Folk Art Festival Contest and more...

image from Cricut.com site

I got a "Hello Thursday" email from ProvoCraft yesterday.  These used to be on the third Thursday of the month but things were switched up this time.  Two cartridges were highlighted - Holiday Frames and Tags, which is available only from a Creative Memories consultant and Folk Art Festival which is available only at Michael's stores.

The Folk Art Festival cartridge is very appealing to me.  It has a Pennsylvania Dutch style with a wonderful decorative font with cut-outs and shadows.  You can see the full digital handbook HERE.  There are also ten lovely fancy shape cards with inset images (the kind that I like to design) and fifty beautiful borders.   The borders could be welded together to make intricate frames.

I don't buy as many Cricut cartridges as I used to but I think I'll be making room on the shelf for this one.  Cartridges are on sale this week for $34.99 - I may have to take a trip to Michael's today or tomorrow!

There is also a Folk Art Festival Design Contest with five prizes - a Grand Prize of a Cricut Mini and a $50 Michael's Gift Card and four category prizes for Scrapbook, Home Decor, Gifts/Cards and Fabric.  Click HERE to go to the contest information page.

There are some new specials available this week at Cricut.com.  The digital Thanksgiving Table Decor cartridge is only $4.99 and the Sweet Tooth Boxes cartridge is free to use this week (through the Craftroom or by synching your Gypsy).  There is also a special on the Expression 2 bundled with the Tablescapes  - Fall & Winter cartridge for $209.99. Just click Today's deals from Cricut! to go to the specials page.

Breast Cancer Awareness Month Gift

 

  
The winner of the Sizzix Scrap Pink set is...

Congratulations!  Please send me your mailing address and I'll send the package as soon as possible.

Thanks to everyone who left comments and shared their personal stories.  Please remember to continue to do your exams and get those mammograms when they are due! 

Have a great weekend.  If you are in an area that was hit hard by the Hurricane Sandy I hope that things are starting to get back to normal for you.  The images on the news have been overwhelming and it is going to take a lot of hard work to repair the damages in some places.


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New Cricut Cartridges and a Silhouette Sale

Two new Cricut cartridges were announced in a "surprise" Hello Thursday yesterday.  Both of these cartridges had already been found in JoAnn stores and discussed on the Cricut message boards so it really wasn't that much of a surprise...  You can find the "Hello Thursday" page on the Cricut.com site HERE.

screen shot from Cricut.com site

Create A Critter 2 looks very much like the original Create a Critter but there are lots of seasonal and holiday icons and phrases.  If you loved Create a Critter, you'll probably love this cartridge too (but you may wonder if it seems too similar to the first cartridge).  You can find the full handbook HERE on the Cricut.com site.

screen shot from Cricut.com site

Suburbia makes me think of the TV show Mad Men with phrases and images from the 50's and 60's.  It is similar to Forever Young, with silhouetted figures that have colorful layers added.  There is a font called "housewife" in regular and italic versions, both with shadows.  The font is in a style that is very popular right now and would be great for making posters.  You can find the full handbook HERE on the Cricut.com site.

If you have a Silhouette machine, there is a 25% off sale on purchases from the Silhouette America site The sale will run until September 12th and does not include the Cameo, downloads, download cards, subscriptions or gift cards.  Just use the code BACKPACK at checkout.  Some of the supplies can also be used with a Cricut machine.

The days are getting shorter and fall is arriving.  There was a beautiful sunset last night with very bright pink light.  I have something special planned for tomorrow so be sure to stop by!


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Freshly Hatched

Four new Cricut cartridges were announced yesterday for "Hello Thursday" - you can see the full Hello Thursday listing on the Cricut.com site HERE.  There are also some new Cuttlebug items (I like the chicken wire) and some cartridges that are now available digitally.

The new cartridges are:

Mini Books - a Project cartridge with an exploding box album, a mini accordion book, a mini square book, a horizontal album, and a vertical album.

Frame of Mind - a Project cartridge with 24 layered frames sized to fit standard photo sizes.

Tablescapes - Fall & Winter - an Events cartridge with fall and winter themed boxes, name cards, napkin rings, etc.

