Cricut Design Studio

What is the Cricut Design Studio (also known as DS or CDS)? What can you do with it? Do I need DS?

DS is an add on program for the cricut. With DS it will allow you to view all the cartridges available on the Cricut line, weld shapes, create new shapes using existing shapes on the cartridges, conserve paper, layout your designs prior to cutting the shapes/letters, remove portions of shapes just to name a few things that this program can do.

Does this sound like something that you would like to enhance your "cricuting" experiance? Well you too can enjoy the benefits of DS. Provocraft allows
you to download the trial version. What can you do with the trial version? Well you have access to the full program only you will not be able to cut with all of your cartridges. With the trial version you will be able to VIEW and DESIGN with any any cricut cartridge but will only be able to cut with the cartridge that came with the machine (George and Basic Shapes (GBS) for the original bug (baby), Accent Essentials (AE) and Plantin Schoolbook (PS) for the Expression (E), and Don Juan (DJ) for the Create.

If you purchase the full version you will then be able to cut with any shape/letter/cut file from any cartridge that you actually own. Like any computer program it does have a learning curve, however once you get a hang if it it's a great program even when it does have it's quirks and issues.

Do you need DS? Well that's entirely upto you as to what you want to do with your cricut and your crafts/projects. I almost never use my bug without using DS. I like laying out my layout/card/project etc. to see how it will look prior to cutting it out that way I can tweak things first. I also like having the ability to weld my letters together to create words instead of shapes.

Hope this gives you an idea of what DS can do for you. Be on the look out for future DS tutorials.

The results are in .....

So the results for the photography contest are in. The photos will be displayed in the Southwest Regional Library in Broward County for the whole month of February. Out all of my submissions 2 made it into the display. They are:


and


Be on the lookout for additional contest pictures. We will be having another contest for the library display next November so be on the lookout for those pictures (they will be posted through out the year).

Happy Wednesday

Hi everyone!! Hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and holiday. Christmas was nice here, very laid back, but nice. I know I've been MIA for a bit, but between hosting Christmas at our house and a little mini vacation to visit my wonderful friend Rachie from DC (Hi Rach!!!) visiting her parents in Orlando I'm finally back home and ready to start posting again. So be sure to check back soon. Take care!!!

Photography Contest Part II

Happy Saturday everyone!! This is the first Saturday I've had off from work in a long while (aside from a few weeks ago for a Baby Shower) so it sure is nice to be on the couch and just enjoying some blogging time :o). So as promissed here are some more of my submissions for the Library Display. Results will be announced tomorrow so hopefully I'll be able to report back that at least one picture will be on display in February.

Flowers

Yep - that's the same picture on my header of the blog. This picture I took at my sister's wedding in September.

This was from another wedding I went to in November. I submitted it for the Flower category since you have the orchids in the vase.


Another picture from the wedding.

I believe there was one more Flower picture but of course I can't remember right now which on I submitted. HA HA HA

Nature Pictures

Here are the pictures I submitted for the nature category








Well that's all for now. Have a great day!

It's beginning to look like Christmas

So I know most people have already had their Christmas tree up for a few weeks but work has been keeping me super busy and I had to work the day after Thanksgiving so no putting the tree up then. I have been spending the morning today putting up all my Christmas decorations. I'll be sure to post pictures when I'm done but in the mean time here is a teaser :-P



Hope you're having a great weekend.

Photography Contest

So the photography club/class offered by our community schools program that I attend is having a photography contest. The winners of the contest will get to have their pictures displayed in one of the larger public libraries in our county. I believe there were 14 categories that you could submit pictures for and could submit upto 4 pictures per category. I submitted a bunch of pictures in different categories.

Here are the some of the pictures I submitted.

