Happy Birthday Book or Card from Royal Inspirations SVG

Hello again!  Two posts in two days!  A new record for me!  LOL  Well, at least for the past little while.  I'm going to try and get better, I promise.  I do have some things to share with you, just no time to sit down it seems to get it all written up, photos taken, and posted! Summer time seems to make it even more difficult.  We'll see if I can improve once school starts back next month!

Yesterday I shared with you a new site, Royal Inspirations SVG started by my friend Retta. On her site she has lots of wonderful files that you can obtain in 3 formats so she should have almost all of you covered.  Not only does she provide the files in SVG format, but she also provides them in Make the Cut (MTC) and SCAL formats as well so that should mean that she probably has a format that works easily for you!  She has files in a variety of categories and price ranges and even has free files for you to download and try so be sure to stop by and find some that will inspire you!

When I saw this Birthday "Book or Card" that Retta designed I just knew that I had to have it!  I wasn't sure when I was going to actually use it, or who the lucky recipient was going to be but I knew I had to get it and create it!  It's wonderful!  The one thing I learned however is that with something like this, you want to make sure that you have a really good sticky mat to ensure those beautiful letters stay put on the mat while you are cutting them!  I have a bad habit of trying to reuse mats over and over and over again even when I should stop and fix them!  I thought I could squeeze a few more cuts out on this one with a little help from my painter's tape but no go.  However, once I broke out a new mat, it was easy breazy and I was wondering why I had wasted my time and paper to start with!

Instead of using chipboard for my "book" backing, I choose to use some neon green styrene that KarenP had first shared about finding on the MTC forum.  It matched great with my green letters and added just enough backing to my pages.  It gives the book that little extra "pop"!  Best of all, it and Retta's files cut great on my Black Cat Cougar that I have been neglecting! 

Speaking of my Cougar, I Love my Cougar, but that doesn't mean that I'm not green with envy about those who are getting the newest cutter, The Silver Bullet,  from Sherri at That's Scrap, Inc. in the USA, Dawn at Thyme Graphics in the UK  and Jo at Cutting Edge Craft in Austrailia too! They look wonderful and I am hearing great things about how well they are cutting too!  Wish I could justify getting one too (I do love new gadgets and toys) but I will stick with my Cougar for now as it does everything I need and more.  I just need to use it more (then maybe I can justify a Silver Bullet too! : ) )  However, if YOU are in the market for a new cutter that will work with MTC and SCAL be sure to swing by and check out the Silver Bullet!  They may just have one with your name on it! But even better than the cutters themselves, is the customer service and support that each of these 3 ladies give, before, during and after the sale! To help justify that new purchase, be sure to check out all of Retta's designs at Royal Inspirations SVG and see what she has waiting for you to create.

As always, thanks for stopping by!  I will be sharing more creations made from some of Retta's files with you as I have other things from her shop that I thought were just too cute!  Plus, I have some of my own files to share with you soon too as soon as I can find more time!  That's the great thing about working with someone else's files, it takes a whole lot less time to actually "create" the end project!  See you soon (I hope!!)

Disney Album Cover - Engraving with My Cougar

One of the reasons I got an 18" Cougar from That's Scraps, (the North American Dealer; see Dawn at Thyme Graphics regarding international orders) is so that I could do many more really cute things that I couldn't do with my original smaller machine like engraving and embossing as well as much larger items and some awesome print and cuts or using free graphic images and fonts from the internet or things I create myself from scratch. I didn't want to be limited by someone else's imagination! The problem though has been first, "time" and second, "bravery". LOL Now, I know many of you can relate to that statement. How many of you get some really cool new tool and then it sits there and you look at it for days, weeks or even months before FINALLY pulling it out of its box and turning it on?! Well, I'm not that bad, I do usually pull it out of the box immediately and then get it all set up but then stare at it for a while! LOL

Actually, I had had my Cougar out of the box for many months and had used it for quite a bit of regular cutting and it cuts really great. (It is easily setup out of the box but it does take some getting use to how to load and where it will cut, etc. especially if coming from the land of Cricuts). However, I hadn't been brave enough to try the engraving on plastics and metal, or the embossing. A lot of the time - my excuse was I didn't have enough time to devote to figuring it all out. However, I finally decided to give it a try and I must say once I started the engraving I thought, "Wow, that was EASY!" and wondered why I had waited so long! I Still have some other tools to try as well as some really neat crafting supplies that I just bought from Tyler over at his online store "All that Jazz". He has some neat textured papers that look like animal skins and other things, velvet paper, thin and thicker sheets of acrylics, metal, and so much more. Now, just to get brave and try some of that as well! LOL

Anyway, here's the project that I wanted you to see. I had found a couple of sets of 6"x6" Clear Acrylic Covers by Zutter for use in the Bind It All marked down to $1.79 at HL the other day and figured that was a great, inexpensive way to give my engraving tool and my Cougar a try! I decided to create a mini album for a Disney Trip. I have some free Disney Fonts and dingbats I found by googling for free Disney Fonts and used them to engrave the cover of my album.

Beach Babe "Print and Cut" Cards

You might have seen this post on my prior blog. If not, be sure to check it out and then check Tyler's site for a great place to order a variety of files as well as supplies for use with your cutter and software of your choice! He sells vinyl, chipboard, metal, plastic, and speciality paper to name just a few! He also provides some great cutting files from a variety of vendors.  The best part though is that he has personally tested the materials and cut files he has for sale with his cutter to make sure he is providing a solid and dependable product!  How is that for customer service?

I wanted to share two cards I made from some new "Print and Cut" files I found on the "All that Jazz" site by Tyler. They are designed as Print and Cut files for 2 page scrapbook layouts. The files are from "Scrapbook Circus" and can be found on "All that Jazz" (along with a video and a free sample file to try!) Check them all out here:

Scrapbook Cricus Print and Cut Files at All that Jazz.

Well, I'm not a scrapbooker (yet) but I do make cards on occasion so I thought I'd try the "Beach Babes" collection and see if I could take "scrapbooking" files and make cards with them! I was able to make 2 different cards and used a number of the embellishments from the files. The files are available in several formats that should work for almost anyone no matter what cutter and software you use (.mtc, .svg, and .jpeg files).


Here are the two cards I made from the files. I did have to resize them some to fit on "cards." Not too difficult to do with MTC and the new features offered in the new version 4.*. Shift and hold while clicking and dragging to resize outline and texture at the same time for example.

One Card (the blue base) is 5x7 and the other is 4x6. The "mat" on the smaller one is also from the file.

Best thing (besides the cute files) was this project forced me to sit down and actually calibrate my Cougar machine so I could do the Print and Cuts of these files! I have tried a few times but never gotten it nailed down - close but not right on (more a problem with me and my brain - not the fault of the cutter or the software - strictly a user error - My brain fogs when it sees X/Y and +/- numbers I am afraid!). I'm happy to report that with the help of Tyler and Rob (ScrappyDew) and their latest work to continue to find tools to help us use our machines and software, I was finally able to get my machine calibrated!

You can find this latest help file on Tyler's website:

Print and Cut Calibration Help at All that Jazz

I used this and then used MTC's Black Cat Plugin and the Laser option and found great success in doing these Print and Cuts so thanks Tyler and Rob! Please feel free to ask if you have any questions. If you have the ability to do Print and Cuts I would highly recommend checking out these files on Tyler's site and downloading the free "Hammock" file! Thanks for stopping by!