Team Spirit - an "Everyday" cartridge with lots of sports icons and mascots in both full color and two layer versions.

You can download the Mini Books handbook HERE.

The Frame of Mind handbook is HERE

The Tablescapes - Fall & Winter handbook is HERE.

The Team Spirit handbook is HERE.

Let me know what you think of these new offerings...I haven't had time to study them but on first glance my favorite is the Frame of Mind.

The chicks at the top of this post were on display at the Grange Fair in the 4H building.  I was so glad that my Dad decided to let me take him to the fair for a couple of hours.  My parents were very active Grangers, and August was always "Fair Time" for our whole family.  I grew up helping with the exhibits and serving the delicious barbequed chicken dinners.  You can see lots of photos of the types of things on display at the Fair in THIS POST from a couple of years ago.

Can you guess the secret purpose of the white topped silo in this photo?  If you would like to find out more about the Middletown Grange Fair in Bucks County PA, the website is HERE.  The Fair will end on Sunday.

I'll be driving home today and we have some family events back in Massachusetts this weekend - but I will definitely find some crafty time!

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Craft Wars, Blitsy and more...

Have you heard about "Craft Wars," the new show on TLC?  The first episode will air on Tuesday, June 26th at 10 pm (9 central).  Three contestants compete in two rounds and the finalist gets a prize of $10,000.  You can see lots more about it HERE on the TLC site. 

Michael's is sponsoring this show and if you go to the site you can download a coupon for 50% off any regular price item.  The coupon is good until Saturday, June 30th.

I am curious to see what sort of challenges they give to the participants.  I wonder how they chose the contestants.  Do you think you'd like to try something like this?  Crafting under pressure (and in front of a camera crew) sounds rather stressful - but you sure could buy lots of supplies with the grand prize!

Blitsy has lots of Tim Holtz Alterations Movers and Shapers Sizzix dies.  I have been wanting to try more of these and I ordered a few today.  They also have Diane Reaveley's Dylusions Spray inks but you'll need to hurry since the colors are going fast (they do sometimes restock during the week but you never know...).  I bought some colors when I took her class and I added several more with this order (lucky for me there are only twelve colors!).

If you haven't shopped at Blitsy before, please use my referral LINK to join this free membership site.  They have all sorts of interesting craft items at good prices with new sales starting every Monday, Wednesday and Friday and continuing for a week or until sold out (popular items can sell out very quickly).  Once you are a member, you can get your own referral link and earn credits for future purchases.

Hello Thursday is old news at this point, but in case you missed it, there were two new Cricut cartridges announced.  Both are full cartridges.

Dr. Checkup is all about the typical childhood illnesses.  You can find the digital handbook HERE.  I doubt that I will be purchasing this one, but it might be useful if you have small children and scrapbook everything.  I don't care for the lopsided faces on every character - I'd like the mouth to be centered as it is on real people!  There is some cute word art and lots of medical items as icons.

A Quilted Christmas is much more my style, but I do have lots of Christmas cartridges already.  You can find the digital handbook HERE.  I like the way this handbook shows completed versions of all of the cuts together in a section at the beginning of the book.  This makes it easier to browse through and find all of your options quickly.  The card feature is very nice - just two layers for quick and elegant cards.

Two more cartridges (Art Deco and Paper Doll Teen Scene) are now available as digital cartridges.  You can see all of the cartridges in the Cricut CraftRoom online design tool.  The update for Design Studio is not listed and I haven't checked on the Gypsy for updates.

There are lots of new Cuttlebug items - just scroll down on the Hello Thursday page to see them.  I like the poinsettia quilling set and several of the new embossing folders, particularly the Honeycomb, the Folk Art and the Christmas designs.  Click HERE to go to the page with the details on all of the new sets.

Monday was a rainy day - a good day to rest up after my trip.  I did do some designing - now I have to start cutting samples to see how they look in paper.

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Art Deco and more...

