Bird Houses and Cricuts

Well, we had a project this summer that ended up being a family project. Hubby cut the boards and milled down some old cedar shingles. My daughter helped me make some windows out of vinyl on my Cricut. I also did the shutters out of a beer can and ran it thru the Cuttlebug to give it some texture. We then painted them with alcohol inks to give them the look of old copper. The things you can make out of beer cans!
Hey, don't get me wrong here. I do mention beer cans and I do mention alcohol inks. They do not have anything to do with each other. Alcohol inks are just really cool alcohol based inks that colorize really slick surfaces such a metal, glass, and plastic. All those things that are normally hard to paint otherwise.

A Little about my Cricut

I really like to mess with crafty software programs and I love to play with my Cricut Expression. A Cricut is a machine that will cut out anything that you draw or bring into the software screen on your computer from 1/4 inch up to 2 feet! Oh, where would be without those special software programs? I love the fact that you can cut anything you want using the Make The Cut program also known as MTC. There is another program called Sure Cuts A Lot or SCAL that does about the same thing. For some reason I have both programs. They both do about the same but they each have their own little things that I like about them.
These third party softwares are the only reason I bought the Cricut. If I had to buy cartridges for all the projects I would be so broke I couldn't afford to buy the paper or vinyl to put in it! You can cut any font on the computer or search the Internet. You can cut out any dingbat you want. (You can Google that if you don't know what a dingbat is and NO it is NOT a dingy woman. I already hold that proud title!)
You can also design your own cutouts. It is endless what you can do with a Cricut. It is a lot of creative fun and I would highly recommend adding it to your personal "I need" list!

Using SCAL for Fancy Schmancy Designs

For those of you who do not have a Cricut, go no further. This will not excite you as much as those of us who do have SCAL or MTC and a Cricut. All right, I can see a few of you scratching your heads wondering what I am talking about. YOU THERE...go do something else, leave us Cricuteers alone to do our thing.

I found a fantastic font called Nymphette, and it is on http://www.dafont.com/. It is actually a dingbat of some nice flourishes to use. Don't be put off if something seems a bit too skinny to use. You can always change it in SCAL or MTC by giving it a Shadow.
Here is what it looks like with two of the flourishes and how I added the 2 circles to join it all together.

This is a simple way to do something in SCAL without the use of Inkscape. For those of you that do not want to tackle Inkscape this is one way you can make your own designs in SCAL. Just remember to click weld on everything you intend on putting together. You must overlap things in order for it to be welded. You can check if it is welded or not by going to the little magnifying glass by the scissors and clicking on it. It will outline in red all the areas it is going to cut.

Hope this helps someone and I hope it helps others to get creative just using SCAL or MTC.
Have fun!

How to Outline with Cricut Markers

Well, I have been way too busy doing nothing so I thought I should put something on here that someone that has a Cricut can actually get some use out of.
This is what I do to make a "sorta" printer out of my Cricut.

First of all you need to buy some of the Cricut pens. I have seen other people say they use all kinds of other things but I just happened to have bought all the colors because they were on sale and I just like to collect things for my hobbies.

SO....Here we go....

First of all, whenever you are putting that pen any where near the Cricut cutting area, PLEASE be sure to put a piece of waste cardstock under the pen/cutting area or you will be marking the paper you are going to use or the carriage of the Cricut. I am speaking from experience here!



Second Step:
Be sure to seat the pen in properly. There is a little indentation on it so be sure to have it in there.

Third Step:
OK...now select the design you want. If it is from a cartridge, select size. Push "Cut". This will start it printing out the picture.
It will stop below what has already been printed. Here is it all printed out.



Fourth Step:
Hit the "Load Paper" button and it will go back to home base. Put your waste paper under the pen and change to the cutting housing. Put pressure back to whatever you need for the kind of paper you are cutting. (If I use heavy cardstock I use pressure of 5 and needle depth of 3.)

