting project for this week! On the left you can see my big laptop running Make The Cut. My Cricut is out of shot to the left, all  connected up.

On my main desk is a project I completed yesterday evening – a bag skirt.

I’m going to do a separate post about this so I won’t go into any detail here or it will get too long.

I’ve got a bit of a rush on because we need to take the Christmas presents with us when we go to the funeral, to save posting them. In addition to finishing the bag skirt, I have also wrapped all their presents to go in the bag.

I’ll also be blogging about my gift wrapping in due course so won’t say any more here.

One bit of good news – I discovered that my new Black Cat Cougar cutting machine will be coming from Derby, which isn’t very far from where we will be spending the next few days. I contacted the lovely Dawn and she said of course I could collect it in person! I am thrilled because a) I shall get to meet her and b) I shall save myself the fairly hefty carriage and insurance costs (it’s a heavy and valuable parcel). So as long as we actually get there, I shall be returning home with my new Kitty!

Hope you all have a great week. When we get back I’ll try and visit a few of you but I’m afraid I won’t have the time or energy to do too many!

Some Exciting News! Imminent Arrival of a New Kitty!

---but not one to make Beatrice and Phoebe jealous!!

For some time now I’ve been getting increasingly fed up with my Cricut. First of all, I was really hacked off over the court case between Provocraft (the manufacturer of the Cricut cutting machine) and the designers of the excellent software Make the Cut (and subsequently, I believe, SCAL) which meant you could no longer design your own cut files and cut them with this machine. I was OK because I had the old firmware, but anyone updating the firmware, or buying a new machine, would be stuck with the very expensive Cricut cartridges only, and no possibility of cutting their own designs.

That’s absolutely fine for a lot of people who are more than happy to cut other people’s designs, and more power to them – at least they can cut different shapes and continue to make their cards and other projects, but for many of us, that is far from being enough. I’ve had a taste of designing my own stuff and wouldn’t want to give that up.

Also, as usual with any of my technology, I push it to the limits and make huge demands on it! I have been finding that cutting simple shapes is no longer enough for me. I want to be able to cut small and intricate pieces, and more complex designs and projects, and quite honestly, the Cricut is simply not up to the job. What brought it to a head was when I made the Christmas roses for my altered boxes – I used Penny Duncan’s lovely Christmas rose pattern, and on her superb instructional video, she showed how beautifully her Black Cat Lynx cutter had coped with the delicate centres of the flowers – not a single “spoke” was torn. I was really jealous of this! She’s been singing the praises of her wonderful new machine for a while now. When I attempted to cut these flower centres with the Cricut, less than half the spokes survived. I had to print Penny’s pdf file and cut them out by hand.

My hubby was in my ARTHaven the other day when I was cutting something, and he could see that the result was far from perfect. I’ve been moaning about it for a while in his hearing, but didn’t think he was that interested or even listening to my ramblings!

The lack of accuracy and cleanness of cut leaves much to be desired. For example, in the spring, when I made Wonderwoman’s mother’s 70th birthday card, when I cut the window for the box lid, I cut a second window in the box lid lining so that I could sandwich a sheet of acetate between the two layers, and the cut was “out” by about 1/8 inch when I came to align the layers. I had to trim the aperture in the lining, and cover the inside edge with a narrow gold peel-off strip, which actually finished it off nicely, but that wasn’t the point!!

Another example. I designed an svg file of a “bracket” style frame a while back, and used this to embellish the box I made a couple of days ago for my mum’s Christmas present, cutting it in the silver card.

Superficially I suppose it’s OK, but examine it closely and the inaccuracy of the Cricut cut is revealed.

The two paths of the cut file for the frame have moved out of alignment during the cut, making the frame slightly asymmetrical. Also the cut itself is not quite clean, having a ragged edge, and this despite having a new blade in the machine.

I brought the finished box downstairs and showed my hubby, and pointed these deficiencies out to him. Despite my thinking he hadn’t been that interested, he’d obviously taken on board what I’d been saying over the past few months, because he said, “I think you should just go ahead and get that new machine.” I couldn’t believe my ears! Music to them, in fact. I felt I now had “permission” to go ahead and invest in a new machine that I knew would do what I wanted.

