St. Louis Regional Day 2!

I have plenty more to share with you about the Close to My Heart St. Louis Regional Celebration, so pour yourself some coffee and have a seat! 

Day two started off with one of my favorite things to talk about--the CRICUT!!!!  I have heard that there are some people who don't know what a Cricut Cutting Machine from Provocraft is, but that seriously must be a rumor.  It is one of the most amazing paper crafting tools ever!  It is essentially a machine that is designed like a printer, but instead of printing out images, it CUTS them out!  I KNOW!!!  I feel your excitement!  If you have one, want one, or want to know more about them, feel free to contact me.  The Cricut is cartridge based, and does not need a computer to operate.  I currently have two different Cricut cartridges available from Close to My Heart, Art Philosophy and Artiste.  This session at St. Louis concentrated on the Artiste Collection. 

I learned quite a bit during this session, the most important fact being this:  Did you know that to get the best cuts and longest life out of your blade you should position the black arrow on your blade housing to face FORWARD?  ME EITHER!!!   Here is the way it should line up--and let me tell you, mine was not facing this way!  I adjusted it the second I got home.

Another important bit of info is the fact that on the Artiste cartridge 3D objects, the size you choose on your dial is the FINAL size of your 3D project when it is assembled.  

We talked about using the Center Point feature key on the Cricut Expression (the BIG Cricut Machine.)  This is useful for when you need to use just a certain portion of a pattern paper, or even cutting a photograph into a certain shape.  You just place the item you want to cut on your mat, load it, move the blade to the center of the area you want to cut, and push "Center Point."  Now whichever shape you choose will cut out AROUND this center point.  Pretty nifty if you ask me!  Just a tip though--always do a practice cut on scraps!  ;)

Now, I have no clue how I did not know this, but you can change your image size increments in the settings menu on your Expression machine.  This can give you smaller cuts!  Here is how to find the screen on your Expression 2:

First click on the wrench from the home screen.

Then use the arrow on the right to advance to...

This setting icon...and click.

This will show the following screen where you can change your size increments or change from cm to mm:

Have you ever wanted to make a true 12 inch border, but could not because the largest cut will not be that long?  I learned how to do it!!!  It is simply a matter of tricking your machine, lol.  Go into the settings again by clicking on the little tool icon.  Use the arrow again to find this little icon:

Click it and you will see this screen where you can choose the 12 x 24 mat size.

You can use this setting even if you DON'T have that size mat!  It will trick your machine into believing that it can actually cut a true 12" length of a border now!  They told us to set the size to 13 inches and adjust your paper accordingly to be a little farther down, but I am not sure why you can't just make it 12"?  I will have to play around with it and see.  I would have NEVER thought of this!  VERY good info for us scrapbookers!  :)

OK, now,  the changing of settings becomes important when you are decorating our Bracket Frame.  There were a couple of consultants that shared the sizes of their bracket frame cuts that they found will perfectly cover the frame at the proper size.  One said 10.9 cm was exactly right and another said to use 10 3/4 inches.  I will try it and let you know in a later post.  Feel free to experiment and let me know in the mean time!   (Use scrap paper first!!!)   ;)

The next major presentation was about how to run successful clubs.  I was very interested in this and was able to get many great ideas from the three fabulous consultants who shared their insights with us.  Sarah Paige Gruber, Brenda Rose, and Shari Froemming were a delight to listen to and are all very successful and talented at their craft.  They each go about their clubs in in very different ways so I think one of the keys here is finding YOUR niche and doing it how it works for YOU.   Nobody could have said it better than Dr. Seuss himself:

Tomorrow I will begin to share the projects we created in St. Louis!  Well, at least the ones I have finished!!!  ;)  Here is a sneak peak!