EASY Vectorizing to get the KFC effect

Remember my post on vectorizing to get the KFC effect? Well, a dear friend found this awesome tool online for me, click here. How easy it will be to have the already finished product and then trace or get outline by colour and then cut , layer and WOW! Aweome idea :)

Are women born this way?

Click here - it's just fantastic!

Tips & Tricks: Paper Piecing & more freebies

Have you heard about Paper Piecing? Try doing a google search and see what you find ;) It's a great thing to look out for because you can get lots of ideas and free PDFs that you can make into cutter files.

Here's a great example:

Click on image to link to scrapbooksetc.com source file in PDF and scrapbooksetc.com's info OR click here for more info on this type of stuff :)

FREE FILES - got your attention didn't I :)

CHEERS! If you are a new cutter owner and I really hope my blog is useful to you :)

When I first got my Cutter, I scoured the web for free files that I could play with and soon got frustrated because whatever project I was working on would take forever becasue I knew *exaclty what I wanted* and either had to buy it or find it for free online. Well, when searching for just the right cutter file, I encountered version issues, file type issues and incredulously I found a lot of great files and ideas and collected what I thought was a lot of free files - yippieee!! Like candy to a craft-addict!!!

Then, I had to figure out a filing system, and then I just got frustrated when the file I wanted to use needed just a little tweek here or there and one that could not be accomplished after I cut it. I was ready to cry at my Valntines Day attempt, I swear I wanted to throw my machine out the window!

I realized my creative brain was much too big for the software that came with the Silhouette. I broke down soon after and collected my pennies and invested in the greatest program - the KNK Studie GE software and WOW! Once I started playing with it and going over the tutorials that came with the purchase, and those free on iloveKNK.com and the fantastic user manual that came with - my juices were flowing.

So I was recently cleaning up a bit of old stuff because I am so loving my program that I dont really use GSD files anymore... I came accross my list of gold - which I have included below. I hope it helps some of you newbies, it sure helped me at the time but WOW... now, I don't BUY files - I create them in a blink of an eye!!

I'll even admit, I own a QuicKutz Silhouette and spent some money buying GSD Files and NOW... HA! I coudl create and cut those same files in just a few minutes - thanks to the KNK Studio GE Software.

Good luck, and happy cutting!!!


Tutorials and Tools
http://02af4c4.netsolstores.com/MachinecomparisonsTSI.htm
http://new.myfonts.com/WhatTheFont/
http://www.iloveknk.com/
http://scrapbooking.arnolds.net.au/forum/viewforum.phpf=4&sid=f43ec12b09c3248c2c091352550ffa09 (tutorials)
http://www.scrapbook.com/forums/showforum.php?fid/50/
http://www.batchconverter.com/image-converter.html (change file types by group)
http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F2Fcrafty.actifforum.com%2F&langpair=fr%7Cen&hl=en&ie=UTF-8

Free GSD & KNK Files & For files sale
http://www.4shared.com/dir/15995478/45b64a0a/KNK_Files_by_Nikki.html
http://www.4shared.com/dir/12150434/f3b662f5/GSD_Files_by_Nikki.html
http://www.fam-bjork.se/monicas-hobbysida/
http://www.quillingpatch.com/category/freebie-friday/
http://02af4c4.netsolstores.com/index.asp?ageAction=VIEWCATS&Category=7
http://www.littlebit.com/cutter/cutter_files_index.html
http://02af4c4.netsolstores.com/index.aspPageAction=VIEWCATS&Category=7 http://creations.110mb.com/whatsnew.htm
http://www.timeforcrafting.co.uk/templates.html
http://www.collectedmemories.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/cmStore.woa/wa/page?key=morefreediecuts
http://www.eduplace.com/rdg/hme/k_5/shapebook/toc.html
http://www.bosskutdesigns.com/
http://www.letsbescrappy.com/cutter_files/cutter_files.htm
I know there are more out there, you might also look for websites that have pdf files you can convert, or jpgs too.

A resource for GSD Junkies
CRAFTY, le Craft Robo
Davesangel
Dianas Designs
Great Scrappin Designs
Hinkeltje fotografie & scrapbooking
I Love Craft Robo
Jayrewcraft - GSD Downloads
JennieBean Crafts
Kreations By Katie
Looking Out
Monique
MyDieCuts.com
Mydiecuts
Paperthreads
Serialpurrs
Signmax.us
Sussann's Blog - Cutter Files
The latest by Mary
The Scrapbook Lady - GSD Downloads
Time for crafting
Ukscrappers - Craft Robo
Visual Designs By Chris
Wishblade Files
Wishblade GSD Files
Wishblade
http://www.scrapmag.info/crafty/index.php (French site - all free)
http://www.duckysdesigns.com/KNK/Freebies/freebies.html
http://wordpress.com/tag/free-gsd/
http://papercuttingfun.com/wishblade/
http://www.paperthreads.com/forum/index.php
http://aussiescrapsource.typepad.com/aussie_scrap_source/quickutz/index.html (Free .GSD)
http://www.paperthreads.com/ (mostly for sale) (message board for sharing)
http://scrapbooking.arnolds.net.au/forum/index.php
http://ukscrappers.co.uk/ (go to the Craft Robo part of the Forum)
http://www.designsbyduchess.com/dsphotography/wishblade/wishblade.htm http://www.thewishbladingwell.com/
http://greatscrappindesigns.com/store/Default.asp
http://www.thescrapbooklady.co.uk/catalog/gsddownload.php
http://www.jersgirl.com/temps.html (jpg templates) Matching QK &

