More uses for your Cricut!!

Everyone, I am so excited to have found this new product, I can even stand it!!

I know that I am not the only one to have invested in a Cricut, and was then put off by the never ending costs of keeping it up to date with the newest designs and the cartridges! Well empty you wallets no more!!

Yours truly (you can thank me later) has found a product out there that allows us to create and cut our own designs! It's called "Sure Cuts A Lot" SCAL for short... and it might be the best thing since sliced bread, or at least can cut an image of sliced bread!! Basically it allows you to take designs that youve either created yourself or downloaded from online (many of them being free), connect to your Cricut machine and cut your items directly from your computer. Its pretty much the same as Design Studio, except its about $30 cheaper and lets you download SVG files from online.

Most people dont know that their Cricut has a USB slot in the back, usually right next to the power cord. (You'll need the same kind of usb cord that you use for your printer, not the kind that is the same on both ends)


So first, you click on this link: Sure Cuts A Lot

Pay for and download the file.

Now you should be all ready to start creating!!

At this point, you have a few different options.

1. Now you can go to a website that offers free SVG file dowloads, such as:
Paper Yoga
Free SVG Files

or, just do a google search for "free svg files" and see what you can find!

2. Design your own by downloading Inkscape and using your own SVG files.

I am on the lazy side and would just rather download others files, but if you are super creative, go for it and be sure to keep us updated with your creations!!

A Day of Fix Its!

Today is turning out to be a day of fix-its. I awoke an hour earlier than I usually do to take my car to the auto body repair shop. I am pleased though, because they literally had my car in and out in under an hour! That was a first for sure! I was psyched that I would be able to get on with my day without any delay... until now! My flat-screen TV conked out on me a few days ago, so the TV repair men were scheduled to come out. I was told between 10am-1pm... and of course at 12pm, I finally call and am told that I they wont be here until 1:30 because he's coming from Long Island. I wish that service people would give you a tracking number, like UPS or FedEx and you can randomly check in every few minutes to locate where your service guy is at any time. Then you can go about the rest of your day uninterrupted! As a matter of fact, that's GENUIS!! Remember guys, you heard it here first!!

In the meantime, I am home making granola for my new breakfast diet. So I grab my laptop, look up the recipe I used last time, and set up my laptop on my kitchen counter. It dawns on me, of course, that this would be much easier to do if I had a recipe card that I could simply pull out of my recipe box. AHA... I have a new class to add to the class schedule... Scrapbooking Recipe Cards and Recipe Box! Coming in March! Be sure to sign up for the newsletter to stay updated!

E-Craft...squashes competition? (No pun intended)

Happy Monday,

So has anyone else heard of the new electronic cutter coming out by Craftwell? I, for one, am pretty gosh darn excited. It's called the e-Craft and is similiar to the Cricut...except better! The major difference between this and the Cricut is , #1 no more expensive cutting mats. You simply load the machine with paper, and voila! No need for a mat, or spatula or tweezers and all those other tools that come along with the Cricut.

Now dont get me wrong, I love my Cricut. But in my humble lil ole' opinion, the e-craft just may be the competition we were all hoping for. Craftwell claims to offer a couple of thousand images, comparable to the Cricut catalog. However, Craftwell also offers an interactive community to its customers that allow for sharing of new designs and techniques!

The only downside that I can see is that its price starts at $259 and ranges all the way up to $599. However, if the online community is as shareable as they claim it is, it could be well worth it as a full catalog of Cricut products could end up costing you 4 times as much! It is scheduled for a sale date of March 1st, so we shall see if the quality and ease of use live up to the hype!

Welcome to The Crop Shop

Hi all,

This blog is intended to keep you all up to date on the happeneings of the Crop Shop!

We recently completed our first cropping class since we opened and it was a great success. We were lucky enough to have Jeanne Nevins come and guest host the class and her cards were MAGNIFICENT! We had 2 ladies that came in that'd never scrapbooked before and they were both so impressed with the cards they completed! So again, thanks so much Jeanne for your time and creativity and we all are looking forward to having you come back again soon! Pictures to be posted soon!

FYI, Everyone! The Crop Shop website is getting a massive influx of supplies and embellishments over the next few days so please check in again soon for updates! Thanks for your support and happy scrappin!