Nursery Rhymes - enabling...

One of the newest Cricut cartridges is the Nursery Rhymes cartridge.  It has a great font and charming silhouetted images from many favorite nursery rhymes.  You can get more information and ideas for using the cartridge at this LINK on the Cricut website.  You can download the complete handbook from the link on that page.  I am happy to see the improvements to the website that make it easier to find out all about a cartridge before you buy it.  Most cartridges have much more than you can see in the image on the back of the box.

I am away on a short trip to New Jersey and Pennsylvania - to see my son's concert and to visit with my Dad.  One of the side benefits to a trip to see Dad is a chance to go to a "super Jo-Ann's" just a few miles from where he lives.  The Jo-Ann's stores near my home are all small stores.  I stopped there tonight and saw that they have tons of Nestabilities, the new Cricut Cake and most of the accessories including frosting tubs and sheets and many paper packs that are not at "my" store in Massachusetts.

I have always liked Debbie Mumm's designs and I found a cardstock stack that will be perfect to use with the Nursery Rhymes cartridge.  The sign said that the Debbie Mumm papercrafting supplies were 60% off but when I got to my Dad's I realized that they had charged me 40% off.  I'll have to call in the morning to check on this - it is possible I misunderstood the sign.  (Of course, it would be better if I had noticed this before I left the store...).  I think this is probably an older stack that never made it to my local store.


I took photos of all of the pages so you could see what this stack has to offer.  It is late so I won't give you my usual "commentary" but I will do a review of the Nursery Rhymes cartridge soon after I get home.  So, without further ado,  take a look at a whole lot of cute!

Here is a closer view of the front cover listing the featured nursery rhymes.  12 of the patterns have glitter and 12 are plain.  There are two sheets of each design in the stack.

One more "green" tip - on most of the stacks made by DCWV (they manufacture the Debbie Mumm papers for Jo-Ann's) there are small squares of the papers on the cover.  Don't throw away the cover - these little pieces can be used for projects with a bit of careful trimming.

One last photo from after the concert - I know stripes and plaids don't go together but somehow they work for our son (you should have seen the rest of the outfit!).   The concert was great and now he just has to take his finals and that will be the end of junior year. 

Dinner, Shopping and Digital Coloring

I just have a few things to share - mostly enabling if you have a Costco near you.  We needed to stock up on some things and went to Costco today.  My only problem with Costco is that the money I save on the things I actually need such as coffee and paper towels, usually ends up being spent on things I didn't even know I needed until I saw them at Costco.  Oh well, I do find some great things there (and I didn't even check out the ribbons today).

In the book section, I found some scrapbook kits for $12.99.  They include 64 pre-designed pages (16 for each season) and lots of stickers - epoxy, glitter, vellum and dimensional. One kit is Debbie Mumm designs (her designs are some of my favorites from my quilting fabrics - she also has scrapbook lines at Joann's that I like).

The other kit is by Susan Branch - one of my absolute favorite illustrators (I think I have all of her cookbooks too!).  I normally don't like "pre-done" anything.  I enjoy coming up with my own page layouts and designs - but I think that the pages would be great if you were trying to catch up or do a quick album for a gift (if you also like the style of these artists).

Here is the back of the Debbie Mum kit - you can get an idea of the page layouts.  You could always "deconstruct" these and use bits and pieces of the pages on your own pages or for cards.

The back of the Susan Branch book shows a few of the predesigned pages in her kit. 

Here is a glimpse at the extras in the Debbie Mum kit - seven sheets of embellishments including epoxy stickers, vellum stickers,border stickers, glitter cardstock stickers, more cardstock stickers, letter stickers and some die cut tags and labels.

 

The Susan Branch kit has the same basic configuration of extras.  Even if you use very little of the paper, the embellishments alone are probably worth $12.99 (once again, if you like these artists).  You can also use these pages as inspiration for your own page layouts.

So, if you like the look of these, check your Costco.  You know the "Costco rule" - get it when you see it (because items like these come and go very quickly).

I also wanted to mention that you can give a donation to help with earthquake relief for the people in Haiti when you check out.  We were happy to do our bit and I think it is great that Costco is organizing this (the money goes to the Red Cross).

 

One of my other purchases today was this book (for $8.99).  It is full of black and white line drawings that can be photocopied and used for craft projects.  It would be great for practicing with Copic markers (another temptation that I have avoided so far).

I scanned a few of the designs and did some digital coloring in my Creative Memories StoryBook Plus 3.0 software.  The initial set up is a bit time consuming (but fun to do) and once you have all of your areas defined you can experiment with colors and patterns over and over.  I posted about doing this last summer when I used one of Dustin Pike's great digital images - here is a LINK to that post.

On the right is the original image and the image on the left is the one I "digitally colored," leaving the outlines black.

You can get different effects by changing the color of the lines between sections.

 

Here is another example - the original line drawing is at the top right.

Here is a closer view of my "coloring."  I used some digital paper for some of the areas on this one.

You may wonder about the "dinner" in the title of this post.  Well, tonight we finally went out for our anniversary dinner.  We went to the Capital Grille and had a wonderful time.  They gave complimentary champagne, special chef's tastes and a candle in our dessert!  Then the waiter took our picture (without me even asking).  He came back a few minutes later with this photo in a nice folder as a memento of the evening. Needless to say, he got a nice tip!

I have lots of projects to get ready for various design teams next week so tomorrow I hope to spend some quality time in my studio.  We are expecting a storm tomorrow night but we are well stocked after the "Costco run."  I don't have to drive anywhere until next weekend, so the storm won't bother me!  I hope you are having a great weekend.