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The investment of a Cricut™ Personal Electronic Cutter is essential to paper crafting. I love mine and I am looking forward to upgrading to the latest model. There are currently 3 versions of the machine and each cuts a variety of materials without a computer. Oodles of cartridges offer an endless assortment of shapes, letters, and phrases; there’s something for every occasion. The ever advancing accessories alone could sell this thing but in today’s unpredictable economic climate, dropping a couple of hundred dollars on a hobby machine may seem completely out of the question. This blog post will help you see that this is one investment that will actually have you seeing green in no time; both in your wallet and on all of your Cricut merchandise. 

 LEFT: The Cricut™ Create is the new kid on the block. This compact
cutter combines the best features of the first 2 generations of the Cricut™ machine: portability and the ability to cut size .25″ up to 11.5″ on a 6″ x 12″ cutting mat. New functionality is also introduced. Read about it in #10.

1. Never buy cut chip board again, make your own - These cutting machines are beasts! They cut through many types of material, including chip board so you can create your own chip board in the size you want.

2. Create your own personalized stamps cheaper than you can buy them - Personalized stamps are costly and can take weeks to receive. If you already have acylic blocks, you can purchase the stamp creating refill sheets for approximately $8. Other wise a starter kit is available for $20. Either avenue is cheaper than ordering personalized stamps.

3. Favors made easy - Showers, weddings, parties, class room treats, whatever you need a favor for, you’ll be thanking the Provo Craft gods for how easy the Cricut cutters make creating favors. The Bags Tags and more cartridge offers endless favor possibilities and options available in many other cartridges, like box available in this one, allow you to create boxes and bags in any color or size to suite your theme or purpose.

4. Beautiful scrap book layouts for pennies! - I don’t care what anybody says, Scrapbooking is pricey! The cost of Stickers and embellishments adds up fast and you get little product for your hard earned dollars. Why purchase embellishments and sticker sets when you can make your own? With oodles of cartridges on the market and an easy to use software suite, you can create one of a kind scrapbooking layouts with ease. With your Cricut machine at your finger tips you will always have access to embellishments and the ability to to create lettering an phrases.

5. Look out Hallmark - The last time I purchased a card from Hallmark, it cost $5! I love to give cards but with a special occasion nearly every week, $5 quickly turns into hundreds of dollars. Yea “budget” cards are available but why waste the money when you can create your very own beautiful, sentimental, hand made, personalized card for a fraction of what it costs to buy one? Today I bought 50 sheets of card stock for $3.99. After a couple of passes through my Cricut machine, I will have dozens of beautiful looking cards that I made my self. There are cartridges with the ability to create the card form and envelopes. The savings here alone are endless.

6. Trendy Home decor made easy, cheaply and personalized! - Vinyl wall decals are all the rage right now. Favorite phases, cute graphics and holiday images are just a few of the decals being used in home decorating right now. Provo Craft offers vinyl and transfer tape so that you can create your own decals right from your personal cutter.  Store bought decals range from $10 to $50 and aren’t personalized.

7. Expensive punches aren’t necessary - Why are paper punches so darn expensive? It seems like the more useful the punch the more expensive it is. Since purchasing my cutter, I haven’t had to drop cash for any paper punches. The ability to cut in many sizes a shapes helps eliminate the need for those pricey punches.

8.  Custom make stencils - The Cricut Stencil Material allows you to create your own custom stencils to use ion home decorating or crafting projects.

Bottom line: you can purchase a Cricut cutter for $199 to $399 depending on sales and the model but if you are a frequent crafter, this is one investment you cant afford to not make.

I am part of a team that is participating in a March for Dimes for Babies walk on April 26th 2009.  Check out my sponsor homepage here: MLLauffer March of Dimes Homepage You can donate directly from my personal webpage with a credit card or PayPal. If you prefer, I can also accept cash or check. Just click the appropriate box on my webpage

So today the hubby and I got all of the Christmas back into the attic. I hate January because of the weather and the un-decking of the halls. In Western PA January typically means very cold and the biggest snow fall. We were threatened with a terrible storm this weekend but seem to have just missed it. A little north of us got 8.5 inches. We got Slush all day Saturday. The dogs loved it. Me not so much. So anyway I always do my "Spring" Cleaning when we put that stuff away because we are in the groove. We throw out stuff reorganize … you get the picture. The garage is the only beast to tame. We’re saving for another January weekend. January is always our least busy month so we get a lot of house stuff done. Now for the fun stuff ……

It’s that time of the week! Lauren’s Saturday Sketch Challenge. I can ALWAYS use thank you cards so I decided to make a thank you card for the challenge.

