Pie Baking Day

Thanks for all of the lovely comments about the wreath I did for the Family Trees exhibit at the Concord Museum.  I will post the details about creating the fish and the moon face in the Silhouette Studio software in a few days.  Today is food preparation day for Thanksgiving for many of us and I'll be making pies for our extended family get together on Thursday afternoon.

The traditional apple pie that I make is time consuming but easy to make.  It is also vegan since we use oil for the crust.  I posted step by step photos and the recipe earlier this year.  You can see them HERE.

The Swedish Apple Pie is much faster to make and everyone loves it.  You can find the recipe in THIS POST.

I know that everyone is busy with last minute details for Thanksgiving plans (and maybe scoping out the Black Friday deals) so that's all for today.  Safe travels if you will be on the road this weekend - please be careful!  We'll have one of our sons home this weekend and I might even get an early (for me) start on some Christmas decorating.

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Happy Thanksgiving!

Thanksgiving
By Ralph Waldo Emerson

For each new morning with its light,
For rest and shelter of the night,
For health and food,
For love and friends,
For everything Thy goodness sends.

I want to wish all of you a very Happy Thanksgiving.

 I hope you have a wonderful day with family and friends.

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Give Thanks (digital paper)

Thanksgiving is just a week away and today I am thankful that my Dad is celebrating his 87th birthday.  Happy Birthday Dad!  Thanks to everyone who offered to send him a card.  I'll be going to Pennsylvania this weekend to celebrate with him.

Since I have limited us of my left hand right now, I thought I'd share a digital project - done mostly with my right hand using the computer mouse!  I took photos of a lot of colorful leaves last year.  I placed them on a plain background with the idea that I could turn the photos into digital elements with my Creative Memories StoryBook Creator software.  I used the 3.0 version of the program when I made this paper, the latest version is 4.0.

After I had turned the leaves into individual .png files, I arranged them on a 12 x 12 green textured background.  The leaves above are direct from my photos and the colors are a little muted - so I decided to perk them up a bit.

I experimented with the adjustments on the color tab until I had a result I liked.  The dotted line shows the actual square of the 12 x 12 page.

I applied a surface effect (wrinkles2 in the program) to make the leaves a little more interesting and to tone down the brightness.

Finally, I created a text box and typed the words "Give Thanks" over and over in the Edwardian Script font.

This is the final version of the paper that I created.  I  can use this a a background for a scrapbook page or print it at a smaller size to use for a card or another project.

I'd like to share this paper with you - you can click on the bold link below to download the high quality jpeg image (the image above is just a screen shot and won't enlarge nicely to a 12 x 12 size).  If you use the paper, I'd love to see what you make.

Give Thanks Leaf Paper

For all of you who wrote to ask about my left hand...no I wasn't literally putting out a fire (!)

I had a little raised freckle spot on the back of my hand near the base of my ring finger.  While the doctors thought it was "probably nothing to be worried about" they decided it should be removed.  I didn't realize that to do this they would actually make quite a long incision (you can't remove just the circular spot and pull the skin into a lump so they made a long diamond shaped cut).  I have lots of stitches in my hand and it is swollen and sore.  It should heal fairly quickly but it is really slowing me down right now.  I thought it wouldn't be a big problem since I am right-handed... It is amazing how much you do that requires the use of both of your hands - like opening jars and lifting things.  So I'll do what I can but the next week or so might be a little different than usual here on the blog.  Most of you are probably busy with family and the holidays now - I hope you have a wonderful time and that you can be with your loved ones.


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Happy Thanksgiving

I want to wish each and every one of you a wonderful Thanksgiving.  I know some of you live in countries where this is not a holiday but it is a wonderful tradition to take the time to stop and be thankful for all that we have.  Our sons are both in Japan so this is an odd year for us - truly an empty nest - but we have lots of other family in the area and will enjoy the holiday with them.  Stay safe if you are traveling and have fun! 

Good luck at the sales if you are a Black Friday shopper - I don't think I'll be going out this year.

