I Could Be a Magician. Pixscan Mat Fixed!

I have a love/I’m so sad you don’t work relationship with my pixscan mat. And in this relationship, I take comfort in knowing it’s not me. It’s totally the machine. My machine does this annoying little thing where it pulls my pixscan mat in too far while reading the second registration mark. Then it spits the mat out the back. Obviously, this doesn’t work. And the whims of the machine seem tied to updates. It can work well, then after an update, I have this same issue. So I wait.
I know my software is up to date, but yesterday, I remembered my machine had FIRMWARE. I checked to see which version I was on. It was 1.40 I went to the Silhouette America site to see if there might be another version. There was. It was 1.6 – I may have missed firmware update or two.
I updated my machine following the instructions on my screen. It took about 15 minutes and I got to see the screen on my machine change to various pretty colors.
I just tried my pixscan mat and it worked on the first try! I’m so excited 😀 I haven’t tried again, so I hope it wasn’t a one time thing, but considering it didn’t work at all before, I think my chances are pretty good 😀
So, if you’re having similar issues with your pixscan mat, this may be a good starting point for you, too 🙂
Thanks for stopping by!
xoxo

Christmas Cards Part the Fourth

Still working on fun 🙂

This card involved digital elements as well as an actual stamp 🙂 The background and the fairy are digital. I printed them off, colored, and then cut them out. Then I stamped the greeting 🙂

This is a stamp I bought a few months ago because, look at it 😉 This card is almost completely old school with no digital 🙂 I stamped and colored the image. Cut out all the papers. Used embossing powders and gel pens. When it was time to cut out the stamped portion, I tried to use my pixscan mat, but my machine and that function still don’t get a long. Which is a shame, because it’s such an awesome feature. Instead, I created and cut out two frames. One is the mat. The other I traced around my stamped image then cut the image out by hand. I got the right size by using the pixscan function, even if my machine wasn’t able to cut it out.

And we have a Christmas box card! I think I’ve shifted into the box card making part of my seasonal cards 🙂

Thanks for stopping by!

xoxo

Links to the projects: fairy digi stamp, pattern/digi paper, postcard stamp, snow globe box card

I Had Plans But….

I had a stamp set picked out to use.

I had a card sketched out on paper.

My card kind of resembles my sketch.

Here’s the sketch I did. I don’t know if you can really tell what it is, but that’s okay, since I didn’t really follow it 😉

Here’s the stamp set I planned to use…but I don’t think I used any of that, either.

From the sketch, I think I kept the background and the coral…

Here’s how the card turned out. I’m not disappointed at all.

The background is sponged on using multiple colors of multiple shades of browns and blues.

The white line around the card was done using a Silhouette sketch pen and a pixscan mat.

The mermaid was stamped and colored with copics and pencils.

I wanted to use my pixscan mat again to cut her out – but after the first cut, I could see the cut was off. I stopped the machine and rescued the image and ended up cutting her out by hand.

I kept trying to work in the sea horses I’d colored and cut out from the stamp set, but it just didn’t work. I dug through my things and found the bliss stamp and I’m jazzed how well it all came together considering it barely resembles the idea I started out with.

Thanks for stopping by!
Xoxo

Bliss stamp in a set from Serendipity, but I’ve had it forever and I can’t find the specific set. There is a stamp there that looks like it, but I have no idea how the size compares.

Mermaid is from a place called Coronado Islands stamps, but I don’t believe they exist any longer.

The coral is from the octopus set I used a while back 🙂

You Don’t Always Get What You Want

Now I’ve got that song stuck in my head 😉

I played with some new stamps and I don’t think I quite have the hang of them yet. Again, I think my color selection might be off, and some techniques didn’t work as well as I’d hoped.

This stamp set does have a coordinating die set for help with cutting them out. However, I don’t have it. But it’s fine because I have a pixscan mat to use with my Cameo 🙂

Okay, so that part didn’t turn out as well as I’d hoped either. While it now reads the registration marks and cuts, the cuts are a little misaligned. It’s still easier than fussy cutting them, but not as accurate. And I KNOW it can be more accurate, I’m just not sure how to tweak it 😦
This means I NEED to play with the stamps set some more 🙂

Stamps, Background was done in Craft Artist 2

Mermaid in a Bottle

It was a stressful week. We had court for our foster son and the judge is in the process of deciding whether to change the baby’s case goal from reunification to adoption.

Court was Thursday.

It’s Saturday.

We’re still waiting for an answer.

To help deal with the stress, I colored a mermaid. 

I decided she needed a cozy bottle to hang out it, but it was kind of boring, so I also created a background for her.

But I’m most excited about the cork. Yes, the cork. Below the card in the picture, you can see what the cork looked like compared to the cork on the card.

When I put the card together, I realized the bottle looked kind of funny with the cork on top because the cork should be behind the opening. But when I put it behind the card, it looked funny because there was no cork visible inside the opening.

To fix this, I drew in the bottom part of the cork and colored it with my copics. Then I colored the top of the cork to make it match better.

I like the bottle much better now 🙂

The mermaid is from a place called Coronado Stamps, but I don’t think they’re around anymore. But a quick search online showed their stamps may be found on eBay 🙂 I used my pixscan mat to cut out the stamped image on my Silhouette Cameo.

The background was done in Craft Artist 2 with the kit called Summer Seaside. The bottle and the letter set are from the Silhouette Store.

Thanks for stopping by!

xoxo