Catching up again...

Yeah I know - where does the time go... I'm sure it was still February just yesterday... well the weather seemed very much like February - wind and rain - just ready for today being Bank Holiday Monday here in the UK...

Right - where do I start? Having now sold my original Cricut Personal because I now have the all-singing-all-dancing Cricut Mini, I'm finding that it is not quite as wonderful as I first thought. Sure, using Cricut Craft Room to design everything I want to cut exactly how I want it is great - BUT you have to be online to do so - so I can't take it to a crop 'cos my laptop doesn't have a roaming internet connection. And whilst that isn't so much of a problem, it is a little frustrating... having said that I'm still having fun cutting things on it!

One of the first things I made was a cute little basket  - don't ask me which cartridge its from, George and Basic Shapes I think - but it looked so cute that I decided to play and managed to centre a heart shape onto one of the large panels to cut out...

I'd used a double-sided cardstock with a darker shade on the reverse taken from the Cricut cardstock pads that are ready cut 6x12 - I know my Mini mat can take wider but for playing around I thought the pad would be perfect.

It looked great when assembled and the cut-out heart glued into place onto the other large panel... Yeah I know, twee... but it's a start in working out how to use CCR...

Then I got cocky and decided that a 'word book' was next on the agenda... having been to Scotland twice last year I have loads of pics so decided that the word would be 'Scotland' and that I'd print out lots of the photos quite small and stick 'em in... that was before my wireless printer decided to disconnect itself from my home network - AGAIN - so I can neither print nor scan... I'll get round to sorting it eventually!

So after a lot of trial and error I finally came up with the letters for the word 'Scotland' - all nicely welded onto rectangles to give the right spacing between the letter pages, base pages cut from either white or grey cardstock, then just the letters cut from sheets of tartan paper I'd bought in a craft shop in Oban in July (ye gods - do I get a prize for actually using something I've bought within a year of its purchase???)

As you can see its over 12" long when finished - I actually cheated and glued the cut letter-strips onto strips of acetate having made sure I'd added on about half an inch to allow for binding. That didn't figure in my initial workings, but I think I've gotten away with it - especially as I can maintain that I'd planned on using a strip of black'n'white spotted Washi Tape on the bound edges!

The backs of each page are covered in some rather fetching tartan wrapping paper that I'd also bought on holiday, it was actually the reverse of an aerial photo of Inverrary which is why in the picture above you might be able to see bits of trees and grass in the centres of the letters... I'd thought ahead and bought 2 sheets of the same, thinking I could certainly make use of both sides lol...

Ever the crafter - even on holiday...