I haven't had a chance to cut out this card that I designed a couple of weeks ago.  The images are all from the Thanksgiving seasonal cartridge.  I'll share the file as soon as I get a chance to test it.

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New cartridges added to Design Studio

Updates were made available for the Design Studio and the Gypsy today.  The Paisley, Sweet Treats, Batman and Superman cartridges have been added to the software.  The Batman and Superman cartridges are not yet available but it will be fun to preview them.  I have downloaded the updates and they were quick and easy to do.  Here is a LINK to the message board post with the information about the updates.

I haven't had time to experiment with Sweet Treats in Design Studio yet but a few days ago I tried cutting the cupcake holders.  In this photo you can see the cupcake holder from the Sweet Treats cartridge cut in several sizes.  As I mentioned in my review (here is a LINK to that post), the cupcake holder is identical on all 50 keys.  Such a missed opportunity!

The tiny holder is from my first trial cut.  I thought that a cupcake holder should be about 3 inches high so I set the dial on the machine for 3" (completely forgetting that the dial setting would determine the size of the entire unfolded cut - I really should use the Cricut without Design Studio more often!).  These would be cute for truffles or other candy.

The large holder is the size produced by using "fit to page" on the 12 x 12 mat.  It is about the size of a strawberry basket.  I wanted to "dress it up" a bit so I used one of my new Martha Stewart punches (floral vine) on the edges before I assembled the holder.

The third holder seems to be "just right" - it was cut using 8 inches as the dial size.  The sides end up at about two and a half inches with a three inch base.  Now that we can work with the shapes in Design Studio,  I think I will try to make some variations with interesting designs cut into the holders.

I made a quick trip to Michael's today.  I went to the second store that is near my home and found some different items.  If you have a Michael's store nearby, you should know that the Halloween/Fall items are 90% off.  At that price I couldn't resist getting this turkey dinner pop up punch ($1.59) - now I have to figure out what to use it for...  Each time I have been to Michael's lately I have met someone with a Cricut - so here is a quick shout-out to Judy and Janet.   I hope we can get together sometime soon!  (It is always fun to meet fellow Cricut fans).

We leave for my Dad's birthday celebration tomorrow morning.  It will be a great reunion with my sisters and brother to celebrate Dad's 85th!  I have a lot of projects going on in addition to the birthday preparations but most of them are "secret" right now.  You should see the mess in my studio!

I am still trying to locate any missing emails - if you sent me a note or question and I haven't responded please try again.  Thanks also to a few of you who sent me awards - I will be posting those soon.

Good luck planning your "Black Friday" shopping now that the ads are becoming available - it sounds like there are lots of bargains to be had!

Super Simple Thanksgiving cards

Last month I posted a couple of Thanksgiving cards I made using images from a 12 x 12 sheet of cardstock from a Debbie Mumm holiday stack from last year.  Here is a LINK to that post where you can see the stack and the sheet of cardstock I used.

These were the first two cards I made and shared last month.  I sat aside the rest of the images after selecting coordinating colors for the card bases and got busy with other things.  Today I finally put the rest of the cards together.

The first three are simply inked on the edges and adhered to the textured cardstock cut at 8 1/2 x 5 1/2 and folded in half for an A2 card. You can't get much simpler than that!  The glittered images are charming enough to make the card work.

I happened to have some gold metallic paper on my work table so I used it for the next cards.  For the card on the right I layered a rectangle below the pumpkins, keeping the odd proportions so the side margins are wider than the top and the bottom.  The card on the left has a layer that I punched with the Martha Stewart Punch Around the Page Leaf set.  The image is five inches so the punched edge worked out evenly.  When I trimmed the images, I took off the gold border on two sides because they each had been on the edge of the original page and the borders were uneven.

For the cornucopia card, I simply added some of the punched out leaves at the four corners.

I am starting to accumulate lots of leaf punches!  These three were all new to me this Fall.  The punch at the top left is an EK Success border punch called "falling leaves."  I like the compact size of these punches and this one has a variety of images in the same border.