TTF Fonts:
http://www.scrapbook.com/blogs/19078/view/3115.html
http://www.publicfont.com/category/quickutz.php
http://mamawslegacy.wordpress.com/ (blog; free files almost daily)
http://mamawslegacy.com/cut/cut.html (free cutting files)
http://mamwawslegacy.cuttersmarket.com/ (cutting files; files in gallery)
http://www.letsbescrappy.blogspot.com/ (inexpensive for sale)
http://www.visualdesignsbychris.com/store/home.php
http://www.digitalcraftcutters.com/id67.html

Ideas for creating:
http://www.letteringdelights.com/
http://www.deltaphiscrappa.com/DayCrop28.html
http://www.estiloweddings.com/CUPCAKE-WRAPPERS/cart.php?m=product_list&c=97

Awesome free files - thanks Monica :)

http://www.fam-bjork.se/monicas-hobbysida/en_index.html

Awesome pop-ups!

Have you ever made a pop-up card or done Kirigami before?

Try www..EASYCUTPOPUP.com for card patterns

Click on the pics above to go staraight to their website.

Altered Binder Clip - great for work!!

How cute is this!!

Such a great idea for the office, no?

Awesome - Free files!!

This blogger is committing to a file a day for a year and she is offering them free. Hope you all find something you can convert for your use! http://vendibles.wordpress.com/365-free-svg/

A fun Silhouette of girlfriends shopping from Sh*ppers Drug Mart :)

Wouldn't this make the coolest girlfriends card? I am imagining layering the women in different colours, but my big brain is usually wayyy ahead of my creating-ability ;) Anyone interested in taking the leap and creating a cutting file from it? Please send me a copy when you're done, I'd love you forever becasue although I am really good at manual tracing, I still have to fiddle a whole lot with auto tracing and these lines need to be clean!

Click on the pic to get the jpg file and ENJOY!!

Tips & Tricks: QuicKutz Alphabet equivalents

Click on the pic for the link to the font equivalents - thanks Superpezgirl

Tips & Tricks: complete cutting control at your fingertips

Check out my all time MUST-HAVE tool, for what someone once called xacto knife surgery for those cuts that don't quite go all the way through.


Enjoy!!

1st Communion Card

Wow, looovin' how this looks with the gold ;) I manually traced a photograph using my KNK Studio GE program and had this cut in 15 minutes, start to picture! I will be using it to decorate a patent black gift bag for my husband's Goddaughter's 1st holy communion gift... which is no doubt - GOLD and beautiful ;)

Click on the pic for the knk file, sorry, didn't have time to convert it to GSD.

From panic to passion!!

Okay I must be loosing it! I tried cutting something simple the other day (3 letters for a monogram) and had to change the blade cap for the paper - I did. Then I went to cut and it started making this horrible sound and since the whole house was asleep I couldn't investigate, I powered off. Finally I now have a moment to try again and the noise is still there. Note, there are no pending print/cut jobs and I powered down and unplugged all cables before restarting, and my Silhouette is only 4 mos old! When I power up... the "carriage" (to use the old typewriter-term) wants to move left but it's as far left as it can go so the terrible sound is the motor trying to move it left. ACK! Whaaa'doo'eye'dooo? HELP!

You know, I really have to hand it to my Yahoo Group friends, they just make life so very much easier! And Sandy McCauley simply makes me want to HUG my machine!! They confirmed I am not losing it!! (and also that it's not human error, my baby is BROKEN!!

PANIC!!!

Holey smokes! I am about to cut 145 monograms for wedding invitations - NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!

... and that I should contact the QuickKutz Customer Support, so I did, through their website and in less than 24 hours The Silhouette Support Team said: "Thank you for alerting us to your concern. It sounds as though the Silhouette's blade holder is off track. To get the tool back on track you can manually move the device back and forth several times. This should cause the belt to get back on track. Please try this and let us know if you have any problems. "

... and it worked!

So, off I went to use the Passions Conflict Rob font I fell in love with thanks to Nancy which is no longer a free font, so for those of you who want it, try Aquarelle.

