Making A Father’s Day Card With The Cricut Expression And The Animal Kingdom Cricut Cartridge

With Father’s Day just around the corner, I wanted to make a fun Cricut card for my Dad.  Last month when I was visiting my family, we were getting silly one afternoon and were all making fish faces.  I even got my Dad to make one.  Anyway, I wanted his card to have a memory of that silly afternoon.

I went through my Cricut Cartridges and the Animal Kingdom was the winner again.  There is a Fishy Kisses saying along with a fish face.  It was so simple to make with just three layers, but ohhhhhhh so cute.

Happy Father’s Day Dad ~ You’re the Best!

animalkingdomcricutcartridgefishykisses

Make it a Great Day and don’t forget to leave time to Craft!

Great Cricut Card Ideas

Why spend another penny on a store bought greeting card now that you own a Cricut cutting machine. You paid a lot for that Cricut, so let’s put it to work. Here are just a few Cricut Card Ideas that will get you started and allow you to use any of your cricut cartridges you choose.

The next holiday coming up on the calendar is Easter. When I think of what cricut card ideas I can come up with, I think of how your family and friends will react when they receive a handmade greeting card made by YOU. Now that you have your Cricut cutting machine and a variety of cricut cartridges, it is so easy to add your personal touch to a card.

If one of the cricut cartridges you have is the Cricut Doodlecharms cartridge, you can make a really cute handmade greeting card of the Easter Bunny or an Easter Basket filled with colored eggs. Or maybe another one of your cricut cartridges is the Cricut Wild Card cartridge so you can make a Filigree Easter Egg card. Another one of my Cricut Card ideas is if you have the Cricut Stretch your Imagination cartridge. You can make a card with a Bunny coloring Easter eggs or a bunny in a basket.

As far as all of the cricut card ideas I could come up with for Easter, not all of them need to have bunnies or eggs on them. Here is an example of using a different one of your cricut cartridges called A Walk in My Garden cartridge. With this cricut cartridge you can make beautiful daffodil, hyacinth, or tulip to be the theme of your card. You are the artist of this Easter card, show your creativity and have fun.

Then the next big card day is Mothers Day. Think of how your Mom will feel getting a handmade greeting card from her child. You will totally make her day. No matter what cricut cartridges you have you will be able to find some thing that will put a smile on her face, and of course you will do all of this with your magnificent cricut cutting machine. It could be as simple as a basic flower from the Plantin SchoolBook cartridge, that you cut into different sizes and layer on a card, and then add the words Happy Mothers Day, or to the Best Mommy in the World.

The great thing about your Cricut cutting machine and all the cricut cartridges that are available to you is that it gives you thousands of Cricut card ideas. You will see that your cards look so professional you will not be able to wait to send them out or start selling them. I’m going to get busy making my handmade greeting cards on my very own Cricut cutting machine, how about you?

Make it a Great Day and don’t forget to leave time to Craft!

Cricut Design Studio Software is a Paper Saver

First you purchased your Cricut cutting machine (the Original Cricut, Cricut Expression, or Cricut Create).  After playing with it for awhile, and wasting a lot of paper with all of your errors, you see that there is another product on the market called Cricut Design Studio.  This is a software package that you load on your computer that allows you to see what you are going to cut on your computer screen before you cut on your cricut cutter.  It lets you connect letters together, alter shapes and the list goes on and on.

The Cricut Design Studio is actually is a paper saver too since you see exactly what is going to be cut before you cut the images on your Cricut cutter.

So you break down and purchase the Cricut Design Studio software.  You open it up and see that there is a program disc, user manual on how to install the software and some basic terms and applications, a USB cable and a cute cricut mouse pad.  You load the software in your computer and then if you are like me you said “Now what the heck do I do next?”

Here are just a few things that have helped me with the Cricut Design Studio software and hopefully it will help you too.

1. Cricut Design Studio has all of the cartridges that are available loaded into this program.  And what is really cool is that if you see that a new cartridge was just released, no need to purchase any new software, you can go online and update your software so you have the latest version available.