  To the left you can see the sketch. For my take, I started with a piece of paper from a scrapbooking calendar that I got for Christmas last year. It has a lot of nice stuff for paper crafting. So I dug through my papers and found a brown and orangish shade to match and threw together this card. It felt a little naked on the bottom so I added my favorite embellishment - a butterfly punched from my Martha Stewart punch decorated with a few rhinestones. It turned out cute. Cant complain.

Speaking of not complaining I found out this week that I get to go to an international conference for work March 25th thru 27th. How exciting. Its at the Buena Vista Palace in Orlando Florida - its in the middle of the Disney parks  The end of March is usually another crappy time here weather wise. The big Blizzard of ‘93 struck during that week and having a March 23rd birthday I remember many snowy birthdays.  So I will be ready for some sunny Florida weather right about then.

This is my second entry for Regina’s BBTB contest. See my previous post here for more details concerning the challenge. I was thinking spring with this one and decided to modify a card that I made for a Sketch challenge for my second entry. I thought the lay out and idea of the card would suit the BBTB challenge well. The Circle, star and squares were cut with my Cricut machine and the George and Basic shapes cartridge. I think the vellum butterfly is a nice touch. 

You can see the Official Contest announcement and rules here. 

Today was my first day back to work after having been off for 13 days in a row so I’m short winded today. 

Paper: Black Card stock for the card base, stripped paper from DCWV Glitter Stack, Yellow Card Stock, Blue Card Stock, Pink Card stock, Linen Card stock and Vellum for the butterfly
Embellishments:  Butterfly made with Butterfly Punch from Martha Stewart, Adhesive Rhinestones from K&Company
Stamps: Live Well Laugh Often Love Much from StampinUp! two step Stampin Spring Garden and flowers from Paper Try Inks Flower garden

Today’s high in Western PA is in the low 30’s. It’s cold … cold enough that the dogs wont stay outside. Now that the Holidays are over I am ready for Spring so here I sit in my craft room feet freezing because I am too lazy to go next door to my bedroom and grab socks, I decided to think spring thoughts for Lauren Meaders Saturday Sketch.  To the left you can see the sketch and to the lower right; my take.  I changed my cards orientation and made my middle square with my sentiment a little bigger than the side squares. I liked this sketch. I made 2 cards and posted the best of the 2. Maybe sometime this week when I go back too work (YUCK) and have less time, I’ll post the other creation. I have been on vacation since December 23rd. Its amazing to me how fast 2 weeks goes when you don’t have to go to work!   Ok so back to the card. I embossed the yellow circle with my Cuttlebug Swiss Dots folder (my favorite),cut the little squares and their shadows with my Cricut George and Basic Shapes Cartridge and used a sliver of DCWV paper from the Glitter stack.  Oh and I almost forgot I added a tiny butterfly adorned with a few Yellow rhinestones. I love my Martha Stewart Butterfly punch. This put me in a Springy mood despite the calendars glaring reminder that we’re only in the first weekend of January.

Paper: Kraft card Stock from paper Trey Ink, stripped paper from DCWV Glitter Stack, Yellow Card Stock, Orange Card Stock Purple Card stock, Linen Card stock and Vellum for the butterfly
Embellishments:  Butterfly made with Butterfly Punch from Martha Stewart, Adhesive Rhinestones from K&Company
Stamps: Live Well Laugh Often Love Much from StampinUp! two step Stampin Spring Garden and flowers from Paper Try Inks Flower garden

