The New Kid in Town

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The Zing Air arrives.

In my last post I mentioned that after four years of using the CraftWell eCraft I was upgrading to a new electronic cutting machine. My KNK Zing Air arrived sooner than anticipated and I didn't get around to opening it for a couple of days. It appeared unassuming enough and I didn't expect that I would have a difficult time learning the nuances of this new system. Well, this only turned out to be partially true. It was easy enough to hook up but I had a devil of a time getting my computer to recognize and connect to it. After turning everything off and restarting, propitiating gods and sacrificing chickens it connected and I was able to run the machine.

I am happy to report that the Zing Air is far superior to my old eCraft cutter in many ways and offers creative options I could only wish for. I won't go into all of the bells and whistles.  There are many YouTube videos that can walk you through those details. I will say that my favorite tool is the pen holder that allows me to draw images from my computer with almost any pen or marker at my disposal. I even used a glue pen to draw a delicate flourish image which I then covered in glitter. Oh, I'm going to have fun exploring the possibilities.

My one disappointment is that the machine was advertised as including a special blade for cutting fabric but it did not arrive in the box. I purchased the machine from Amazon but was unable to find a Contact Us link with a telephone number or an email address. I tried contacting the Amazon vendor who responded that I had to handle the issue through Amazon. The only option I found to deal with missing parts was to get a full refund. Thankfully I can get a fabric blade from the manufacturer for less than $10 so I'm not going to waste further time and energy over this but I can tell you I will definitely think twice or more before buying anything else from Amazon that has more moving parts than a book.

Okay, rant over. I'm off to my new machine to see what goodies I can conjure up. I'll be sure to post them here.  Stay tuned.

Ballo ergo sum
- Gitana, the Creative Diva

A Fond Farewell To An Old Friend

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The eCraft  -  November 2010

I've just taken a leap and invested in a new electronic cutting machine as a combination Christmas/birthday gift to myself. My trusty eCraft cutter, which I won in a contest over four years ago, has served me well but its limitations are many. The machine is just not as good as some others in creating cleanly cut detailed designs. Craftwell, the eCraft's manufacturer, is no longer making the machine although I was told by a representative that they will continue to support it and carry the accessories. Nevertheless, I can see the writing on the wall. The eCraft is not long for this world.

I'm ready to move on to a more reliable machine that will make the intricate and detailed cuts that I long for. My new KNK Zing Air will arrive sometime next week and I'm greatly looking forward to it but I will always fondly remember my first machine. Once I have mastered the learning curve of the Zing Air, I have no doubt I will be whipping up some amazing projects which I will post here and link to my Facebook page. Here's to a new year, a new machine and some new creative adventures.


Ballo ergo sum,
- Gitana, the Creative Diva

Ahead of Schedule

I'm one of those people who always underestimates the amount of time it will take me to complete a craft project so I tend to put it off until the last moment. This invariably leads to either a) a sleepless night trying to complete something that should have been started days earlier, or b) an unstarted/unfinished/ unsatisfactory project that won't be ready in time. That's happened more often than I want to admit.

This year I took the bulls by the horns and actually sat down to make a Mother's Day card a week ahead of need. In order to make the process go a little faster, almost all the elements I used, with the exception of the green leaves, were things I already had on hand.

Materials:

• Card base -- DCWV Mariposa Box of Cards collection
• Flowers -- Petaloo
• Black swirl rubber stamp -- Hero Arts Florentine Scroll Background 
• Sentiment Stamp -- Impress Rubber Stamps
• Ink -- Tsukineko Versafine Onyx Black (sentiment and scroll),  Versamark Watermark Ink (scroll), Ranger Distress Ink (shading around oval and leaves)
• Three-part butterfly (solid contour, black veining and body) -- Memory Box dies

Notes:

• The solid blue butterfly contour was colored using pigment inks and gel pens before the black veined wing details were attached. The body was encrusted with self-adhesive rhinestones. 
• I designed the leaves in a drawing program and cut them with the eCraft electronic cutter. 
• Florentine Scroll stamp was inked first with watermark ink then with onyx black ink. Image was then embossed with black ultrafine embossing powder. Because of the "dimples" in the card's texture, the impression looks somewhat distressed and antiqued.