So with a PASSION font, I created these thank yous for each and every one of you who always see to it that I loooove my cutter (especially Sandy!)!!

Tips & Tricks: Embossing, Engraving, Punching, and Drawing with a Digi Cutter

Click here for Sandy's video

Tips & Tricks: The Font Organizer

This program, The Font Thing is yet another really awesome freeware program. I personally found it helpful to organize my 1,000s of fonts into folders so when using this program I can actually at the click of a button install and uninstall fonts as I need or want to. It's also got this great feature where you can type in whatever you want to "cut" or "print" and you can see what the font will look like to help you narrow down what the lucky font of the day will be :) This is the biggest time saver I've found to date! Unfortunately I have become addicted to fonts now ;) What a fantastic problem to have!!

Download it here.

Tip & Tricks: Colour Detector

This is a neat program that allows you to find an exact colour match, not only using Craft Robo type software but ANY software! This is great when editing photographs even :)

Download it HERE

Silhouette Training manual

This is awesome!!

... and about time too...

here's a link to a decent training manual

for the Silhouette!!

I've stuck these pics on my wall for reference, it used to baffle my little brain ...

Awesome Tool: ImageChef.com

Tips & Tricks: Vinyl Cutting

I haven't tried this yet but my friend Sandy gives a tutorial :)

Tips & Tricks: Vectorizing to get the KFC effect

First of all, I am very grateful to all of you who have offered condolences and support about my wish to create a KFC Logo-type silhouette as noted in my two posts below. Apparently, I am software challenged at the moment but still have been offered some great information like... the Funtime Delux software in fact has the capability to do this and so does Photoshop apparently.

Here's a great place to start, click on the images below:

...and a tutorial online... lookie here:

KFC Logo - converting photos to silhouettes - Part 2

You know, this is another excellent example of what I want to do with my daughter's pic... see where I am going with this? See my last post and let me knwo if you have any ideas.

KFC Logo - converting photos to silhouettes

Is anyone out there graphically inclined enough to convert a face pic (jpg) into a great silhouette, like the KFC logo of Col.Saunders?

I want to take a pic of my baby girl and convert her and her pigtails into an image like the KFC logo, is it possible? What software and what "graphics trick" would I need to use??

Thanks if anyone has some ideas!!

My pretty baby

Hi again,

I've been slowly but surely getting our vacation pics into my daughter's scrapbook album and thought I'd share this cute google find that I actually traced myself. Unfortunately though, my tired 3AM eyes and brain saved over my original file and I only have a block of "all black" and "all reds" saved that I put together to cut to save on paper and of course, sorry but I saved over the original traced file (and knowing me may never need or use it again so sorry) but I traced it in no time at all so feel free to try your hand!!

I actually gave her hairstyle piggy tails instead and added a feathery thingy on the scrapbook page it's on so she'd look more like my daughter ;)

If you're my facebook friend, shes wearing the outfit in my profile pic... and as of today you can take a peek on my very first post to see my profile pic ;)

The font I used for the layout was Chinese Takeaway and I think the page turned out quite cute!

LittleChineseGirl.GSD (This one was retraced in RoboMaster just for you Lisa)

LittleChineseGirl.JPG

Enjoy!

Tips & Tricks: Turtle surgery (reviving crappy cuts)

Siiigh... so on our cruise we also visited the Turtle Farm in the Cayman Islands. I found this wonderful dingbat font called Keya's Turtles and fell in love with one of them and proceeded to cut out a turtle in my perfect-colour green paper... and it didn't cut all the way through. Siigh... then I tried again, and again and then had to get creative with the green papers, or rather what was left of the green papers... and FINALLY I gave up and I got out my chalks and chalked the darned turtle after performing a tedious exacto-knife-surgery to cut the outside edge to FREE the turtle from it's almost-cut. So, here's a tip on reviving crappy cuts ;)

Anywhoo... still not very good at selecting paper types and thus blades yet - but at least I am cutting, right :)

I think he's cute!

Tips & Tricks: Converting KNK to GSD Files

Thanks Edita :)

Tips & Tricks: Removable Tape

I use Scotch 3M matte finish removable tape for all my die cutting.

I arrange the cut-out on my cutting mat (non-sticky) and put the tape on it, turn the whole taped thing over, add glue and position on my scrapbook page or card and press into place, then remove the tape strip.

This is how I would make my letters join when I was using the Quickutz Squeeze and then the Revolution. (Loving the weld feature on the QK Silhouette that does it for me now!)

I pride myself on still being on the same roll for 4 years, that's how much I re-use the tape strips. PLUS I can't find the darned stuff anywhere even if I wanted another roll :(

Question: What do you guys use and how do you add your adhesive and position your little pieces???

My first manual tracing file!!

I did it!! I viewed Sandy McCauley's manual tracing video tutorial and in about 4 minutes no-word-of-a-lie this came out of my Silhouette!!!