Fifth Step:
Hit the "Repeat Last" button and then hit the "Cut" button and it will cut the same thing it just printed right on the same lines it printed out.

Here is a picture of what was cut out and I am trying to show you how much of the line there is left of it.







This was a black marker that I used.

If anyone is actually using the pencil grips or any other type of pen I sure would like to see it in action.

How To Become A Happy Hooker

First of all….did you really want to know how to become a Hooker?

OK…then I got your attention so now if you are interested in Scrapbooking, Cricuteering, Cardmaking, or Stenciling, Etc. then just keep reading!

This is for those of you that might want to create your own stencils with any font of your choice, not just the MILITARY STENCIL look.

Call up any of the fonts you love in your favorite graphic program and add a little hook or piece to whatever letters you are using. See the BoDiddly Picture above. Normally we are only using a few words at a time and it is not problem to add a little piece that will hold the inside of a P, D, B, etc to hold it all together without really messing up the look of the font. You can make it swirl or make it straight, you add one or you can add eight. Hey! That rhymed! I digress..........
I then cut away the hook after I have it glued into place. Just don't put the glue on the piece you want to cut off. Glue down the piece and use a craft knife to carefully cut away any unwanted pieces. For something very ornate, this method works great.

This is wonderful for making stencils for glass etching. Set up your word or design and then add the hooks to the open areas of the letters that you don’t want to fall out, connecting them to the outside area. Cut it out in vinyl or contact paper, place it on the object and rub out any air bubbles and THEN cut away the unwanted part (hook). It makes for very accurate placement when you have a lot of open letters or something very ornate. Your inside pieces don’t get lost and they are placed perfectly where they are supposed to be. You then would proceed as you wish for etching glass or stenciling.

On the BoDiddly design, the Cricut would cut out all the white parts and the rest would be left including the insides of the letters. Glue in place or rub in place if it is for glass etching then cut away those little hooks holding the inside letter.

WALA….perfect placement everytime.

How to Take a Screen Shot

This is for those of you who have Windows XP and want to take a screen shot and are not sure how to do it. If you have Windows 7 you are already set with the Snippet Tool.  This works great if you see something on a website or want to share something in a program with someone. This is one way to do it. For those Cricuteer friends of mine, it is also great for showing everyone what you have drawn in Inkscape, MTC or SCAL or any program for that matter. This is a pretty easy way to do it.

I got this from www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/setup/tips/screenshot.mspx, Just in case you want to go there and look at a better explanation. I added a few of my own tips on here.

1. Click the window you want to capture. Press ALT+PRINT SCREEN by holding down the ALT key and then pressing the PRINT SCREEN key. The PRINT SCREEN key is near the upper right corner of your keyboard. (Depending on the type of keyboard you have, the exact key names on your keyboard may vary slightly.)
Note: You can take a screen shot of your entire desktop rather than just a single window by pressing the PRINT SCREEN key without holding down the ALT key. At this point, it doesn't look like it did anything but wait!
2. Click Start, click Accessories, and then click Paint. Personally, I have a Paint icon ready to go at the bottom of my screen. I use it a lot!
3. In the Paint window, click Edit, and then click Paste. (I just do a “Control V” to paste it)
4. When the image appears in the Paint window, you can decide if you want to keep the whole window or just cut out what you want to show. If you want to cut out a particular part, just use the upper left icon, a box type thing, and pull a line around the part you want and do a “Control X” this will take it out and put it on the clipboard. Go to “File”, “New” and you will have a new Paint screen. (I just do a “Control N”.) Next do a “Control V” which will paste just that selection you wanted on to the window.
Now go to “File”, and then click “Save As”.
5. In the “Save As” dialog box, in the File name box, type a name for the screen shot, and then click Save. (I would recommend saving in GIF if it is a special photo it will look nicer than a JPG)

You can now print or e-mail the saved screen shot just like you would any other picture.

I would recommend reducing the size of the window just a bit because it does such a nice job of capturing the screen that it fills up your Paint screen.