So far I am loving the cricut. I had a few issues when I first started working with it. I had to mess with it to figure out the right pressure and blade depth. After a couple hours and several torn cutouts, I figured it out. I have even made a few pages with it which I have posted below. When I ordered my cricut, I also ordered the cricut design studio. The design studio is really neat. It allows you to take images from any cartridge and manipulate them to make new designs. You can weld words together, so you don't have to tape down each individual letter. You can rotate, flip, resize, etc. When you go to cut it out, you just connect your computer to your cricut with the included usb cord. Click cut on the design studio and it will ask you if you want it to check for cartridges which you say yes to if you have a jukebox (unfortunately I do not have one...yet). So I click no and load each cartridge when prompted to on the cricut. Then the cricut goes to work and soon you have your new creation. I will mention that you have to have the cartridge if you use an image from it. You can design with every cartridge, but can only cut from the cartridges you own.
I did run into a little snag the second day I was working with the cricut. In order to use the design studio, you have to update the firmware (your cricut). I plugged my computer into the cricut and followed the steps to update the firmware. Piece of cake. The issue I ran into was from then on the load paper and unload paper buttons wouldn't work. I would push the buttons and nothing would happen. No noises, no attempt to load, nothing. I found a way around this by pushing the load last button. It would load it like normal, but the unload paper button still didn't work. I was a bit bummed because I knew this would limit what I could do with the cricut. My cricut does have a one-year warranty, so I knew it would get fixed if I contacted the company. But, I had just gotten my new toy and was not ready to send it away for who knows how long to be serviced. This was Thursday the 7th. Today when I sat down to scrap, I thought I would see if it the load paper button was working....It was!!! I have no issues right now. I have no idea what caused it to stop working or start working again, but I don't care. Hopefully there will be no more issues.
So this blog is about my journey into the world of high-tech scrapping which includes a lot more than just the cricut. While I was researching scrapping, I stumbled across a blog called scrapfit. There is a link to it on the right of this blog. It is a website that posts challenges twice a month. You make a layout (LO) that follows the guidelines described in the challenge. Take a picture of it and upload that picture to the website. Their design team judges the entries and chooses a winner. There is a prize for each challenge. I haven't entered one of the monthly challenges yet, but I have been doing something with scrapfit. This weekend they are having a cyber crop. Scrapfit has a forum page where you sign up and then can discuss scrapping with others online. The cyber crop started yesterday. Several challenges were posted and I have been working hard to complete some. This is for fun and the entries are not being judged. For each challenge you complete and post a picture of, you are entered into the drawing for the prize for the crop. If you have some time you should check out scrapfit and the forums. My name is katybug on the forums. I am brand new there, but have felt very welcome. Anyway here are the entries I have posted to the challenges at the cyber crop.
This is the first one I did. The challenge was to take the Christmas cards and photo cards you received this year and scrap them. I loved this idea because I always feel guilty throwing them away. I am going to do this every year and keep them in a book! The house in the middle and the snowman in the lower corner were from regular Christmas cards. The ornament in the upper left was actually a Happy New Year card, but I included it.
This one is for the mix it up challenge. The challenge was to break a scrapbooking rule or do something you don't typically do. I chose to do a page for my daughter's scrapbook in the traditional boy color blue. I used my cricut to cut out the word sleep. I used the design studio to weld the letters together.
This is the last one I have done so far. The challenge was to do a page that was inspired by a Beatles song. Also in the LO you needed to use a rub on and some hand doodling. The "Molly was the singer in the band" was rubbed on and I hand doodled the large music note and the music staff. My daughter's name is Molly and in the song Ob La Di Ob La Da there is a Molly. When Molly was about a week old, she had a really bad night and nothing made her feel better. She screamed and screamed. We tried everything including playing music. As soon as Ob La Di Ob La Da came on she calmed down! That was the only night it worked, but I have loved this song even more since then and was excited to make a page inspired by it. In the photos Molly is playing with one of her favorite toys. It has a microphone that she likes to put her whole mouth around and yell into. I also used the cricut for this LO. I cut the words ob la di ob la da with it.
That's all for now! Gonna try to do some more challenges.
