Welcome 2013!

I was going to start with Happy New Year, but I guess that has been and gone! So I hope that Christmas was good to you all and that you rang in the new year with friends and loved ones. Our Christmas and New Year was very family oriented, with lots of family functions, which was tiring, but nice.

Since then life has been pretty quiet. Kid's playing with/using Christmas gifts and catching up on sleep. I have even managed to snatch a little time here and there over the past week or so to have to myself in my crafting space. The first order of the day was the need to refresh and renew my space. This urge quite often comes with the ringing in of the new year. A good sort and cull later I was feeling more inspired to sit there and create! I also was pretty excited to get time to sit down and play with my new toy.....

I have a Silhouette Cameo! Yay for me! I had been uhmming and ahhing about this for a while now, and then a few weeks out from my birthday in December (the big four zero don't you know!) I decided I needed to buy myself a birthday present, and so I ordered one!

Well, so far, all I can say is this.... this machine is wonderful! I wish that when I first had the urge for and electronic cutting machine that this one was around. I wouldn't have gone through other costly machines (which I used but not as much as I thought I would have, and never quite lived up to the hype). But I guess if I hadn't experienced the shortcomings of these other machines then I wouldn't have truly appreciated how great the Cameo is now would I??!!

So I have done some of the January challenges, and thought that I had better photograph them and link them before the month disappears in a flurry of action. So here they are, in no particular order...

White with One - a colour challenge - White + Aqua and Red + Summer Photo

So, I have used the Cameo to cut the sunburst background, and the title and the arrow! The cool lollipop is from Purple Pumpkin.

This next one is Kraft it Up, another colour challenge. My colours are all a little subdued compared to this swatch though!

Again, the Cameo was used to cut out the speech bubble with the words. Very cool!

This one is for Scrap the Boys. Their challenge was to scrap a photo showing your son's favourite summer/holiday activity and use the photo to inspire the layout.

No Cameo cuts here, can you believe it?! Just a simple page using lots of bits and pieces lying around! Gotta make room for new CHA stuff!

And last but not least, a page for Stuck?! January #1 sketch.

This one did use the Cameo! The title, arrow and speech bubble are all cut with the cameo. I have been super impressed with how fine and detailed a cut this machine can do. Not to mention that I can create my own custom cuts quite easily! I had the basic speech bubble that I turned into this! Love being able to weld words too.

Well, that is all scrapping wise. But before I go I thought I would throw up a photo from Christmas that I simply call - "The Aftermath". I am sure you can all relate to this one!

Until next time!

Katie