Yesterday was Hello Thursday - the day each month when new Cricut cartridges are released.  I haven't been keeping up with all of the cartridge releases here on the blog.  When they started to come out every week (digital cartridges) it became too overwhelming to try to keep up.  You should be sure to register on the Cricut.com site and subscribe to the newsletters if you want to get email notifications about new cartridges.  You'll also find information and projects on the Official Cricut Blog.  Of course, the Hello Thursday bloggers, my friends Joy (Obsessed With Scrapbooking)  and Melanie (Courtney Lane Designs) will be showing lots of great projects made with these cartridges.

You can find the Hello Thursday page HERE.  The new cartridges are already in the Cricut Craftroom.  I checked but the update for the Design Studio isn't up yet - I'm not sure if the current Gypsy update includes these cartridges.  (All of the bold red words in this post are "clickable" to go to the sites mentioned).

The cartridges released this month are:

Spring Cottage
This is a seasonal cartridge with a limited number of images.  They are very pretty but I already have lots of similar images on other cartridges.  This cartridge does have a cut for the cute paper strawberries that have been popular for a while and a basket to put them in.

Chip Decor
This cartridge coordinates with chipboard products sold at Hobby Lobby.  This is a great idea - I remember how long it took me to figure out the exact shapes for some of the Michael's flower shaped chipboard books to create files for them.  I won't be getting this one since we don't have Hobby Lobby in my area so I don't have any need for it.

Paper Doll Teen Scene
I am sure this will be very popular since people have been asking for more "grown up" dolls for quite a while.  It's not a cartridge that I have a lot of use for right now so I don't think I'll be getting this one.  I also don't care for the style and the lack of noses and mouths on these dolls!

Now before you get to thinking that I am sounding very negative about this release, I have to say that the other two cartridges do appeal to me - a lot!

Art Deco

This is a cartridge with images that we haven't seen before, great fonts and a very nice monogram system.  I was able to quickly create a screen shot in the Craftroom of my monogram in a pretty frame.  There are options for left, right and center initials so you will be able to make beautiful etched glass items and monogram note cards with this cartridge. 

Contemporary Nature

This is an Imagine Pattern Cartridge.  There are twenty patterned papers and some sheets of tags with four additional projects.  The color palette appeals to me - teal, blue, gray, purple - and the designs are attractive.  I used it to make the screen shot at the top of this post. I still have a problem with buying 20 sheets of digital paper that I can't recolor for $40 - it is so much more expensive than the typical digital kits that I buy and I can use them in more ways with other programs...still, I do like this cartridge.  Maybe I'll be able to find it for a better price in a few months.

So that's my take on this week's offerings - what do you think?

Here is a sneak peek at my St. Patrick's Day design.  I'll be posting the card I made with it tomorrow.  I created it in the Silhouette software, starting from a free design from the Dover sampler (but making a few of changes to make it "cuttable"at a small size).  This design is only about 3 1/2 x 4 inches and you can see how tiny and thin some of the lines are.

If you aren't on the Dover Sampler email list, you should be.  They have great sample images every week that you can download and use for all sorts of projects.  Some of the files are SVGs and some are regular clip art.  You can sign up for the Dover Sampler here.

How will you be spending St. Patrick's Day?  It is a "major holiday" here in the Boston area so there will be lots of parades and parties.

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Merry Christmas Ribbon and Hello Thursday

Happy Friday!  Just a little over a week left before Christmas and I still have lots to do but I think it will all get done (fingers crossed!).  How are you doing with your last minute preparations?

First things first - I wish I had enough ribbon to send some to all of you but I had to draw three numbers and here are the names that came up... 

Kris

Rosie

Pam (Old Teacher)

I have the envelopes all ready to go - I just need your addresses so please email me at capadiadesigns@gmail.com so I can send these out today.

Thanks to everyone who left a comment - I really appreciated some of the sweet things you had to say.

Hello Thursday - New Cartridges

Yesterday was "Hello Thursday" (the day when new Cricut cartridges are announced).  Here is a quick summary of the new releases and some links for you.   With the Cricut Craft Room operating now there are also digital cartridges released fairly often - you can always check the cricut.com site shopping page HERE to see all of the cartridges that are available digitally. 

