Friday, July 17, 2009

Kaisercraft Scrap your Summer Competition


Have you heard? Kaisercraft has a great new competition called Scrap your Summer

While freezing here in southern Aust let's remember the warmer months and scrap some sun drenched beaches, or tropical pools! The idea of the competition is to scrap your summer photos using the new Kaisercraft Offshore or Pina Colada range. Check the blog for detail: http://www.kaisercraft.net/blog/scrap-your-summer-competition/

Wall Vinyl

I have been wanting to do some wall quotes or decorations for months but I haven't yet found a good (reasonably priced) source of vinyl. I have some scraps that I got from a sign maker though and so I decided to have a play and do some designs on my daughter's wall. As my scraps were quite small I was fairly limited but I am happy with how it turned out. This sits above my daughter's pillow.



I just used the Storybook Cartridge for this one but now I have started I can see so many possibilities using SVG's I have downloaded!

Tuesday, July 14, 2009

Kaisercraft Pina Colada and Child's Play


Today is an important day as it marks the point at which I have now completed a layout with each of the Q1 paper ranges! Note to self - no trumpet fanfare! I am happy with how these layouts turned out as to tell you the truth. . . the papers didn't excite me at first. Having said that I love the pages I've created and now I can see heaps of ways to use these ranges.

The font on the Snow Angel layout is one of my favourites, it is called 1BeanSproutDNA and it is a freedownload. I especially like the way it is easy to weld in Sure Cuts A Lot.

Saturday, July 11, 2009

Cricut Gypsy

I see Cricut has a new product nearing launch. It is called a Gypsy and it is a hand held unit. The idea seems to be planning designs on the go and then hooking up to your Cricut to cut. At least I think that's the idea! The specs I have found are listed below:

Features:
Size – 8” x 3” x 1.5”
Weight – 11 ounces
Screen Size - 4.7”, 16:9, 480 x 272
Stylus Length – 3.75”
Storage – ~4000 Cartridges, 10000+ Designs
Battery Life – 4 hrs cont. 18 hrs int.
Compatible with all Cricut Machines and Cartridges
Weld, size, slant, rotate, stretch, preview
2 Full content cartridges preloaded


Benefits:
No computer required
All CDS functionality on-the-go with no PC
Interfaces with CDS when connected to a PC
Stores All Content
Stores All Overlays
Stores All Manuals
Stores CDS Projects

The website they have up at the moment (Rogue Gypsies) is a tad unusual, the premise being that 10 of the Gypsies have gone missing and they've sent a kind of bounty hunter after them. As I said a little unusual.

I will be keeping a close eye on this to see if it is really worth getting excited over. At the moment I kind of can't see the potential but am happy to be wrong.

Monday, July 6, 2009

Dinosaur SVG border

There's a Challenge on the Craft Edge website to design an ABC border or frame svg file. I like to keep my Inkscape skills current by creating random files and so I jumped into this challenge. Hope someone can use the file. It was fun playing around with dingbat fonts. I probably should have done some princess icons instead as I am planning to do some vinyl wall decorations for my daughter and also some freezer paper t-shirt stencils and I am pretty sure princesses will be the theme and pink the colour! Maybe that's why I chose dinosaurs for this project.



DinoABC border file HERE

Thursday, July 2, 2009

Kaisercraft Loire Valley and Duchess

Managed to spend some more time creating last night, and I had a ball with the Loire Valley Range. I was really pleased with how this one turned out. I love the paper but wasn't really sure I had the right photos to use it. So I decided to focus on the reverse of the papers and OMG I love how it turned out. Inspiration came from Pagemaps



I also played with the Duchess Range. Now I know most people upon seeing the range will have it pegged for heritage layouts. I know very few people who do heritage layouts and so I decided to use it for a general kid layout. I was happy with how this turned out too. It has made me look at the entire range in a new light.



This leaves me two ranges to play with. Now I love Pina Colada but really don't think I have the photos to suit. I'd love to have some cruise photos (PO cancelled our cruise in '04, haven't quite got over that yet!!) but I haven't so not sure what I will do with this range. Again think I will concentrate on the reverse of the papers. Child's Play isn't my favourite release but I am sure I can come up with something. Watch this space!

Wednesday, July 1, 2009

Kaisercraft Offshore Range

If you haven't checked out the new ranges from Kaisercraft then get on over there asap. There are so many gorgeous papers in this release. I rhink my favourite is Offshore, or maybe Penny Royale but then again Loire Valley is stunning - what a hard choice.

Here's my first layout created with the Offshore range. We live inland and so beach visits are rare for us. Thankfully the Offshore range suits baths photos too.



I really loved the layout in the Kaiser magazine that Melissa Kennedy did with the Penny Royale papers and so I scraplifted it and then took it one step further turning it into a double layout.



Now what should I work on next? I have a layout half finished using the Duchess Range so perhaps I will try my hand at Pina Colada.