Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas to all my friends & blog readers! As has become an annual tradition, please enjoy one of my very favorite groups, Straight No Chaser. I was so lucky to see them live as a student at IU, and I love that they are now becoming famous! They always have some great Christmas videos - here is my pick for 2009.

It's A Digital Christmas

I used Photoshop and my printer to print most of my Christmas cards this year. I'm having loads of fun playing with some of the House of 3 digital Christmas elements in making all sorts of fun projects. The first one I'll show you is a Christmas image that prints at 5 x 7, I've been able to "print on demand" when I've found myself needing a few extra quick cards this year. I just print and slap it in an envelope.

The second are some photo tags I made using the House of 3 message brushes. I sized them in Photoshop so they would be super easy to cut using my 1 3/4" circle punch. Now that I know how easy this is, I'm planning to start designing more printable images that work with our favorite punches. And you see those faint horizontal lines on the tags? Yea, I did that on purpose. (Not really, my printer sucks y'all).

Disney Parks Parade Taping Videos

Disney put up a really neat tilt-shift video of the filming of the Disney Parks Christmas Parade taping. We were there for the Steve Rushton, Kelly Ripa & Yanni portions of the taping. Enjoy!

CHA 2010 Sneak Peeks - New Die-Cutting Machines

Hey readers - it's that time again. CHA Winter 2010 begins in a few weeks out in California, and I'm looking forward to collecting updates on all the new papercrafting tools, especially die-cutting systems, stamps and dies.

So far there are two new products I want to point out - Tim Holtz Alternations, a collaboration with Sizzix & the Sizzix eClips - which seems to be a digital device of some variety. The Tim Holtz/Sizzix product line is going to include a new machine as well as dies.

 I'm wondering if this will just be another branded version of the Big Shot, or a totally new style of machine? The sneak peek pic of the eClips makes it nearly impossible to tell what it's meant to be. It sort of looks like a Gypsy, but that would mean Sizzix would need a digital die-cutting machine as well.  Again, more questions than answers. BTW - what ever happened to the Big Shot Pro? :)

No pics yet - but something to think about.

For more on die-cutting machines and how they work, please visit my Die-Cutting Tutorial, which explains the current variety of available machines. 

And check out my past posts on CHA here.

Cricut Projects

Here's a few pics of some Cricut projects I've been working on, including vinyl on ceramic tiles and freezer paper t-shirts. The monogram on the tile is from myvinyldesigner.com. The tiles were $.54 at Lowe's. The t-shirt designs use fonts and images I downloaded from the internet and cut with Sure Cuts-A-Lot (SCAL).

Olivia's shirt. I wanted to do an outline image, but she decided to do multiple paint colors and it just didn't turn out very well, but you can see what the freezer paper looks like anyway.

A t-shirt for a boy. The font is "Stencil" which I think is on most computers and is wonderful for stenciling and t-shirt painting because there are no little pieces. No wonder the military uses it. The tank is from a dingbat font of WWII tanks.

The kids, very happy with their shirts!

I love these tiles. I've seen a number of people do these in the blogosphere and decided to give it a try. It was incredibly easy and a very economical project. The tiles were about 54-cents, and the vinyl is the black Cricut vinyl. The monogram alphabet was $4.95 at myvinyldesigner.com. I haven't sealed the vinyl at all, I just applied it directly and am leaving it alone. I have to deliver these tomorrow so I'm not going to mess with them. But I will experiment some more with other tiles and will try some sort of lacquer. Does anyone have any suggestions for sealing products that won't give me cancer?