Flower By Frannie Blog

The Cricut Essentials Kit (Value Pack) comes with the following items:
1. Two 6″ x 12″ cutting mats

2. Cricut tool kit

3. Cricut Celebrations paper pad

4. Cricut Rainbow cardstock pad

5. Cricut trimmer

6. 2 Cricut replacement blades

7. Cricut spatula tool.

As of January 8, 2009, here are some prices for the Essentials Kit:

Walmart $66.56
Amazon $58.70
Ebay (Price Varies)

I purchased the Cricut Toolkit from Walmart when I purchased my Cricut Expressions Machine. The scoop tool is handy for removing delicate cuts from the cutting mat, the boning knife is useful for folding cards and the scissors I use on occassion. The rest, I barely use. Since most of these items I have purchased already, I probably did not really need this toolkit. The one cricut tool I did get that turned out to be very useful was the Cricut Spatula. The Spatula is great for removing cut items from the sticky cutting mat. I would recommend getting this item instead of the toolkit if you have these items already in your supply.

Here’s a photo of the cricut spatula:

 As of January 7, 2009, here are some prices for the toolkit:

Walmart $18.88
Amazon $24.63
Ebay (Price Varies)

Here are some prices for the spatula:

Walmart $4.97
Amazon $5.99
Ebay (Price Varies)

Here is some information from the Provocraft website on the toolkit:

• Product Line: Cricut
• Product Category: Storage And Tools
• Item Number: 29-0004
• Packaging Size: 
• UPC Code:  093573030048

Get a head start on craft making for the holidays this year. The following list consists of popular holidays:

The following contains a list of recommended greeting cards to make and keep in supply:

This page is dedicated to free Valentine’s Day Stamp images you can print for using in cards, scrapbooks or other paper crafts.

Adding faux stamps are easy and fun. Once you have printed a stamp, be sure to use scissors or a cutter with the Stamp edge. I have both, but here is an example of the Craft Lite  paper cutter with the stamp edge:

If you don’t have a Stamp edge, just use a wavy edge.

To download an image, perform the following steps:

1. With your mouse, right-click the image and select “Save Picture As”

2. Save the image in a location easy to find. You may find it easy to store and retrieve your images in your My Pictures folder if you have one.

The following are images of real US Postage stamps.

To print off an entire sheet of stamps, click below to open a Microsoft Word document:

Click to open in Microsoft Word.

Check back later for more images coming soon.

This page is dedicated to free quote images you can print for using in cards, scrapbooks or other paper crafts.

To download an image, perform the following steps:

1. With your mouse, right-click the image and select “Save Picture As”

2. Save the image in a location easy to find. You may find it easy to store and retrieve your images in your My Pictures folder if you have one.

I often crop images into circles. If I didn’t crop my images into circle, I would have to buy a circular cropping tool and attempt to cut an image after I’ve printed it. For me, it’s a lot cheaper to just print an image or photo as a circle and just use a normal pair of scissors to cut it out.

Here’s an example of an image I cropped using Microsoft Paint:

To achieve this using Microsoft Paint, follow these instructions:

1. Open Microsoft Paint. Click the Start button and select Run.

2. Type MSPAINT and click the OK button.

3.  Click the File menu and select Open.

4. Highlight the file you would like to crop and click the Open button.

5.  When the Save Changes dialog box appears, click the No button.

6. Click the Line button, then click the largest line thickness and then click the Red button.

7. Click the Elipse button.

8. Place the cursor in the top left corner of the image. Click the Shift button + Control Button at the same time and use your mouse to drag a circle over the image. This may take a few tries to get it right. If the circle does not look ideal, click the Edit Menu and select Undo to remove the last action performed.  You can repeat the Undo function to remove previous actions as well. Note: Clicking the Shift Button + Control button at the same time creates a proportionate width and height circle. Using this same key combination for creating a square also ensures a proportionate width and height square.

9. As you notice from the previous photo, there are edges that extend beyond the red circle. To remove these edges, click the Eraser button and remove the edges with the eraser. There are more sophisticated photo editing software that can prevent this step, but the nice thing about Microsoft Paint is that it is already included as part of your Windows Operating System. I’m sure the Macintosh Operating System has an equivalent as well. A really good photo editing software to use is Adobe Photoshop and if you would like to try this out, you can download a trial version at www.Adobe.com.

10. You can now print this image. I like to print several of these images on a glossy photo paper. Once printed, there is a nice shine to the image and it seems to provide a nice contrast to the scrapbook papers I use for making greeting cards. To copy this image to Microsoft Word, click the Select button and draw a square around the image.

11. Click the Edit Menu and select Copy.

12. Open the Microsoft Word program. Click the Edit Menu ad Select Paste. You can repeat the paste several times to fill up the whole page. You can also reduce the headers, footers and margins in order to fit more images on it as well.

I would then print this out on Glossy paper using the best photo image quality setting on my printer. This particular image really pops using black cardstock.

