Cricut Craft Room

I now have access to the Cricut Craft Room.  This is a piece of on-line software that allows users with a Cricut machine to lay out their cutting mat on a PC or Mac but with lots of added features not available on the machine itself.  You can choose to omit a cut eg if you don't want the eyes to cut out of a face just a couple of clicks and they are gone.  You can skew a design, resize it to any size, weld shapes and letters, flip shapes.  You can also use layers so you can build designs on the mat to see how they look in the colours you want; it reminds me a little teeny weeny bit of Adobe Illustrator in they way it uses the layers (yes Dave, you can stop shaking your head and rolling your eyes).  It can be a bit glitchy getting it to detect my E2 without crashing; I found it helps to sync my E2  (even though it is fully up to date) then when in the Craft Room, I click CUT before I have even laid out my on-screen mat to make sure my E2 is detected - a few times I spent ages doing a mat and then lost it when I clicked CUT and it crashed, a disappointing lesson to learn.  Another fab feature is, as it is on-line, you can log in on any PC and design your mat, it then saves it so that when you get home you can cut it on your machine, now how cool is that - lunchtime in work has just got a whole lot better :)   My over all opinion is this is AMAZING; I am not easily pleased (well, except when it comes to chocolate) but I am loving the Cricut Craft Room; it was one of the reasons I finally gave in an bought a Cricut and I am not regretting my decision.   Oh oh oh, I can't believe I forget to mention the most amazing part of all - IT IS ABSOLUTELY FREE!!!!!!! (and yes, I did just use 7 exclamation marks)

My Heroes

For my son's 12th birthday me and his dad took him to Alton Towers amusement park.  It was a fun packed, stomach churning day.  My two brave boys went on Oblivion - I held the coats :) 

Life's a beach

I took this picture on New Brighton beach in Merseyside.  In the middle, if you look very closely, you can see my mum and my nephew.  The panoramic effect is done with a clever iPhone app.

Juicy

I really loved this card when I made it with solid coloured Bazzill card so I thought I'd have a go using patterned papers - I think it looks really good, I much prefer this to my original attempt.  The papers are from Basic Grey's Lemonade collection (6x6 pad).  I stamped the phrase using alphabet stamps and brown ink on Sour Apple Bazzill card. The cut is from Cricut's Country Life cartridge. 

Rock n Roll, baby!

These cards are made from the Rock Princess Cricut cartridge.  I am really liking the cutesy look but with attitude - cherry skulls, OMG -  I'm in love. 

The characters on this cartridge work well as shaped cards.

Even this sweet little strawberry card was made with a cut from the Rock Princess cartridge.

Suzel has left the building :)

Shaping up nicely

Here are a few more shaped cards I made using the shadow feature on the Country Life Cricut cartridge.

I think the cherries are sweet but I wish I had used softer greens for the pea pod.  Oh, maybe I should mention the size, these are about 6-7 inches tall.

The really nice thing about these cards is, when they are on the shelf, they don't look like a card; they could sit there looking pretty long after the event they were given for.

Rosey red yumminess

I made this shaped card using the Cricut Country Life cartridge.  The shaped card is made using the shadow feature cut twice and then glued at the leaf with the crease being in the back half of the card.  I used American Crafts paper for the apples and Echo Park paper for the tag.  I am rather pleased with this card; yup, I love my Cricut ;)