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!

Make The Cut, and ARTHaven Ideas

A couple of days ago I was working in my ARTHaven and trying to cut some sentiments using SCAL 2 (Sure Cuts A Lot) – the software for cutting with Jiminy Cricut, my cutting machine. I was having no end of trouble, and noticed that SCAL was crashing with depressing regularity too. A while back, Penny Duncan, on our Creative Inspirations and Friendships group, was raving about a new cutting program she’d got, called Make The Cut – I thought, “Oh no! I simply CAN’T change to a new program now – I’ve hardly learnt how to use this one!”

However, experiencing so many problems, and bearing in mind what Penny had said about MTC being so much more user-friendly, and having many more features too, I decided to take the plunge, and purchased and downloaded it then and there!

As soon as I started using it, I realised how good it was. I hardly had to look at any instructions at all – it more or less does itself, and is so intuitive that you just “do” things without really having to think about it! I cut some flower shapes for the stationery box I’m making for my mum’s Christmas present and it was all so easy…

Now some plans for my ARTHaven:

Since moving stuff around in my ARTHaven, I have now made available a nice blank wall space above my work table, which was part of the plan for the revamp.

I have been trying to decide how best to use this space. I want to have some shelves, but I also want to be able to keep things I use a lot within easy reach, and so I’ve decided to put up some pegboard panels. You can get lots of different hooks to fit into the holes, and as they are spaced an inch apart, it’s pretty well infinitely variable, and can be changed constantly to meet my needs, and to accommodate new tools etc. as I get them. This is going to be so much better than simply having fixed shelves. You can hang shelves on the board as long as you don’t put anything too heavy on them, and my small cardboard boxes will be great stored in this way.

I’ve spent quite a long time researching the different types of board, and found some quite fascinating blogs along the way – lovely enthusiastic chaps in their garages with their tool storage – and lots of videos they’ve done. I also went on a lot of shopfitting websites which was an education – I learnt for the first time what a slat wall was, and when we went shopping yesterday I saw one in Superdrug! It’s not quite as versatile as peg board with its regularly spaced holes, but has slats that you can hook things onto. It does look rather nice!

I’ve more or less narrowed it down to a choice of two types now: a standard metal board with holes at 1 inch:

or a composite board made of plastic, with a mixture of ordinary holes and keyhole slots, which is much cheaper than the metal one, but I’m not sure yet whether the accessories I want will fit on it.

These days I’m dreaming about hooks! There are so many different ones, mostly for kitting out shops – you can get them with those little price tags hanging on the front! I’ve also found some rather good accessories, including these jars which are very clever – the lid remains attached to the board, and you unscrew the jar from beneath – really useful for keeping paper flowers etc. in.

Then there are baskets

bins:

and this brilliant one, which you can either use to hold a roll of kitchen paper (I use this a LOT in my ARTHaven and it would be nice to have it easily accessible) or for rolls of tape, ribbons, etc. You could have several.

These are some of the hooks and tool holders that are available:

I’m going to cover an area as large as possible above the table, but want to leave some space clear to the right, where I can put up the Ikea rails I bought a while back – I have got some plastic tubs that hang on those, and also they are a marvellous way to store punches.

It will be really nice to have all my equipment in easy reach. Creating my ARTHaven has been a really fun project, and it’s a joy to work in – and any day now I am expecting the arrival of some PureLite bulbs (like Daylight bulbs but cheaper!) to improve the quality of the light so that I can see my colours more accurately. It’s all coming together!

As soon as I’ve got anything to show for it, I’ll post some photos.

Flowers for Thank You Cards

Continuing from yesterday, I have now completed the flowers to embellish my Thank You cards. I have made 2 sizes, from one Penny Duncan's Shaplies cut files:

http://cid-599a4ab7197c18bb.office.live.com/browse.aspx/.Public/PDC%20SVG%20Files/Penny%5E4s%20Shaplies

The one I used was the 5-petal Shaplie flower. I cut the large one 1 1/2 inches across, and the smaller one 1 inch. The centre of the larger one is cut from another of her Shaplies, the 7 point flower Shaplie, 3/4 inch across.

I cut some 12 x 12 inch sheets of white cardstock filled completely with these flower shapes, and I've now saved these files, created in SCAL 2 (Sure Cuts A Lot software for use with my new Cricut machine) so that I can easily cut further whole sheets of flowers in these sizes when I want. (I spent some time arranging them on the virtual mat in the software, to use the maximum amount of card, with minimal wastage.)

