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When I found out about the March Dust It Off Challenge at Scrap Our Stash, my first thought was to use my Fasenator, but I thought that I had given it away long ago. So I was going through my "old stuff" box to see see what I could use, and guess what? I found my Fasenator! Now what was I going to do with it?


I was making a banner as a gift in a swap. So I used the Fasenator as the way to attach the banner together. I had some of the decorative staples and just slid the ribbon under each side and tied knots. I learned alot about my Fasenator, and it has since earned it's spot back on my tool shelf! I'm not so sure it won't get dusty again though!


I used my Cricut Storybook cartridge for the letters and used my Gypsy to alter some of the shapes for the letter backings. Both the hot pink ribbon and the light pink scalloped oval were distressed with my mini mister filled with water and then scrunched up. I inked around the edges with Close to My Heart Bubblegum stamp pad.


If you would like to take the March Challenge. See all the details HERE!

Charm packaging

You may remember my vintage and rock princess chunky charms a couple of weeks ago. Well, they are packaged up and heading to the swap hostess. One of the requirements of the swap, was to make a cute presentation of the charms. Pretty packaging. I wasn't sure how to do that, but this is what I came up with.




My Rock Princess charms are on some DCWV Rockstar paper that I have had forever and wasn't sure what to do with. It has hot pink foil lips on it!. I added a skull from Indie Art. I used an Inkadinkadoo stamp and stapled it over the charm to help hold it in place. To finish it, I added some black, shimmery ribbon.





The vintage charms are on paper by Karen Foster. I hand cut paper flowers out of some old book pages and added a Prima flower to the top of it. The brads were gold, but I scratched them up with some sandpaper and used brown Staz-On ink to make them fit in with the vintage theme. Brown velvet ribbon is stapled across the charm.

I had just as much fun making the packaging, as I did the charms. I hope you will try some too! Happy crafting!

What else have I been making charms for?

I have just finished up these altered Rolodex cards for a swap, my first time altering them! Since I have made so many charms lately and have extra beads everywhere, I wanted to be able to add some to my layouts and projects. I decided to make some small charms and add them to my paper clips!





Such an easy way to add some unexpected bling when a stick pin may not work!

I used some old book pages, Distress Ink, swirl background stamp, and some very yummy paper from the Basic Grey Hopscotch line. I also cut some crete paper streamers in half with decorative scissors to make the ribbon. To finish off the paper clip, I tied some Martha Stewart ribbon, and added a Prima flower. I left the tab blank so each person could add their own label.

I am super excited about using these charmed out paper clips in some layouts of mine!
Happy crafting!!

Learning to use my Copics and Prismacolors

The first thing I found out about my Copics and Prismacolors, is that I need alot more colors! When you only have about 14 colors you can't blend and shade as well as you could if you had a light, medium, and dark shade of the same color. I did however, find out that on some of the darker colors, that I could use my gray Prismacolors to darken it up.

This was the first couple of times using my Copics and Prismacolors to color my one and only Tilda stamp, (isn't she cute!) Her hair looks a little flat, but it does have some shading that didn't show up on the pictures. Like I said, I need some more browns and skin colors!!

If you havnen't tried Copics or Prismas, then DON'T!!! They are addictive!! And then you have to have all of these cute stamps to go with it! I didn't know that there were so many cute stamps out there!

I hope to learn how to use these a little better, so you may see Tilda show up again! Well, that's it until next week. I am off to have my Lasik procedure this afternoon, so no getting on the computer for a couple of days. Have a wonderful weekend and happy crafting!

Check out this blog candy!!!

The Crafts Meow Store is having a wonderful, wonderful, wonderful giveaway!! A 72 count set of Copic Ciao's!! Since my collection of Copics is pretty small, I would love to win all of these!!

Stop by and check out her previews of stamps, kits, and all her other goodies!!

Happy crafting!

My two cents worth.- ProvoCraft v. third party software

I must say that I am disappointed with ProvoCraft at the moment.

For the last year or so, they have been going after third party software that allows you to cut out true type fonts, or other images with your Cricut or other machine. They have reached a settlement that Make the Cut will disable the 600 or so copies of the program that allowed users to back up the cartridges that they already owned. They also have to destroy the Design Studio's source code that allowed them to create the program. This means that they can no longer issue updates. And ProvoCraft will probably issue an update for their machines that will block all third party software.


Here is where my two cents comes in:

I bought my Cricut years ago, when it was the first machine of it's kind. So by the time all the other machines came out, I had already invested a lot of money in cartridges, mats, etc. and couldn't switch to a different machine.

I have a copy of Make the Cut, and about the only thing that I have ever cut from it is true type fonts. Provo Craft has released very few font cartridges that I like. With the hundreds of fonts on my computer, I had just about every font that I wanted to cut out.