ABSTRACT PHOTOGRAPHY

"Can you feel the love"


"Sunny day"


"Spirograph"


"Don't be Blue"

I can't wait to find out who the winners are. The judging will happen on December 20th. I hope that at least one picture that I submitted will make it to the library. This is the first time our class has been able to display pictures in the library. Then in November 2010 we will have the opportunity to display large format pictures (meaning anything larger than 8x10) and will have a lot more space available for us. I'll post more pictures from my submissions in future blog posts.

Diaper Cake

Hello to all my wonderful blog followers. I know it's been about a week since I posted anything and boy has it been a busy week. But I'm on vacation in two weeks so looking forward to getting lots posted then. Well last weekend I went to a baby shower for a very close family friend and my gift to her was a diaper cake. I've seen so many cute diaper cakes posted and wanted to try making one. I of course hadn't had any reasons until now to make one. They are so much fun and so easy to make.



Here is the cake at the party. I of course took pictures with my camera phone cause I was sooooo excited when I was done and meant to take pictures before I wrapped it. But me being me wrapped it heat shrunk the plastic and then went Doh! you forgot to take another picutre. So here is the not so good picture before wrapping.



Another view


Last view


Well that's all for now. Hope you enjoyed the diaper cake. Thanks for stopping by!! :-)

Card a Day Challenge

So my Secret Sister Megan, over on the Cricut Message Board and I decided to challenge each other to a card a day. However, of course life got in the way for both of us so this challenge has extended into more than the month that we intended for it to take, however, we are making great progess and having a blast doing them. Here are a few I've done for the challenge:

Happy Birthday

I used the MCPT to color the candle. The candle stamp is one of the $1.00 Studio G stamps found at M's. The border punch is a MS punch.

The turkey feathers and happy thanksgiving were cut on the cricut using a .cut file from Diane (aka Capadia) has on her blog. I had already made the card base using ribbon and didn't want to make a new card with the cut file so I kept the base that I had and just added this to the top.

Christmas/Holiday Cards

Poinsetta was made from a cut file from TaraMason over on the cricut MB. This card was a total scraplift from the one she posted over on cricut. Instead of the gold center I used red stickles and inked the edges in gold.


This poinsetta was also on the cut file from TaraMason (her cut file had both the small and large poinsetta). I ran the green paper through the cuttlebug swiss dots embossing folder and then added some "bling".

Non-Traditional Holiday colors

(yes Megan I cheated and used the one I had already made .... sorry non-traditional holiday colors are difficult for me).

Sorry the card is hard to see but the flash was reflecting on the silver paper. Used the cricut to cut the black pink and silver squares. Then stamped snowflakes on the silver squares (sorry don't know who made that stamp).

The picture below shows the true colors of the card.

Fourth of July

Another MCPT on the bear stamp. The bear is a Great Impressions Stamp. The "happy fourth" came from a Stampendous stamp set. The stars were all cut on the Cricut at different sizes. Some were then pop dotted on the card to add dimmension.

Last card for today is a

Halloween Card

This card I welded a spider web to a square and added the spider. Then I used MS glitter and google eyes on the spider.

Well, I guess that's all for now. Hope everyone had a great weekend. If I get some more time tonight I'll try to post a few other projects I worked on within the last week or so. If not check back later this week. Take care!

Photography meets Paper Crafting

Since both of my hobbies are paper crafting and photography I thought paper crafting could meet photography. Yes we need pictures to scrapbook but why can't my pictures be used in cards? Well they can. I made some cards using pictures that I took for my photography class.

This is the photograph:



Here is the card (valentine's day card):



Another card I did using a photograph and Martha Stewart Leaf punch is this great fall card.



Here is the orignal picture:

It's amazing what you can come up with when you think "outside of the box". Well hope you enjoyed these two cards. I'll have more to post hopefully tomorrow! Have a great night. :o)

I did it!!!!

Well after lots of you should do it's!; where's your blog?; can you help me find?; I want to see pictures; I decided it was time to start a blog soooooo here it is. A place for me to post my craft projects, photography and cricut tutorials. Thanks for stopping by!!!