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Chuck e Cheese Frame

February 23, 2011 0

Last Sunday, I took my son to Chuck E Cheese to attend a birthday party. They had a mechanical car/ride where you can sit next to Chuck E Cheese. At the end of the ride, the machine took a picture and printed it out for you. It was really a horrible picture. It looked like a security camera picture printed on receipt paper. But my son thought it was pretty neat. The next day, I was feeling the creative itch. But I didn’t have a whole lot of time to devote to any one project. So I decided that it would be easy to make a nice frame for that picture out of some colored cardstock. Plus, it would give me a great excuse to use my new Cricut cutting machine.

I used Sure Cuts A Lot software and used the included shapes to put this project together. It was a rounded rectangle for the frame, a simple rectangle for the picture window,  a swirl for the frame decoration, and some fonts on my computer for the lettering and shadow. This project honestly took about 45 minutes from design to finish. While this project isn’t necessarily an amazing expression of creativity, it goes to show you how easy it is to put something together with stock shapes and scrap paper. My son thought it was pretty neat and immediately posted it on his bulletin board. This project made a nice memento of his time with the giant rat. 😉

Category: Craft

Cricut Expressions Personal Cutter

February 7, 2011 1

A couple weeks ago, my wife and I bought the Cricut Expressions personal cutter. Basically, this is a cnc cutter used to cut paper, vinyl, and other thin materials. Scrapbookers use this machine to cut shapes and stencils when putting together scrapbook pages.

By using a program called Sure Cuts A Lot (SCAL), you can hook the Cricut up to our computer.  It works just like a printer.  But instead of printing, you’re cutting your own designs.  SCAL can use any font (including dingbats) and can import a number of different graphic files.  I use Inkscape to create my designs and import the SVG file directly into SCAL.  Then I organize the layers so I can cut the appropriate papers.  Then I click the Cut button and away it goes.

This is a really cool machine. It is so much fun to play with. I spent the weekend trying out different things. I’ve designed a couple cards (Valentine’s Day is coming up), cut name tags, bookmarks, some of my scroll saw patterns out of paper, and even cut some stencils so I can etch glass. I’m always getting new ideas on elements I can incorporate into my projects. This is really a neat tool to add to your crafting arsenal.  I look forward to sharing some projects where I used the Cricut in future posts.  Hopefully that will spark a few ideas for yourself.

We bought our Cricut on Amazon for $225. While the cartridges are ridiculous, spending the extra money on Sure Cuts A Lot pretty much frees you from spending your hard earned money on those cartridges. But if you decide you want a few anyway, I found eBay is the best place to find them at decent prices.

 

Note: SCAL no longer supports the Cricut Personal Cutter.

Category: Craft