There were two Imagine and two regular cartridges announced yesterday.  You can click on the names to go to Hello Thursday page on Cricut.com.  Click on the "cartridge box" on the top left shelf to go to the "Look Book" for each cartridge.

This and That is a Creative Memories exclusive and it is just what it sounds like - a mixture of this and that.  There are a lot of "cute" images, some nice word art, two alphabets and monogram sets.  This cartridge will be available in January.  As a Creative Memories consultant, I can order one copy now.  I am not sure that the content on this cartridge adds a lot to your collection if you already have a good variety of cartridges.  The colors used for the sample projects don't really show off the images at their best.  This is a cartridge that you will need to study to see if it adds enough to your collection to justify the price.

Victorian Romance is a seasonal cartridge with a limited number of images (usually just 50 keys are used for these cartridges with some layered images - I counted 23 total assembled images).  There are cupids and old fashioned couples, keys, a couple of pretty hearts and some 3D objects.  Once again, it is a matter of taste - some people will really like the style.  I actually prefer the "Lovestruck" cartridge from 2010 which is now available as a digital cartridge.  Take a look and see what you think.

The Good Old Days is an Imagine Art cartridge with a full set of layered images and 20 papers.  The cartridge is another Cosmo Cricket collaboration.  The images look like vintage illustrations from books and advertising and they are very nostalgic with a "clip art" vibe.  Of the 20 papers, nine are just different colorways of the same polka dot pattern.  Once again - you will either like this or not, depending on your personal style.  I am on the fence - there are a few images that I would probably use and I like some of the papers but I am not sure that it is a "must have" for me.

Notebook Doodles is an Imagine Pattern cartridge.  It has notebook paper and graph paper and sheets full of doodles.  Most of the doodle sheets are repeated in different colors or in color and black and white.  Once again - some will like this and some will pass.  I don't think I would use this one very much but it could be fun for some types of projects.

You can get another good look at the images and see some projects made with the new cartridges on the Official Cricut Blog.

Be sure to check out the Hello Thursday blogs for more great ideas - 

Joy's blog

Melanie's blog

Tammy's blog

Mixology blog

Four cartridges are now available as digital cartridges - Art Nouveau, Chic and Scary, Simply Scarecrows and Something to Celebrate.

Eight cartridges were added to the retiring list - DC Comics - Batman:  The Brave and the Bold, DC Comics - Superman, Forever Young, Pink Journey, Pagoda, Paisley, Sentimentals and Walk in My Garden.  I found all of these except Pink Journey listed as available as digital cartridges. (I may have missed Pink Journey - there are so many categories to look through!).

Whew!  That was a long wordy post with no pictures - not at all typical for me!  Here is a little sneak peek at the project I have to share with you tomorrow. So far - this is the only snow I have seen around here! 

Don't forget to check in and see what is new at Blitsy today - they put up the new sales at about 10 a.m. Central time.  If you haven't joined this free membership shopping site yet, here is my link that you can use to sign up - there is no cost or obligation for you to sign up. 

http://blitsy.com/rewardsref/index/refer/id/989/ 

After you join, you can refer your friends and family - go to the "invites" page to get your link and you may earn some credits to use for shopping on the site.  Sales last for a week (while supplies last) and new items are posted on Monday, Wednesday and Friday and 10 a.m. Central Time.  If you become a "fan" of Blitsy on Facebook, you can get a code for 10% off your first order - on top of the great prices they have already!

I hope you have a wonderful day!

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Digital Cartridges and Hello Thursday

Yesterday was "Hello Thursday" - the day when Provocraft announces new cartridges.  There were only two announced - Snow Days and Cricut Font and Basic Shapes.  Snow Days is a seasonal Mini and Cricut Font and Basic Shapes is a digital cartridge that is free with the purchase of the new Cricut Mini machine.  You can check them out on the Hello Thursday page HERE.  Click on the cartridge boxes on the top left shelf to see the "look book" for each cartridge.  Two cartridges may seem like a small number for a Hello Thursday release, however, the new Mini was launched on Monday and there were just twenty digital cartridges released as Craft Room exclusives. 