This card is yet another experiment.  The paper is from a Debbie Mumm stack and I punched the edge of the layer with the EK Success punch.  The layer was white and looked too stark with the Autumn colors so I looked around for a way to make it blend in better.  I tried out some Tim Holtz Distress embossing powder in "Old Paper" on the edges (I picked it up from a clearance bin for 50 cents a long time ago).  When I made this card I had no idea how the distress powders worked.  I have since watched a video by Tim Holtz and I learned that there are release crystals that are meant to rub off after heating (and here I thought I had not heated the powder properly).

Here is one more "experimental" card.  I had a few pieces of the 12 x 12 sheet that were just small tags like the three leaves you see here.  I picked up a few pieces of paper left from other projects that were still on my table and inked and layered them.  I added some wide ribbon and didn't particularly like the way it looked - so I added some orange glitter cardstock on top of the ribbon.  I don't really like the final result but I just wanted to show some things that I tried.  Sometimes using random bits and pieces and just playing around with them can produce interesting results - and sometimes it is better to have a plan!

I hope I have inspired you to take out some of those stacks and make some quick and simple cards.  Remember, not every card has to be a "masterpiece".  Sometimes simple and actually in the mail is the best.  The people who receive your cards are happy to hear from you and much less critical than you think!

I have been designing a lot of intricate new cards - experimenting with making the same things in Design Studio and on the Gypsy.  Right now I have a hard time choosing a favorite - I can group angled elements on the Gypsy but I can hide contours with the Design Studio.  The hide contour feature is something that really gives you a lot of freedom to make interesting new designs from existing images.  Some of these files will soon be appearing here (and some will show up in other places...) 

Just a few notes - The latest update on the subscription emails sometimes showing text and photos on top of one another may be related to using the Google "Chrome" browser - or it may not...a few people who have had problems did say they were using Chrome.  If you are having these formatting issues,or if the email subject is showing up as "${latestitemTitle}," please remember that you can just click on the title and you will be linked to my blog where the post should appear correctly  You can also stop the subscription and "follow" the blog - whatever works the best for you.

I have also had some emails about Design Studio classes.  I have been trying to answer them individually but I did want to say that Jen has been away on a long awaited vacation for the past week and we are working on new formats that may make lessons more accessible to those of you who have timing conflicts.  We will have some new classes and other options posted soon on the Let me Show you How to Do that blog.

A couple of Thanksgiving cards

I am still under the weather - instead of getting better I am worse today, sneezing and coughing.  I did manage to go downstairs for a while so I could "play" with some paper and I made a few cards.  These are for Thanksgiving (very early for me!).

I have always loved Debbie Mumm fabrics - I have lots of them waiting to be turned into quilts.  I was very excited when she started doing paper as well.  I bought this stack last year at Jo-Ann's - there is a new set of Harvest and Holiday paper and cardstock available this year.  If you are like me and still have last year's in your stash, it is time to start using it up!

I took this piece of 12 x 12 and cut it up into individual motifs, leaving a border where I could.  The images are glittered and very shiny.

For the first card, I started with an A2 base (5.5 x 8.5 inches folded in half).  I was putting things away and came across some double sided bead or glitter tape that I bought on sale and hadn't tried yet, so I made a 1/4 inch green glitter strip along the bottom of the card.  The tape did a good job but glitter sure is messy to work with. I am a bit sparkly and so is my floor!  I trimmed the section with the turkeys and left the bit of gold border at the top.  I used some brown ink on the edges to be sure the white side of the cut would not distract from the finished card.

For the second card, I used the Martha Stewart loop Punch Around the Page set.  These punches work with very specific measurements to make a perfect edge.  If you click this LINK you will see another card I made using this punch and you can also see the instructions for making the borders.

The sizing does not fit the topper for an A2 card perfectly, so I adapted the pattern by punching the corners and then centering the border punch on each edge, leaving a small gap that I trimmed with sharp scissors to even out the design.  The sentiment is stamped and embossed with brown "Zing" embossing powder.

I hope you are having a nice weekend - we have terrible weather predicted for tomorrow which is a shame since it is the Head of the Charles Regatta in Cambridge/Boston this weekend.  I will be staying in again, drinking lots of tea and trying to get well!