When Penny got her Lynx I was very impressed indeed, but looking at the details, I decided it was worth getting the higher spec machine, the Cougar, which will cut much thicker material than the Lynx. For a long time I’ve wanted to be able to cut shapes from mounting board (mat board) which is far too thick for the Cricut, and quite impossible to cut anything complicated by hand. I thought I would eventually get this machine, but when my hubby said that, and with the frustration I’ve been feeling of late, I decided to bite the bullet and go for it!!

A few days ago I signed up for the UK Black Cat forum and had a browse around, and read what people on there, and elsewhere on the net, have been saying about the machine and its capabilities. Having searched extensively, I have to agree with one person who said they hadn’t been able to find a single negative review of this machine anywhere online. It’s beautifully engineered, heavy, sturdily built to enable it to cut with the pressure needed, functional, metal not plastic, built to last and will do what I require it to do. It is not tied to any particular software or cartridges – in fact it was designed with people like us in mind, who want to do our own thing and do it well, without any hassle.

So… yesterday afternoon I put down a deposit on a Black Cat Cougar cutting machine! The model I want is out of stock at the moment, and apparently the new machines will be arriving later this month, and they are already selling fast, so it was suggested that I reserve one with a deposit.

If I had known then what I know now, I would not have bought the Cricut, but gone straight for the Cougar. However, I didn’t know, and at the time the Cricut seemed a big enough investment. As an entry level machine it was very good, particularly as I was still able to cut my own designs with it, but since then I feel I have moved on and require something more sophisticated. I am hoping to be able to sell the Cricut; it has an embossing kit with it (hardly used) and a couple of cartridges (not used, apart from the fact you have to have a cartridge in the machine in order to make it work at all).

I’ll keep you posted about when my new kitty arrives! I’m very excited about it! Meantime, it’s back to the forum, and Youtube, to learn as much as I can about it before it comes. It’s a sharp learning curve and not for the faint hearted but it will be well worth the effort, to have such a superb tool at my fingertips.

Here, kitty, kitty, kitty!! GRRRRRR. Big FIERCE kitty! Cut that out!! Lol!

Birthday Cards for my Mum and a Naughty Squirrel

(Warning – image rich post!!)

I don’t seem to have blogged for several weeks, except for the weekly WOYWW blog hop – for details click on the logo in my sidebar – for over a fortnight I’ve been laid low with a dreadful throat infection/flu-type virus and although I’m tons better now, my throat is still a bit sore and I haven’t got my voice back completely (I was voiceless for over a week!). I’m also feeling pretty wiped out as a result. Still, it’s the time of year for it and I’m not the only one who’s been suffering.

My main project recently has been to make a collection of birthday cards to give my mum for Christmas. She is hard to get presents for these days as she’s 90 and wants to get rid of stuff rather than acquire more, and she always appreciates things I’ve made, and these can be given away, which is even better. I have tried to keep them fairly simple as card making isn’t my No. 1 favourite thing to do, but I do enjoy embossing and inking and experimenting, so I’ve been having some fun. I am not going to give them all to her but put some in my ever-diminishing stash – there’s always a panic on when it’s someone’s birthday and a card has to be made in a hurry, and everyone’s birthdays in our circle of family and friends seems to be in the first half of the year.

I’ve made a box to put them in, which I thought she could use again to put cards in when these have all been given away. I used my Crafter’s Companion Top Score Multi-Board to make the box out of black cardstock, and decorated the sides and top of the lid.

I designed the label using Serif CraftArtist – I wanted a soft, romantic shabby chic look for this box, which I hope I have achieved.

The embellishment is made from two small crochet flowers I made a while back, which I sprayed with some pale pink glimmer mist (which doesn’t show!!) and secured with a pretty green brad over some organza ribbon.

Here’s a picture of some of the cards in progress – I uploaded this a while back on a WOYWW post. I have made them all the same size (A5).

Now for the cards in detail. Here is a pair of similar cards using clear heat embossing as a resist, and inking with Tim Holtz Distress Inks using my Inkylicious Ink Dusters. I love this technique as you get a lovely subtle blending of the colours. The sentiments are peel-offs.