On our recent vacation, we insisted my 11 month old wear a hat so after "Hi" then "Up" and "Dada", her next word was "hat" which we thought was hilarious because it quickly became an incessant peek-a-boo tool, but at least she wore it!! The pic is of her wearing my hemp Tilley Hat to give her more UV coverage in the hot Mexico sun! I couldn't resist creating this cut-out for her scrapbook.

Enjoy it - summer's coming!! Use different colours for dimension or simply chalk the edges as I have. THANKS SANDY!!!

As an aside, my apologies to my GSD friends, I will figure out how to convert the KNK files from my KNK Studio GE program to GSD files, please bear with me on my learning curve... in the meantime I encourage you to get the program cause I am having a BLAST!!!

TilleyHat.jpg & TilleyHat.knk

~Nikki ;)

iloveknk.com

YAYYY!! Sandy's got a new tutorial on how to make hearts and shamrocks and I did it, I made a 4 leaf clover and it's cute ;) I'm still a perfectionist so before posting, I'd still like to play a bit but it's so awesome how the smart bar changes to reflect what edit mode you are in - just awesome!!! Check out the free video and see how easy-peasy it is to do! Thanks Sandy!!!

On a sad note, I am going to have to figure out how to convert a KNK file to a GSD file for my fellow scrapaholics, any advice?? I was thining of uninstalling the Craft Robo 5.1 version and putting a much lower version on my machine to see if converting from KNK to that version of GSD would work - who knows?? I'll figure it out one day - right :)

6 degrees of separation...

In one of my Yahoo Groups, there was a post where we all told each other where we lived and I have met (by email) someone with the same first name as me who lives less than 30KMs from me and her son was born exactly one day before my daughter and their birthdays are in less than 2 weeks!! More specifically, my dayghter was born on Easter Sunday and her son the day before Easter only one city away from each other.

So, I thought I'd share what my baby-giveaways will be for my Baby Easter Bunny's five little friends who are coming for a birthday play date, it's called a Boo Boo Bunny and they are so darned cute and easy to make!

The inspiration came from Avon and Cheeky Monkey.com where I saw these cuties and of course I thought, there's no way I am spending 10 bucks and that there has got to be a way to make them myself for a loooot cheaper! Of course, I found a great how-to on About.com and these are what my lil one will be sending home with her little friends.

Here are some cute poems you can recite to your little one when they have a boo boo that needs your TLC:

Boo Boo Bunny is here today,

To help your boo boo go away.

This funny, fuzzy, furry friend,

Will cool the hurt to help it end.

She'll make the ouch go bye-bye fast,

So hold her until the pain has passed.

And when the boo-boo is all through,

She'll still be here to play with you.

When the tears begin to flow,

From a bruise or bump or blow,

Boo-Boo Bunny is so nice,

In its tummy holding ice,

Gently soothing all the while,

Sadness turning into a smile.

If a boo-boo has you feeling crummy,

Stick an ice cube in my tummy.

Hold it to your boo-boo tight,

Soon everything will be alright!
I'm the Boo-Boo Bunny.

I turn sad faces into funny.

I'm addicted and LOVING the KNK Studio GE !!

Hey fellow newbies ... I saved up the coffee coins and made the plunge!! I purchased Sandy McCauley's KNK Studio GE from the package deal link on the right at http://www.iloveknk.com/ For those of you who've read about my frustrations you know I was going nutz because I couldn't erase a stinky little line in my Valentines card... IMAGINE! One line, driving me to drink!! Well, I had some generous people try to help me but we were limited by software capabilities and time but in the end, this is the video that sold me on this product. That's as well as Sandy's very generous responses to my questions and posts on Yahoo groups.

Seriously no one's paying me to say this... this software is amazingly INTUITIVE, with bright colours, simple easy to understand icons and for goodness sakes the darned thing makes sense!! No rocket science and trying to make-do becasue of software limitations, and I can finally enjoy designing and manipulating images to cut on my Silhouette. I've got a pep in my step and got joy in my heart as I plan to make my scrapbooking pages of my lil' darlin' EXPLODE now that I have this under control!!

I haven't had much time to actually start playing with real files but have experimented with things and adjusted my preferences as aI go page by page through the manual and I am SO THRILLED I feel the need to use an expeltive I am so thrilled !!! I can't wait to completely get through the manual that SHE, Sandy McCauley wrote and the free video tutorials on her website and the additional ones that come free with your purchase!! Siiiigh... it's a certainly a great day :)

And... our vacation was wonderful BTW, thanks to you know who you are for asking; I am back to work on March 23rd (that part sucks) tee hee

...and since you're still reading, here's a beautiful heart card I made; the R is from my QK Finale alphabet and the inside of the card was hand-cut (how archaic) to give the two-toned look. Enjoy :)