For my Thank You cards, I need 2 of each size, so I've decorated 30 of each. Here are some of the larger ones:

and some of the smaller ones:

To decorate them, first of all I inked the whole top surface of each with distress ink in Old Paper. So that the colour wasn't too strong, I swiped the pad onto my craft mat and spritzed it with water, and then swirled the flowers around in it. When this was dry, I used an inking pad to ink the edges and bits of the petals with Antique Linen distress ink. I then inked the edges of the petals, and added some definition, with Walnut Stain distress ink, taking care not to overdo it as this is quite a strong colour. To add the little veins to the petals, and some darkening to the centre of the flowers, I swiped the ink pad on my craft mat and spritzed it with water, and used a very fine brush to paint in the detail, treating the ink on my mat like watercolour paint on a palette.

When it was all dry, I took a piece of funky foam, and using my round-ended embossing tool, I embossed the petals from the back into the foam, and then, on the front of each flower, embossed down into the centre with the tool to complete the 3-D flower shape.

I then spritzed them with glimmer mist in a pale pink colour, which had the effect of toning down the brownish shade of the flowers. This has given them a slightly greenish hue which was unexpected, and which I rather like!

The centres of the large flowers I inked with Tattered Rose distress ink, and inked the edges with Walnut Stain distress ink. These were also spritzed with the pink glimmer mist, and glued to the centres of the flowers.

All the flowers then had centres added, using Ranger Stickles (glitter glue) in gold for the large ones, and Fruit Punch (a nice rich pink) for the smaller ones.

I have already cut some of Penny's Small Leaf Cluster cut files:

http://cid-599a4ab7197c18bb.office.live.com/browse.aspx/.Public/PDC%20SVG%20Files/Leaves

in two sizes, the larger one to go at the top left of the cards, and the smaller at the bottom left, and also the words "Thank You" in the same gold card that I made the backgrounds from yesterday (with the embossed script and gesso).

In order to assemble the cards, I need to cut some brown card to attach the script background and all the embellishments onto, and then the whole thing will be matted onto plain white card.

Jiminy Cricut

I ordered my Cricut machine on Thursday, and within an hour of paying for it, I received an email informing me it had been despatched, and less than 24 hours later, I received it! How's that for service? I got it from Smart Crafts:

http://www.smartcrafts.co.uk/epages/es117161.sf/en_GB/?ObjectPath=/Shops/es117161_shop

and I don't think I've ever experienced such quick delivery on anything!

The machine is a limited edition blue Cricut Expression, and it came with a free 24-inch mat (the standard one is 12 x 12) and two cartridges - you were even given the choice of which cartridges, if you did not want to receive the ones they suggested. However, these seemed to have the most useful things on them so I opted for them.

It's a beautiful machine. To look at, it has sleek lines, and is embellished with a blue trim and decorative swirls. Structurally it seems very robust; it's heavy (always a good sign) and feels substantial.

I set it up this evening and did a trial run, choosing a flower from one of the cartridges, which I cut a number of times, for use on the base of my Beehive Explosion Box. I also managed to get it connected up to the computer, as I have decided that the cartridges are of limited use when you can design your own cut files, and share with others, using the free (open source) vector graphics software Inkscape, and SCAL 2 (Sure Cuts A Lot - what a fabulous name!!). These programs enable you to see exactly what you will be cutting, arranged on a virtual mat on your computer; the shapes can be edited, resized, moved, layered, and manipulated in any number of ways.

My only problem now is learning to use the software so that I can start creating in earnest! I had a very frustrating evening achieving not very much, after an equally frustrating afternoon where I didn't accomplish much either, except to make a lot of mess with gesso! (But that's another story...)

I am grateful to my friend Penny Duncan - http://pennyduncancreations.blogspot.com/ - for her excellent video tutorials on this, and many other subjects, which I am sure will set me on the right path to get this stuff under my belt. It all seems fairly daunting at present, but so many of my friends on the Art group we all belong to, are creating and sharing cut files all the time, and making the most wonderful creations from them, so I am sure it won't be long before I master these skills too!

My new machine goes by the name of Jiminy Cricut. This post is by way of welcoming him to my blog, and to all of you! He is itching to get going, but will have to be as patient as all of you before you see too many wonderful creations just yet!