I recently discovered this really great blog "Bitten By The Bug" (BBTB). The bug being the Cricut die cutting machine from Provo Craft. Blog Creator Regina started the blog specifically for Cricut designers. She often hosts contests sponsored by Internet supply companies that provide awesome prize packages. My first BBTB contest is as follows: (this is copied directly from the blog post)

using the colors in this STAR PROJECT, you need to create a CARD using these colors AND there needs to be a star on your project somewhere…..Simple huh!
1. Create a card using these colors (all or at least 80% of)
YELLOW, GREEN, PINK, BLUE
2. Add a STAR to the card.
3. The card can be ANY occasion.
4. Everyone is welcome to enter….
5. Only 2 entries per person.
6. Previous bbtb winners are welcome to enter.
7. You must link in the comment section of this thread where I can find your project….A DIRECT LINK….(please don’t put my card is on my blog….I have a hard time finding it that way).
8. Contest will run from today through the 10Th of THE NEW YEAR, JANUARY 10, 2009……(yes this date is AFTER CHRISTMAS, just in time to have a yummy kit coming to you to scrap those Christmas photos).
9. YOU MUST USE AT LEAST ONE CUT FROM ANY OF THE CRICUT CARTRIDGES…

So now that you are in the know, here is my submission. I used all 4 colors and when I first read the challenge, I thought unisex baby card but I wasn’t really in the mood to design  a baby card so my next thought was New Years.   The Stars and "2009" were cut using Cricut’s George cartridge. I ribbon bound the card and embossed "Enjoy" in black. It’s hard to see, but the 2009 is covered in Black Diamond stickles. I glittered a few of the stars on the card and outlined the others in Diamond stickles.

I hope you had a Merry Christmas and are looking forward to the New Year. I am. I have big plans for my "Hobbies" but I’ll share those for a later post. Thanks for reading.

Paper: Blue and Pink Card stock, stripped paper  from DCWV Summer Glitter matstack Embellishments:  Stickles, wet embossing with Black embossing powder by Ranger and white organza ribbon
Stamps: Enjoy from the Spiral Bouquet set by Papertrey Ink

Despite the Holiday season, I was able to complete Lauren’s Saturday Sketch challenge.  I just got this stamp today. My husband and I were at Jo Ann’s and he found it. Our first dog (we have 2) is a Golden Retriever named Izzie. My husband loves Izzie more than I have ever seen somebody love a pet and he thinks this stamp looks exactly like Izzie when we first brought her home. He said that every card I ever make him should include this stamp. I don’t  know if that will happen but I thought I’d ink it up for the challenge.

The Woof and bones were cut from paper pups cricut cartridge and the ribbon came from Target’s $1 spot. Sadly the entire spool was used on this card.  Not much ribbon but hey what do you want for  $1. I should mention that it came in a tube with 3 other spools of ribbon and I’m sure those spools have only a few inches on them. I really need to get some Copics and learn to color with them. I have seen some amazing coloring done with those expensive little guys. The colored pencils just arent doing it for me. Other than the coloring, I think the card turned out cute.  I added a picture of Izzie to this post so you a face to put to the name.

                   

Paper: Kraft from Paper Try Ink, brown yellow and red card stock Embellishments:  yellow ribbon with brown stitching                         Stamps: Baby Retriever Rubber by Inkadinkado

I love INKADINKADOO stamps! This card was made using the Flourishes set - a clear stamp set. Its by the very talented Brenda Walton. I stamped the swirl twice - once in its entirety and partially second time at the bottom of the card. The small flowers have diamond Stickles added to their centers and the bird is covered in black diamond Stickles. I cant seem to master getting them into photos.  I rarely use black as a card base but I think it paid off this time.

Of course I had to add a ribbon. It matches the mauve card stock used as a mat for the cream card stock with the stamping.

I’m anxious to see what other creations I come up with with this set. 

Paper: Black cream and mauve card stock
Embellishments:  Stickels and ribbon
Stamps: Inkadinkadoo’s Flourishes

This is my first Sketch Challenge Click Here to view the sketch set forth by Lauren. I’m going to attempt Lauren’s sketch each week. I always check out everyone’s else’s work so I thought why not join in.

I love Halloween and fall and thought this would be a good opportunity to start on my Autumn Cards. I used the spider from Papertrey Inks’ Spooky Sweets I. Can you see his web??? I made it with Diamond Stickels. I added black Stickles to the spider to make him pop. Happy Halloween is embossed so that it would stand out better. 

Speaking of Halloween, I am anxiously awaiting Papertreys Spooky Sweets 2. I ordered a few days ago. I already have lots of good ideas for it!!!!

Paper: Black and Orange card stock, Halloween black dots patterned paper from K& company
Embellishments:  Stickles and green ribbon
Stamps: Spider from Papertrey Inks’ Spooky Sweets and Happy Halloween from CMC