It just so happens that one of the Yahoo groups I belong to is sponsoring a giveaway drawing to celebrate National Scrapbooking Day. The requirement for entries is that it must contain one or more elements created on an electronic cutter using MTC software. Well, the leaves on this card were created in precisely that manner so I entered my card into the drawing. Hey, who knows? 

Ballo ergo sum
- Gitana, the Creative Diva

The Arrival of Spring

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Due to an unexpectedly warm winter, here in the northeast we are experiencing an unusually early spring. With temperatures at times reaching upwards of 70 degrees Fahrenheit, all manner of flora and fauna that would usually be out of sight until April has made a glorious appearance in mid-March as evidenced by the beautiful daffodils I photographed in my garden. There was actually a period during which daffodil shoots were actively growing with nary a crocus in sight when the reverse is usually the case. Eventually the crocuses got their act together and showed their faces before the arrival of the daffodils but it was a pretty tight race.

Although I announced in a previous post that I would no longer be conducting weekly craft classes at the senior citizens center, I agreed to continue putting up the seasonal decorations. I wanted to really celebrate the arrival of spring's colorful flowers in a way that all the members could enjoy so I created a large (12" x 34") sign to go over the entry door to the main activity/lunchroom, a place where it can't be missed by anyone who enters the center.  All the materials used to create this sign were either free or donated, including the electronic cutter I used to cut out the various elements of the sign. The paper and fabric flowers came from Materials for the Arts and the cutting files came from SVGCuts.com, a site that offers free cut files for electronic cutting machines. The butterflies were created with Memory Box dies I purchased for my personal use but once I cut and colored them, they were so beautiful I just couldn't keep them all to myself. Click on the photo and zoom in to see the details on those blue beauties. There is also an invisible detail that doesn't show up in the photo. The oval in the center of the sign has flowers stamped in watermarking (transparent) ink and dusted with gold pigment powder. The stamped flowers can't be seen until you pass underneath the sign. When the light catches it just the right way all the flowers appear to shine.

This is the first large scale project I've done with my eCraft and I still have much to learn but I'm very pleased with the way this first attempt came out. Ya know, I had so much fun making this sign, perhaps I'll make another one for summer.

Ballo ergo sum
- Gitana, the Creative Diva

An Unconventional Valentine's Day Card

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2012 - a dramatically different color scheme

When you think of Valentine's Day, you think of pink and red hearts, right? Yeah, me too, but this year I wanted to do something a little different for my seniors. Our Valentine's Day projects for the past two years, as seen below, have included the mandatory red and pink hearts. This time I wanted to give an unexpected twist to our craft project. While this year's card sports the obligatory hearts and flowers my ladies know and love, the color scheme is anything but conventional. Inspired by a beautiful piece of specialty paper in shades of turquoise and purple , I designed a card that really played up those colors. I will admit that, at first, I wasn't too thrilled with the way this card was turning out but the more I worked on it, the more it grew on me and now I'm very pleased with the final outcome.

Our very first project from 2010

2011's hanging ornament

The colors are not the only things different about this card. You can't really tell from the photo but this is not a foldover card, it's an insertion card. What I mean is that there is only a front and a back to this card, like a postcard. It doesn't open up. You have to turn it around to see what is written on the other side. This will be a bit of a departure for these ladies accustomed to the more conventional type of card.

For this project I had my DrawPlus graphic software and my eCraft electronic cutter working overtime. The heart is crafted of four different layers stacked upon one another. Each of these layers had to be designed and cut separately. It took quite a few attempts to get the lighter blue trellis-like layer to cut correctly, after which I had to manually poke out all the little holes in between the mesh. Once the heart was completed, cutting the rest of the card elements was a piece of cake. The tiny tag was just the perfect size for a kiss print rubber stamp that I've had for the longest time. I deliberately left off any overt references to Valentine's Day because I wanted this project to convey the universal aspect of love over the celebration of one calendar day. This card could just as easily be used to congratulate a newly engaged couple or be sent as a quick hello to a cherished grandchild. Although I admit that the swirls and flowers lend a very feminine air, the color scheme would suit a young man. I'm sure the ladies will love it.