You can see the Craft Room Exclusives HERE.  The images on the Craft Room Exclusives include some of the often requested categories (such as Greek Letters).  I think the price is high - some sets include only five or six images for $9.99.  However, if there is an image set that you find appealing, it might be a reasonable price to pay.  I used to be happy to pay $10 (with a coupon) for a set of four sizzlits dies which would only cut in one size and did not have layers.

When I checked the Cricut.com site I counted 275 cartridges that are now available as digital cartridges.  You can see them HERE.  This may be good news if you have been trying to find an older or discontinued cartridge, however the prices are full retail prices.  As I understand it, digital cartridges are available to you in the Craft Room and will transfer to your Gypsy for use without a computer or internet access.  The digital cartridges will be added to the Gypsy the next time you run Cricut Sync.  If the images are very new, you might have to wait for an update to add the cartridge to the Gypsy.

If you click on the white shelves in the center of the Hello Thursday page you will see some cartridges that are retiring - however, with the digital cartridge option I am not sure that it matters anymore...

You can see more images and some projects made with the Snow Days and Cricut Font and Basic Shapes cartridges on the Official Cricut Blog. 

(if you are curious about the cut at the top of this post...I'll tell you more about it in a few days)

My hand is healing and we are on our way to Pennsylvania today - I'll try to catch up with email now that I can type a bit better but it may take me a few more days so please be patient.  I do try to answer all emails- if you haven't heard back and it has been a week or more please feel free to send another message - sometimes things get lost in the shuffle!

Have a great weekend!

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New Cartridges and some Digital Fun

Yesterday was Hello Thursday - the day when new Cricut cartridges are announced.  This month there are 13 cartridges and you can view them all by visiting the Hello Thursday page on Cricut.com.  Just click on the colorful cartridges on the shelves to pull up the "Look Book" for each cartridge.

Santa's Village, Christmas Wish and Floral Emporium are all Cricut Imagine cartridges.

Santa's Village contains traditional holiday images and papers.  There are gift tags, candy wrappers, coloring pages and labels and bags for food gifts in addition to all of the houses, elves, reindeer, etc.

Christmas Wish is a pattern and colors cartridge with more non-traditional colors (pink, aqua and light green).  The cartridge is designed by Sheri Berry (Sheri McCulley Seibold) and very similar in style to her Snow Angel cartridge from last year.  If you'd like to read more about Sheri and her designs you can find her website HERE.

Floral Emporium is also a patterns and colors cartridge with 20 pretty floral designs in pinks, greens, reds and blues.  These florals were designed by Lily Ashbury and you can find her website HERE.

There are six full size cartridges, Noah's ABC Animals, Ribbons and Rosettes, New Testament, Go Canada, Paper Trimmings and 'Tis the Season.

Noah's ABC Animals has 3D versions of the animals and the ark that you can assemble.  They are done in the "sliceform" style - made of intersecting layers of flat cuts (you'll be able to see this in the "look book").  They can also be cut as flat images and there are names and sounds for the animals, along with a font.  This cartridge, along with the New Testament cartridge will make all of the people who have been asking for a religious cartridge quite happy.  New Testament has biblical figures, crosses, Bible verses and more and will be great for church projects and bulletin boards. 

Go Canada is a cartridge full of Canadian images, including igloos and hockey skates, province and territory shapes, lots of welded words and phrases (some in French) and a font inside a maple leaf shape.  I am happy to see that all of the Canadian Cricut fans now have a cartridge to help with their projects.

Ribbons and Rosettes is full of borders and sections of borders that can be accordian folded and made into rosettes.  There are medallions for the centers of the rosettes as well.  There are even rhinestone border templates and a rhinestone alphabet.

Paper Trimmings is exclusive to the Cricut Circle and is another cartridge full of medallions, corners, frames and borders.  There are some nice holiday images.  If you join the Circle for the next quarter, you may not receive this cartridge.  Starting with the new memberships for the second year, members received the welcome packet with French Manor as their first cartridge.  I am not sure if this will continue throughout this year but you would want to check before signing up if your goal was to receive the Paper Trimmings cartridge.