Here’s another example of clipart using the same technique:

Here’s an example using a rectangle instead of a circle:

About the Clipart I Used:

A few months ago, I purchased a new vintage Christmas Clipart CD by Dover Publications. The images are beautiful and have a unique old-fashioned victorian type of feel to them. The nice thing about the Dover clipart I have purchased in the past is that it comes with a full-color printed copy of every single image, Dover Design Manager software for easy viewing and all images were royalty-free.

Here is a link to Dover’s website: http://www.doverpublications.com

Here is a link to the Christmas Clipart I purchased: http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Full-Color-Decorative-Christmas-Illustrations-CD-ROM-and-Book/Staff-of-Dover-Publications/e/9780486999678/?itm=7

Per a blog reader’s request, I made a Valentine’s Puppy  Bouquet. I love it!
It is so adorable. See below…

Valentine Puppy $24.95 + $10 for Shipping

Valentine Puppy $24.95 + $10 for Shipping

Puppy Twins  $29.95 + $10 for Shipping SOLD

 Please visit my website store to see all the latest puppy bouquets at: www.flowersbyfrannie.com or www.puppyblooms.com

Holiday Puppy $24.95 + $10 for Shipping SOLD

Puppy with Purple Flowers  $24.95 + $10 for Shipping SOLD

Princess Puppy SOLD

Puppy with Yellow Orchids  $24.95 + $10 for Shipping SOLD

Cheerleader Puppy  $24.95 + $10 for Shipping

Yellow Puppy SOLD

To get free clipart emailed to you, I would suggest subscribing to two e-newsletters:

1. The Vintage Workshop http://www.thevintageworkshop.com/store/information.php?info_id=18

2. Dover Publications http://www.doverpublications.com/sampler1/

To download free clipart, visit these websites:

1. Microsoft http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/clipart/default.aspx?ofcresset=1

2. Google http://images.google.com

3. Canon http://cp.c-ij.com/en/index.html

4. HP http://www.hp.com/hho/hp_create/index.html

My passion for card-making naturally led to my desire to purchase a personal electronic cutting system. In reading various cardmaking magazines, I noticed there were only a few personal electronic cutting systems to choose from, but the choice was pretty obvious for me.

After watching the Cricut informercial (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VxMhGejU96Y) on tv, I became intrigued. The Cricut system is made by Provocraft (www.provocraft.com). I did searches on Ebay (www.ebay.com) and Craigslist (www.Craigslist.com) in hopes of finding a good deal. At the time, the resale price on these sites was so close to the price offered at WalMart (www.walmart.com), that it didn’t make sense to try to buy it used when I could have a new one and the ability to conveniently return it if there was a problem. I also liked that WalMart and Michaels (http://michaels.com/art/online/home) carried other Provocraft products such as cartridges, mats, pens and a toolkit. There also was a wide variety of cartridges I could select from both WalMart, Michaels and Ebay. Each cartridge contains a unique set of images or fonts. Some of the cartridges include: Animal Kingdom (animals); Mickey Mouse (Disney), Christmas Cheer (Seasonal), and much more. Only once did I pay a ridiculous amount for a cartridge ($99 for Paperdolls). At the time, it was very new, widely popular and hard to get. Now, as a rule, I only purchase cartridges when they are on sale. Michaels often has a sale where these cartridges are only $35 – $40. If I bring a Michaels ad to WalMart, any cashier can perform a price match. WalMart is great about price matching cricut cartridges, dvds, etc. 

There are 3 versions of the Cricut cutting system:

1. Cricut (original)

2. Cricut Expressions

3. Cricut Create (Sold Exclusively at Michaels)

I purchased the first model and loved it right away. A few months later, I then sold my system on craigslist and ordered their largest system, the Cricut Expressions from WalMart. This model is capable of cutting larger sizes up to 12″ x 24″, the standard scrapbook size sheet is 12″ x 12″. The third model, the Cricut Create, is an improvement on the first small model and sold exclusively at Michaels.

The other great features of this cutting system is the ability to draw. You can replace the cutting blade with Cricut pens to draw, instead of cut, images. You can also purchase Cricut Vinyl adhesive sheets to cut images for decorating the interior of your home. There is also the ability to connect your Cricut machine to your computer via a USB cable. You can then use the Cricut Design Studio software to prearrange the layout of your images before cutting. The Cricut Design Studio software also allows you to view the images of all Cricut cartridges, but you can not cut with them unless you own the cartridge. Another option is to use a third party software, such as Sure Cuts A Lot to cut from your existing fonts or to create your own images to cut. This product is by Craft Edge and is available on ebay or by clicking this link: http://www.craftedge.com/index.php?rfid=8626933&ref=1e24a499091c6d0df7432acdfe78d156

This machine is lots of fun, versatile, and widely available by big retail giants. I would highly recommend purchasing this machine.