I have still purchased cartridges from Cricut. I have alot that I bought because it is much easier to use the cartridge for a shape that has a ton of parts, like the Toy Story characters. I have never used it to copy and cut a Cricut image.

Design Studio was a waste of my $35. It does nothing but allow you to weld your shapes together, no shadow function, no where near the features of Make the Cut.

I have not updated my Cricut since they filed the lawsuit and I probably will not since I am no longer interested in supporting Provo Craft by buying anymore cartridges. I understand why they filed the lawsuit, but I don't understand why they didn't buy the software and sell it under the ProvoCraft name. It is a much better program and it would have made alot of their customers happy. It seems to be the normal thing for ProvoCraft to release a product full of issues, never fix them, and then move on to the next thing. So many people had issues with the promises of Design Studio, and then the Gypsy, and now the Imagine. Now they are making those same promises with Cricut Craft Room and we just don't believe them. And just this week they announced that cartridge prices were going up. I just can't believe that they think $89.99 for a cartridge is reasonable let alone another $10-$27?

I think that my love for all things Cricut has faded. I hope to sell one of my Expressions, and buy an E-craft or a Cougar which have supported the third party software. I honestly will never sell all my Cricut stuff, I have way too much invested in it. But I can't take anymore girly, whimsy, and other images that I just don't want. If ProvoCraft would have listened to what we wanted and come through with that, alot of us from the message board wouldn't be ready to give up on them. But that is where alot of us are. We want to create how we want to, and be able to make the decision on how to use the macines that we purchased. I will be using my Cricut today, and I will enjoy it.......as it is! Happy crafting!

PS-You can read the lawsuit against SCAL here

Your thoughts and comments on this are welcomed!

Altered journal

Can you believe that this journal was out of the dollar bin at Michael's? I wanted a journal that I could make and hang a chunky charm on. Since it had red polka dots on the inside, I used some of my Basic Grey Scarlet Letter paper. I used Modge Podge to glue down the paper on the cover. The edges are painted black along with the back cover, and then sealed with a coat of Modge Podge. I was also able to use my new Copics!! I stamped the butterfly image and used my copics to color and blend around the butterfly. I added a larger black circle behind it and then rolled the edges inward. I used some hot glue to add the ribbon, Glossy Accents to make sure that the bling stayed on, and then of course, that cute chunky charm! And it's all done! Not bad for a half days work. Happy crafting!

Tiger Rank-Layout 11

You know I love how my little guy looks in a uniform, and I have the pictures to prove it! These are pictures of when he first started Cub Scouts and when he earned his Tiger Badge. I needed a quick layout for the Cub Scout banquet a few weeks ago. I saw a layout by Joni on Scrap Our Stash here. She did her paper strips the same way, and I loved it! I used my American Crafts letter stickers and my EK Success punch. This picture is not the best, the paper kept curling up. I like how the page turned out and it's one more page done for the year! Happy Crafting!

Rock Princess Chunky Charms!

I told you I was in love with these little things! This is the charms that I made for the Creator's Choice group in my swap. I decided on a "rock princess" theme, kind of girlie and funky. I had alot of black and pink beads, (and this is one of my favorite color combos!) so I went with what I had! I added a button and a rose shaped bead. I made bottlecap charms with Pink Paislee rub-ons and added them. It makes a very cool sound when it's dangling! Now I need to make something to package them in, so for now it's back to my paper stash! Tomorrow I have a new layout to share with you. Happy crafting!

Toy Story birthday decorations!

I was so busy last week that I took a few days off to catch my breath! But I am back and thought that I would share with you one of the reasons why I was sooooo busy! I just had a week to get all this done, so I worked on it every chance I got.

The twins have been into Toy Story for a while, so I bought this cartridge just for their birthday party.

I had planned on making a birthday banner, but changed it to a centerpiece because the place where we had their party, wouldn't let us hang stuff on the walls. Most of the characters are cut out at six inches with med pressure and high speed so I was able to cut that small. I rubbed the back of the cuts with sand paper so they would pop out cleanly. But at this size, most of these characters were such a pain!! I put them on skewer sticks and filled the paint can up with styrofoam. I covered all that up with some shredded paper.

I loved the alien so much that I decided to add him to the front of the goodie bags. I printed out a message to add to the front of the bag using the Gilbert Ultra Bold font. It looks just like the Toy Story font and you can download it for free.


The cakes were a hit too! Although I decided to go the easy way and order these cakes from Sam's club. These were perfect! Easy to serve the kids the cupcakes, but we had plenty of room for candles!




So now I am finished with the Toy Story party and we are moving on to my oldest son's party, Easter, Pinewood Derby, swaps, design team projects, gifts..........oh my! I guess I will have lots of projects to share with you!!! Happy crafting!