Happy scrapbooking month! The merry month of May is great for many reasons. First, it's national scrapbooking month. If that isn't enough it's also the month lilacs are in full bloom just like clockwork. This reminds me that Mother's Day will soon be here. With the help of my Cricut pal, I've made an especially nice card for my own Mother.

Some say that May is a boring scrap and craft month. I would like to help them with a few ideas. May is full of some great holidays and celebrations to scrap about. It all starts off with May Day, Mother Goose Day, then Cinco de Mayo, Mother's Day, Armed Forces Day, Memorial Day, not to mention graduation season is in full swing. I also remind you that the first ice cream freezer was patented May 29, 1948. That alone is reason to celebrate. We wouldn't be eating ice cream at all of our celebrations without that one! I personally plan on scrapping and celebrating May with a bowl of strawberry cheesecake ice cream. Yum!


Happy Cricuting :-)

A: Thanks for your question. I'll bet you are looking for the Cricut Deep Cut Blade. Click on this link to learn more about it.

The deep cut blade is recommended for:
Magnet (0.035"/0.80mm thick) with the recommended settings of
Speed 3 (medium)
Pressure 5 (max)
Depth 6
Multi Cut 4

Chipboard (0.059"/1.50mm thick) with the recommended stettings of
Speed 3 (medium)
Pressure 4 (high)
Depth 6
Multi Cut 5

Stamp (0.0415"/1.05mm thick) with the recommended settings of
Speed 3 (medium)
Pressure 4(high)
Depth 4.6
Multi Cut 1

My tulips have finally opened. WOW! Such vibrant yellows and reds, I love watching the backyard as each day new flowers or green leaves show their faces as spring is upon us. My lilacs are in bloom and the backyard smells so good. I love spring and I love Mother's Day, which is next week for those of us here in the United States. I cut some flowers to put in my house so that I could continue to enjoy nature. I think even the dogs can tell spring is coming; they are wrestling more and enjoy the backyard during the day. Ella also likes to taste the tulips--apparently tulips taste good. I have to nip this tasting of the flowers in the bud--quickly!

For this exploration I will continue with the cartridge Life is a Beach. As a review the creative features that come with this cartridge are: Layers, Title Words, Border, Photo Card, Square Card, and Charm. Last week I wrote about the Photo Card and the Square Card, the week previous I talked about what comes in the cartridge and the Layers feature. In this exploration I will talk about the features Border, and Charm. The Border feature is pretty obvious, in that any of the images can have a border for your scrapbook pages or any craft project. The leaves are placed so that you will get at least three leaves in a line, or maybe four that create a unique design. The "leaf 2" image reminds me of an award plaque. If you were creating some special awards, add this image using the border feature. You can either cut the image out of gold cardstock or spray paint the image gold. Then glue this image to your plaque and you've just cricut-ized your project--hehe. The plumeria border would work great with the Yudu silk screen machine. Cut the image out of black cardstock and simply follow the instructions in the Yudu machine to create your template. Once that is done, you can print this image on a canvas bag, t-shirt, or even a pillow case. Think of the fun gifts that you can do with the Cricut and the Yudu machine. The ocean border will fit any of your summer pictures for a scrapbook page. The fish, when cut with the border feature, turns into a school of fish, which will match any pictures surrounding beaches, fish, or vacations. The swim trunks border could also be used as a journal tag. Simply write the story of your scrapbook page on the swim trunks- such a cute idea. The crab and turtle borders are really cute, or maybe it's just that I love those images too--hmmmm, am I playing favorites?

The Charm creative feature is similar to its title. All of the images are placed within a circle and the little charm marking at the top. On the whale image, when you press the shift button, you can cut a solid circle to use as a background behind any of the other images. Or this can be used as a journal tag, a Christmas tree ball if cut small. You even get the letters and numbers in the charm style as well. This means that you have an extra font style in this cartridge. Now you can spell out a title or border with this great charm shapes. The letter "X" in the charm feature reminds me of two baseball bats crossed.

Well check out next week as I finished up the last creative feature. Happy Cricuting and Happy Mother's Day to all you mothers and grandmothers.

-Crafty Kimber

A: This freezing is common if it is happening once or twice every so often. There are a few tips and tricks that I can give you to keep your little "bug" from freezing more than that:

First, make sure that you are not "Hot-Swapping" the cartridges. Hot-Swapping is when you are inserting or taking cartridges out without turning off your Cricut to do so. Many who were doing this found that the machine would no longer freeze when they turned their Cricut off to change the cartridge. Also, if you power your machine on, the doors open and there is not cartridge loaded, you need to turn it off, put in the cartridge, and then turn it back on.

Second, if you give the Cricut a lot of commands at once, or commands in what it thinks is a weird order, it may freeze out of confusion. Most importantly, make sure you are pressing the Special Feature keys (the gray keys located on the left side of the keypad) before pressing the characters or letters you want to cut. For example, if you were going to cut out word "CAT" with a Shadow, you would want to press Shadow, C, A, T--not C, A, T, Shadow. Also, typing long phrases can cause the machine to freeze up. If you plan to cut a long phrase, try spacing it up between a few separate cuts.

Third, if the machine is on for an extended period of time and overheats, it may freeze. Try to give it a 5 ? 10 minute rest every hour or so.