Here’s a couple of pink cards – the first one is quite dark and might possibly do for a man – it’s embossed with a Cuttlebug paisley folder. The sentiment is cut on the Cricut, and as with all the sentiments so created, it was coloured using Tim Holtz Distress Stains to co-ordinate with the card. The one on the right was made using a doily as a stencil, using an Ink Duster and Spun Sugar Distress Ink, and then going over the white part with a white marker pen to give a bit of texture and make it look like lace. The sentiment is stamped.

The next two I am very pleased with. The one on the left is using a script Cuttlebug folder and some Core’dinations card in their “Whitewash” range which I really like – when sanded, the pastel shade underneath shows through. I made the flowers by stamping with some stylised flower stamps I’ve got, and then painting them with distress ink and hand embossing them, before gluing them down onto the card, and adding some orange Stickles glitter glue for a bit of bling. The background was inked with Distress Ink using some sequin waste as a stencil, and the sentiment cut on the Cricut. For the one on the right, I used a small oval die cut piece of decorative paper I had left over from another project, using a Spellbinders die, and I stamped and heat embossed the butterfly in gold, cut it out and painted it using pearlised acrylic inks. The iridescence doesn’t really show in the photo. The background was distress-inked with my Ink Dusters, and the sentiment is stamped.

The next two are done with some Tim Holtz Texture Fades embossing folders, and the sentiments cut on the Cricut. The one on the left is quite plain, but effective, I think – again it’s done with the Core’dinations Whitewash card, sanded and inked with Old Paper Distress Ink. The one on the right was inked in several green shades, and some of the embossed motifs outlined with a white marker pen and then emphasised with some Glossy Accents.

The next two are very simple, just using two different colourways of papers from one of my Tim Holtz paper stacks, which I then edged with a bit of gold rub’n’buff (which doesn’t show on the photo) and added some ribbon. The sentiments were cut on the Cricut.

I hand-painted some stems on the next card and then glued on some yellow hibiscus flowers from my stash, that I made from one of Penny Duncan’s cut files. The sentiment is stamped.

Here are the pictures of a doily being used as a stencil (small trial piece on the left) – I stencilled onto some decorative paper.

I used this as a background for the second card below; I then used the same doily to create the pink doily card above, and as a result the doily was really inky in graduating shades of blue and pink, which I really liked, so I cut it up and used some of the motifs to make these last two cards with, both of which have peel-off sentiments.  I arranged the different elements to make a suitable design, and on the right background, and with the addition of some stickles, they look quite exotic! I’m really pleased with this pair! Doilies definitely have potential for art!

I have also made some extra backgrounds which I am going to use for my card stash. Here are some nice dark, grungey backgrounds I created by embossing some black Core’dinations card with the Cuttlebug and sanding down to reveal the orange core, and then adding some heat embossing in a mixture of gold and copper, and also some black distress embossing powder. They are really gritty!

I had to trim off the edges of the various pieces of card that I used to make the birthday cards so they’d fit in the embossing folders, and I thought they looked really pretty, so stuck them down onto a piece of plain white card – not sure what I shall do with this yet but it’s got potential!

Here are some more backgrounds using the Core’dinations card again – the first ones are using the Cuttlebug script folder – I love this one with the “Whitewash” Core’dinations!

The second ones are using card from the Core’dinations “Gemstones” range – this has a nice pearlised sheen, but not much difference of colour underneath so there isn’t much point in sanding them.

Finally, here are what I call my “smooshed backgrounds” – I used some small pieces of card to smoosh up my distress inks from my craft mat after I’d spritzed it with water. The card isn’t very good quality and has gone a bit spotty, but I thought these were quite pretty, and could be used either as backgrounds or cut into flower shapes and made up. (Also, they are free!!!)

Completely off the subject, look what I managed to photograph the other day – the beastly little monkey!! Hope he doesn’t get too much of a taste for our bird food because it’s the BIRDS I want to feed, NOT SQUIRRELS!!! The window looks pretty mucky but that’s because it was wet – it had recently stopped raining (well that’s my story and I’m sticking to it!!).