'Tis the Season is the latest Creative Memories exclusive cartridge.  I don't care much for the colors that were used in the Look Book for the sample cuts - try to focus on the nice images and lovely word art when you look at this one.  There are also two fonts, snowflakes (!), and two medallion shapes with letter cutouts for monograms.  I have already ordered my copy through the sampling program and this cartridge will be available to order on my CM personal website on November 1st.

There are three Cricut Lite cartridges, Fast Food, Pet Shop and Sweater Weather.

Fast Food and Pet Shop are pretty self explanatory - lots of images of fast food and pets!

Sweater Weather includes images that are made up of squares - like you would find in a knitting pattern or cross-stitch chart.  They have a "pixelated" look which may not appeal to everyone.

The last cartridge, Stencil, is a Project Cartridge and has cuts that create stencils.  Some of the images look like they are from earlier cartridges.  You can make stencils of many Cricut cuts by hiding the outer line of the design with one of the software options, but I suppose this cartridge makes it quick and easy if you want to stencil something.

Some of the new cartridges are already available to order on the Cricut.com site.  You can see projects made with them on the Official Cricut Blog.  The Hello Thursday Bloggers will also be showing projects over the next week or so - click to visit Joy, Melanie, Tammy, Mixology.

If you hover your mouse over the tiny white boxes on the shelves on the Hello Thursday page, you will see that eight cartridges have been added to the retiring list. They are:

Billionaire
Block Party
Chore Chart
Handyman
Lovely Floral
Savory
Slumber Party
Splish Splash

Some of these have been available on Cricut Rewards for 500 points if you are interested in adding them to your collection.

These snowflake pages should look a bit familiar - I made them by taking a clear photo of the snowflake medallion I created for yesterday's card, bringing it in to my Creative Memories StoryBook Creator 4.0 software, deleting the background and creating a .png file and then using my new digital file in various sizes and degrees of opacity on a 12 x 12 page.  I used a couple of different gradient backgrounds and turned the group of snowflakes in different directions.

I have done this with other assembled cuts and designs - it gives me even more options for making personalized pages and projects - and it is fun to do!  You can read more about the program on my Creative Memories personal website HERE.  If you have any questions about the software or how I made these papers just send along a comment or an email and I'll explain further. 


I'd love to know what you think of the latest release - which cartridges do you think you "have to have"? 

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Printing Paper on the Cricut Imagine

Many people seem to be buying Imagine machines and getting very good prices recently.  I don't know how many of my readers have one of these machines, but I thought I'd share a bit about my experiences with printing paper with the Imagine.  There are some things about the Imagine that I like a lot and other things that frustrate me.  I have never been able to get the calibration to be perfect for an entire sheet of 12 x 12 paper.  I decided to try again to see if I can get my machine to produce the kind of results I expected from the start.  As the Cricut CraftRoom online design tool continues to be tested and updated I have high hopes that eventually I will be able to do some of the things I'd like to do with this technology.

When I first learned about the types of cartridges that could be used in the Imagine I was very surprised to find out that the "color and pattern" cartridges had only 20 items on each cartridge and that the suggested retail price was $59.99.  I thought this was far too much to pay for a few pieces of digital paper - particularly since there are usually repeated patterns in different colorways.  The suggested retail price seems to be $39.99 now (at least that is the price on the Cricut.com site) which is still too high for my liking.  I discovered that you can often find these cartridges on eBay and, if you are patient, you can get much better prices.  I have purchased three of these cartridges in the last week or so at an average price of $8.11  - less than I often pay for some scrapbooking magazines.

The cartridges have arrived and I decided to test them out and print some sample papers.  If you just want to print the full pattern on a 12 x 12 paper, you select the "print paper" icon on this screen.

Then you simply choose the paper you want to print and when it appears in the blank page, press next and follow the directions to proceed.  The machine actually does an overspray to insure that the paper is fully covered.  The instructions tell you to clean the mat after each printing - more about that in a bit...

One of the cartridges I bought was the Heirloom cartridge.  I printed a few 12 x 12 pages and I was disappointed in the printing - it looked odd and faded to me compared to the book.  I thought that maybe this was intentional but I was starting to regret my purchase (even though I had paid a low price for the cartridge).