Ballo ergo sum
- Gitana, the Creative Diva

Need a quickie card? RTU's to the rescue

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Okay, so my son tells me he is attending a two year old's birthday party but he didn't have time to buy a card or a gift. The two year old's father is a friend of his and was really pushing for a gift of some sort (just a little presumptuous on his part but I digress). I, who have absolutely NOTHING to do, decided I would make a quickie card. What? Me? A quickie card? Not a chance. I'm the one who spends fifteen minutes deliberating the placement of a decorative paper fastener. There was no way I was going to design a quickie card from scratch so I did the only thing I could do under the circumstances...I went straight to my RTU stash.

RTU stands for Ready To Use. It is my self-defined repository of all those odds and ends left over from other projects I had worked on, creative experiments I had tinkered with...just about anything that I couldn't bear to part with because I thought it would come in handy for a card someday. Sure enough, when I scrounged around in the depths of my creative detritus I found plenty of stuff with which to make a card sure to tickle any two year old girl's heart. In my card drawer I found the dark pink base card  with the pretty punched edge. My paper stash yielded the embossed Happy Birthday layer in pink and orange. The rosette was literally sitting on my table top for weeks, the remains of my first attempts at making rosettes. Fortunately it, too, had a punched edge. The large butterfly and the fern leaf were all leftovers from experimenting with my eCraft electronic cutter. The smaller butterflies had been punched out of scrap paper last year and had been fluttering around in my drawer ever since just waiting for me to notice them. Absolutely everything you see in the photo was ready and waiting for me to bring them all together. The inside of the card, which I neglected to photograph, had the sentiment "Make a Wish" stamped on a tag that also came from my RTU stash. This card only took me about half an hour and most of that time was spent in pulling together all the various pieces of this artistic puzzle and adding a little bling on the large butterfly. (Those rhinestones are applied by hand one by one.)

So I have learned that a severe shortage of time and limited supplies with which to work can spark the most creative ideas. I guess I'll have to dive into my craft drawers more often. Who knows what I might come up with?

Ballo ergo sum
- Gitana, the Creative Diva
Design team member for About Art Accents

An eCraft Project

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Craftwell recently released its updated software designed to correct many of the problems inherent in the original version. I'm happy to report that many of the problems I had with my machine have been addressed and corrected with version 2. It's still not not my dream machine but it is far from the nightmare it was when I first received it. As a result, I've been playing around with it quite a bit, putting it through its paces and seeing what it can do. My big interest in this machine is the ability to import and cut images that I design on my computer. Now that it is behaving in a more consistent manner I can begin to dream up projects for the senior citizens center that I can cut solely on the eCraft. Here is my first paper project cut solely on the eCraft. It is a layered flower mounted on a pin back badge.

The flower on the right was cut from standard cardstock using the eCraft Fundamentals 1 set of SD images that were included in the initial shipment of the machine. The poinsettia flower on the left was cut from discontinued fabric paper the center had on hand with .svg files that I adapted from royalty free clipart. The layers are stacked with a washer between the leaves and petals to create height. The individual leaves and petals are curled and manipulated to give them more dimension and depth. Each layer, including the base badge, has a small hole punched in the middle through which passes a small office variety paper fastener. The legs of the fastener are opened and pressed tightly to the pin-back, effectively holding the whole thing together. I'm particularly pleased that I was able to salvage and repurpose the badges from being tossed into the trash by the senior center director. I believe wholeheartedly in recycling.These versatile flowers can also be made without the pin back for use as decor or dressing up a gift package. Ooh, I see a flowery spring bulletin board in my future.


Ballo ergo sum
- Gitana, the Creative Diva
Design team member for About Art Accents