Copic Coloring with help from OptiVisor

As mentioned in my biography I am learning alcohol ink coloring from Kit and Clowder. I am often dis-satisfied with my results because items I am trying to color are very small. The instructor manages to blend three colors in a space that I have trouble keeping one color within the lines. When I mentioned that problem to the instructor she recommended that I use a magnifying glass. My immediate choices were a handheld magnifying glass which I keep in the bathroom or an Ottlite with a magnifying glass which is at my sister's house. Handheld obviously would not be a great choice and, since I often want to color at odd hours, using the light at my sister's wouldn't be great. I found a magnifier at Walmart which has a strap that hangs around your neck and balances(or not) on your chest. Again, not the best choice. I mentioned this dilemma at my card class and one of the members suggested I get an OptiVisor. This is a jewelers headband style magnifier and was less than thirty dollars. I colored the image below using it this morning and am so excited to be able to say that I used three colors on each petal of the flowers. It's the little things in life that bring us so much joy. LOL

Cleaning A Mirror (Not Craft Related)

While cleaning my bathroom mirror this morning I felt compelled to blog about a cleaning technique I found by accident. My mirror is a hand-me-down that I was gifted with twenty five years ago and have always had difficulty with foggy spots when trying to clean just using Windex and paper towels. (Just for reference I used to clean houses professionally). One day, just by happenstance, I grabbed a magic eraser after I had sprayed the mirror with the Windex and, low and behold, I had a nearly streak and fog free result. I have been using the magic eraser ever since. Sometimes just dry or with water and continue to have success. So I thought I would, for a change, blog about something not crafting related in case anyone else was needing help with mirror cleaning.

Update on Boxed Card Sets

As I announced in a previous blog, my sister and I are working on creating boxed card sets based on Anna Griffin embossing folders.The card boxes, which were designed in Cricut Design Space,  are cut and put together. The card fronts have been embossed and are attached to the card bases. Now we are working on the design and production of inside sentiments. There are two sets of cards. One is white and the other is cream. Each box holds twelve cards and envelopes. Label stickers were designed in Cricut and printed on Gold printable vinyl and attached to the front of the card boxes. There will also be a sticker on the back with our information which has been designed in Cricut but not printed yet. This is definitely not a project I ever previously considered as I really enjoy making one of a kind items. But this project is so easy, as the embossing folders come with interchangeable sentiments. Even the inside sentiments are easily available and replicate-able as I found them in the Anna Griffin Cricut cartridges I own. All of this is important to me because I have concerns about selling hand made items because of facebook posts by sellers who get complaints about the imperfections in handcrafted items. I am looking forward to posting the finished product, which will hopefully be, on Friday. Stay Tuned.

Loving My Cricut

In my last post I announced my newest project of making boxed sets of Anna Griffin inspired cards. I am, at the same time, preparing for a card class using an Anna Griffin paper pack I received as part of an Anna Griffin purchase on HSN. The package came with a photo of card designs that can be made,mostly, with papers and embellishments in the paper pack. The "Mostly" is the glitch. Fortunately I own several Anna Griffin Cricut cartridges and have been able to replicate, or closely approximate, needed embellishments using my Cricut. The version I have is the Explore Air 2 and I am constantly amazed at how accurately intricate cuts are achieved. I am hoping that there is a Cricut Maker in my future as the reconfigured cutting system looks even more capable of managing those intricate cuts. It never ceases to confuse me when crafters post that they have bought a Cricut, or any product for that matter, and are then afraid to use it. The crafting police are not out there waiting to catch someone making mistakes or producing imperfect content. In addition, there is soooo much help on line through Facebook and YouTube to help. I also want to give a shoutout to the Cricut company for the immense improvement in their response to problems since I purchased my first Cricut. I have not heard complaints about that since Ashish Arora became CEO. I also want to give a shoutout to the mentor of so many Cricut users, Melody Lane. Stay tuned for the Anna Griffin Card Box reveal next week!

Boxed Card Set

I am so excited about a new project my sister and I are working on. But, before I talk about it I want to give some history on why this is significant to me, and maybe to some other craft hoarders who buy things and never actually use them. As a paper crafter, I started out making scrapbooks after buying a kit that was on sale. I eventually moved on to quite elaborate scrap booking. I attended a scrap booking event where someone was using a Cricut. Their output was so amazing I knew I had to have a Cricut of my own. "Cricuting" soon lead to card making. As with the scrap booking, my cards started out very simple. Using mostly pre-designed cards on the Cricut web site. With practice and exposure to the work of others my card making became more elaborate.This eventually lead to my buying a set of eight Anna Griffin embossing folders. These folders are VERY thick and would not easily go through the embossing machine I owned. So here we are a couple of YEARS later and my sister bought a Cricut Cuttlebug which is the machine favored by Anna Griffin. I remembered the embossing folders I had not used and took them to my sister's where we played with them. Now we come to the project we are working on. We are making boxed sets of cards using the folders. I can't wait to post the pictures of our finished product.

May UMC Card Class

Mary-Lou Smelgus

Just now

All three of our cards were inspired by cards posted on Pinterest. I am most excited by the Anna Griffin gold card. I have the Cricut Cartridge and also the physical center cut and emboss die so I was able to recreate the card almost exactly. I downloaded a digital paper for the print layer which was a little busier than the original, but was still pleased with the look. The only problem the class had with that card was that I had backed all the gold pieces with Stickit and it did not come off well due to being embossed into the pieces. Lesson learned. I recently watched a video where Gina K used a sponge to apply wet glue to intricate die cuts and will use that technique in the future and save the Stickit for larger and smoother pieces.

The Heart Card was based on a card using a honeycomb embossing folder. I did have one but the heart die I wanted to use produced a larger cut than would fit inside the flat spaces. I found a heart embossing folder that had one row with larger, flat, hearts which were almost exactly the size of my die cut hearts.

When I make my prototype cards I try to use the same material that I will put in the card kits. In this case I did not have enough of the color blue I wanted to use so I did not correct the mistakes I made when making the prototype. As you can see I glued the sentiment down instead of popping it up with foam dots, which would have been a much better look.The cards made by the group were much better looking than my copy. Additionally, we found a better floral stamp to use. I am always inspired by the creativity of the UMC Card Group.

Layered Die Cut Made With Cricut

I have been seeing demonstrations of using layered dies. They are very exciting but also very expensive. So, after seeing a demonstration of someone creating their own layered die in another cutting system, I decided to try it in Cricut Design Space. The card below shows my first attempt. I'm very pleased with it but want to make some design changes before I use it again. If you use Cricut Design Space and would like access to the file please post a request below.