Snapshot Everyday was the next cartridge I tried.  This time I just set up squares from the built in shapes on the machine and filled them with a few of the papers.  These were the results - not at all what I expected them to be!  When I looked at these images, I knew that something had to be wrong and I suspected that there was a problem with the black ink cartridge since the prints did not appear to have any black.

I went to the settings screen to check and see if either of the cartridges were getting empty but they both had a green thumbs up for OK ink levels.  So, I decided to try the "clean print heads" in the hopes that maybe something was just a bit dried up or clogged since I haven't used the machine for quite a while (since June I think!).

I printed the same sample squares again and the difference was obvious!  These images, when printed with the proper ink are very bright and really pop from the page.  Here are some side by side comparisons just to show you how different the print looks after the machine did the print head cleaning.

 I was very relieved to find that there was a simple solution to the problem and that I didn't have defective cartridges.  I never thought I'd like the Snapshot cartridges but I can see a lot of ways to use these images that I think will be fun to share.

 I decided to go back and reprint the 12 x 12 pages from the Heirloom cartridge and the difference was clear (first print on the left, print after cleaning on the right).

 Once again, the lack of black made a huge difference in the look of the paper.

 This was the only page that didn't have a dramatic difference when I reprinted - the design uses very little black ink.

I had convinced myself that it would be OK to print several sheets without cleaning the mat edges each time - and it was...until I managed to smudge ink on my clean paper.  The amount of overspray is small but it does stay wet for a while.  If you leave it too long it will dry and be harder to remove.  So, I think it is fine to do a few pages in a row without wiping the edges, as long as you are careful not to smudge, but you should not delay in cleaning the edge when you finish.  The dark lines created could confuse the machine when it is calibrating for a print and cut operation.

I went ahead and printed on my smudged paper.  Many of the papers available  in the Imagine cartridges are "distressed" and I thought the smudge would blend in - and it did.

All you need to clean the mat is some water on a paper towel.  The ink comes off easily and, even though I printed several times before cleaning, there were no problems.

I had fun printing off a few more papers.  This aspect of the Imagine was something that I didn't think would appeal to me but I really like being able to print full pages.  If I could use this machine as a 12 x 12 printer to print my digital scrapbook pages and my own digital papers I would be a very happy crafter.  I "imagine" that this won't happen since the closed system promotes the sale of dedicated cartridges.  If we were free to use our own digital content, either the price of the cartridges would have to drop significantly or a lot more content would have to be included. 

After my marathon printing session, I finally got this warning screen for low ink in the color cartridge.  I have never changed my ink cartridges since I got the machine last October so it really did last a long time.  I decided to keep printing until I see a loss of image quality since these warning tend to be premature and I don't want to waste any ink.  I was able to get some ink cartridges through the Cricut Rewards program so I will be ready to switch them when the printing is no longer acceptable.

If you have an Imagine machine or are thinking about getting one and have questions, please leave me a comment and I'll do my best to help.  I will also share my experiences with the Silhouette SD machine which is excellent for printing and cutting.  With the Silhouette, you print on your regular printer and the machine uses three registration marks to align the cutting path.  I have had great results with this system and I can use my own content but the size is limited.  If the new 12 x 12 Silhouette Cameo machine coming out this fall has an equally accurate print and cut capability it will be tough competition for the Imagine.


Hello Thursday - one new cartridge...

After a few months with an overwhelming number of cartridges released, the August Hello Thursday announcement was a bit of a surprise.  The only cartridge released this month is a new Teresa Collins Halloween seasonal cartridge called "Chic and Scary."  You can see the Look Book and other information about this cartridge HERE.  Click on the orange cartridge box on the shelf near the top left.

If you click on the shelves in the center you will find eight cartridges that "may be retiring forever" - the cartridges are My World, Playtime, Sesame Street Friends, Disney Hanna(h) Montana, Jolly Holidays, Disney Princess Dreams Come True, Cupcake and Inspired Heart.

When I checked last night there was still no update in Design Studio to add the cartridges after the June 23rd release.  I'll let you now when I see them added - I check every few days.

Have a great Friday - I will have some company today and I think we may do some crafting together...

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