I've Been Woo'ed

Quick, somebody insert image of cute woodland owl with big doe eyes on to my blog to go with my post title!

 

Ah...that's better.  Feeling suitably paper crafty now that I'm spot on the trend.

Moving on. You've all known I'm a pretty die hard Cricut/SCAL girl. I bought a Silhouette pre-SCAL and used it for awhile, but was not crazy for it. SCAL was released for Cricut and the Silhouette started gathering dust as I contemplated how I was going to unload it. It was definitely on the chopping block. Felt a little sad about that, but had already firmly declared myself in the Cricut camp and started recommending that machine as the end all and be all of die cutters. The caveat being, you must get the SCAL software to use it to it's fullest potential.

Then Mrs. Kerri Bradford started working me over. She's a regular little paper crafting seductress. Tempted me into giving it a try again. Since the first of the year, Quickutz has made some amazing strides in their online Silhouette Store. They hired Kerri  and a slew of other designers to design for them. The designs that they are routinely putting up on the site are knocking my socks off. Literally dozens of fabulous things a week. Affordable and there when I need them. Not a speck of dust on my machine since I started using it again.

Still going to use my Cricut. Bought two new cartridges just last week (review of those little houses on the Winter Woodland cartridge coming up soon) and if it broke tomorrow, I would still replace it. But I can say the same of my Silhouette now too. It has gone from zero to hero.  Just too darn convenient. Putting it up there with my Kindle and iPod as far as instant gratification and convenience goes.

One of the things I like a great deal about the Silhouette designs is you control how they are cut. Grrr. How do I explain? Say you have a layers button on  your Cricut and you have to cut out all the extras out of one color just to get one piece of the design to be yellow. And then you have to cut them all out again to get one piece red. And blue. And so on. You waste a lot of paper and have lots of little pieces you aren't going to use. With the Silhouette, you can break apart your images and only cut what you want at any given time. As par for my uptight personality, I'm digging the control.

Here's another example. Isn't this CD envelope cute and convenient? The new Colbie Caillat album in it for a friend. You can cut it on the Silhouette with score lines at the folds. Instead, I decided I could use my Scor-Pal to create the folds, eliminating the need for the score lines. So I just ungrouped the image on my software and deleted them. Perfect. Can't do that with the Cricut. See...the control is NIIIIIICE. The floral spray and label is QK as well. Stamps are Papertrey Ink.

In other news, I'm going to be checking out of life for a few days. Echo in the Bone was released. I have a week long date with Jamie and Roger. Chances are I'll surface for food, water, and chocolate along the way. Matt knows he's on his own for a bit. Take out menu is on the fridge.  If you don't see me for awhile, rest assured I'm in very capable and manly hands. Granted they are fictional...it makes very little difference to me. You know how everybody is ape crazy over Edward Cullen? Well, Jamie is my Edward Cullen with the added benefit of growing past puberty and able to walk around in daylight. I rest my case.