By having the Cricut Design Studio software, you can actually see all the images from each cartridge and this may help you decide if you would like to purchase that cartridge.

Note:  Just because you see all the cartridges available on the Cricut Design Studio software, you must physically have that specific cartridge loaded in your machine in order to cut the images.

2. The manual refers to Welding.  Welding is connecting images or letters together.  Just remember if you want to connect, you have to check the box for welding on your screen.

Welding is very helpful if you are typing phrases for your scrapbook or greeting card.  It is sometimes a pain to adhere individual letters on your paper to make your phrase.  You need to make sure that your lines are straight and letters are evenly spaced but with the welding feature it is just one piece of paper that you need to worry about, all the spacing and straightening is all done for you.

3.  Another great feature on the Cricut Design Studio software is that you can use more than one cartridge when creating a design.

For example:  You are creating a banner that says Happy Birthday Paul.  You decide to use the Jasmine cartridge for the words Happy Birthday but want the Tear Drop cartridge for the word Paul.  With the Cricut Design Studio software that is no problem.  When the Cricut is cutting it will tell you what cartridge to load in your Cricut cutter.  Now how cool is that.

Your creativity can go wild with the Cricut Design Studio software.  The possibilities are endless.

Cricut Design Studio Bonus Pak Software – $ 84.09
This software lets you take your Cricut creativity to a new level. Use the software with the original Cricut or the Expression machine and cartridges. Using the on-screen cutting mat you can modify designs by moving, reorganizing, rotating, resizing, skewing and welding letters from available cartridges. Requirements: Window XP or Vista, min of 512MB Ram, min of 100MB HD, CD/DVD-ROM, USB 1.1

Make it a Great Day and don’t forget to leave time to Craft!

Are there Bugs in the Cricut Expressions Machine?

There is one bug that you don’t want to call an exterminator for.

That is the bug you will get when you purchase a Cricut Expressions Machine!

The Cricut Expressions Machine has got to be the best die cut machine on the market.  With other machines you usually have to do a lot of squeezing, turn a crank, or slide something back and forth, and all you end up with is a cut piece of paper.  The Cricut Expression Machine does all this work for you.  All you need to do is pick out the image you want, pick the size that you want that image to be, add the paper to the Cricut cutting mat, then press the CUT button on your keypad and the Cricut Expressions Machine starts cutting your image.

Now, if that’s not super easy to do then what is?  In minutes or should I say seconds, you have the perfect size, color, image that you want.

Let’s say that you go to your local craft store looking for a die cut of a pink cat.  Most likely you’ll not find it, and if you do is it the right size? The right color pink?  With the Cricut Expressions Machine you pick out the paper color you want, the size that you want from .25″ to 23.5″, and the image of a cat from one of the many Cricut Cartridges.

Don’t Hesitate – for the best in all your crafting desires – go get one now!

Back to my Handmade Custom Christmas Cards

Back in September I was telling you about an idea that I had for my Christmas cards this year.  Well my idea in my head sounded great, but I just couldn’t get it right on paper. So now I am really behind in my card making, but not too worry. I just finished a sample of this year’s card. It is a fun card, with a lot of color and layers. I will share my card with you in December only because if my family & friends read this blog, they will see the card that they will be receiving in the mail.  And if you like my Christmas card, you can start making them for your cards next year.

Now it’s time to talk about Cricut.

If you never heard of a Cricut, you will start hearing a lot about it from me.

I have had this personal cutting machine for a year already but am just seeing how much you can really do with it. It’s too cool.

This machine is amazing. It is great for all of those Scrapbookers out there as well as Greeting Card Makers.

After you cut an image (from whatever color paper you want it to be), you can embellish it any way YOU want, not how the craft store and manufacturers sell it to you.

So when I am done with my Christmas Cards, I will share with you all of the new creations that I will be making with my Cricut.

Make it a Great Day and don’t forget to leave time to Craft!

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