The Silhouette Cameo - Opening the Box

Yeah! My cameo is here.
Love it.
Had to make a video of course!
Remember if you want new images if your studio is already installed you can go to file - preferences - advanced and then click on reinstate the initial 51 designs and you get cool additional images

I need to mention one great great resource other than  the blog and yahoo group  is the silhouette Message board formed by some members http://s15.zetaboards.com/Silhouette_Plus/index/
Do join in there.
Also there is a blog hop going on So do drop by http://www.thebugbytes.com/2011/10/fall-halloween-blog-hop.html and leave comments to enter giveaway. Do play and post your link to your project in the linky.
A sneak peak

Frost Painting

Gasp! Gasp! Gasp!

I did a layout and that too by tearing out paper from a stack which I did not have any duplicate of and on the top of it I used my designer brads. What was I thinking.  I wish I could have gone shopping before doing this (but nope no shopping for me for a while) as I wanted darker chocolate brown cardstock as that would have made the layout pop. But anyways!
I should thank Beatrice at Amazing Grace for helping me out as she asked me to get a birthday layout and told me to cut a cake die cut about 5 inches and start gathering the layout materials.
And another thanks to Allison and Caroline - my dear dear friends at Papercrafting weekend for making me use my stuff (even if I grumble and groan while doing so :) )
I have decided I am an organic scrapbooker. I don't follow sketches and just go with the flow. I know they don't turn out great but do I have fun :)! That's my story and I am sticking to it ;)
So here is my ( I think about my 10th or 11th layout). The photos are old ones taken way back. The camera used is an old  point and shoot. This was actually during my 2nd son's 1st birthday about 8 years back but instead of the kids playing lol you see here my hubby and my sister in law playing with cake frost. So I decided to have sober background but fun colorful die cuts - maybe to portray adults having fun lol.
I have used cake doily. The pattern paper is from sweet stack DCWV and the background brown paper is Kraft paper from recollections. I wish I had a darker chocolate colored paper. Yeah! I have even used my sewing machine. The die cuts are cut from silhouette. The border - white is from pattern paper itself which I cut using scissors to be able to stagger and  the rest 2 are using Martha Stewart punch.  Other embellishments used are stickles, brad (sigh!), viva decor pen, pearls , some brown ink and some twine

Doily 1

I love doilies so I decided to make some. Simple ones to begin with and maybe I'll proceed to complex ones later.

I have loaded the svg files & silhouette file under the file tab.

Altered Frame - 2 with Life is a beach

Hello
This is Pam

A while back I had made an Altered frame with liquitex gel beads, acrylic paint and some die cuts - http://www.thebugbytes.com/2011/05/altered-frame.html. Using the same method I made one more frame using this time die cuts from Life is a Beach cartridge. I usually cut images in sand colored cardstock and color it in if they are tiny. I have used same materials as last time ie

wooden frame - dollar frames at micheals

Gesso

Acrylic tube paint as heavy body is good while mixing rather than liquid ones

Liquitex Gel Glass Bead

Martha Stewart Glass beads

Sponge brush to apply Gesso

Plastic palette knife to apply the glass bead mixture

Plastic or disposable plate for mixing

Cardstock - I just cut all of mine on beige and colored with markers but you can use appropriate colors

Die cutting machine - Here I have used cricut expression and  Life is a Beach cartridge. But you can use any die cutting machine

Glossy accents or diamond glaze

Water in a disposable container or a plastic container

And for the clouds I just tore up some tissue and applied it when paint is yet wet.

You can of course seal it all in the end using gel medium or a suitable sealant

Here are a few pictures of the frame

Suddenly from 2 weeks back I had the problem of PS CS5 64 bit not opening while the other one 32 bit worked.. So did a chat with adobe but after asking all the details and making sure to get my serial number lol that technician said call CS the next day and he couldn't help. Lol. He knew the problem and asked that and so why should he ask for rest of details? Gad knows.
But then i decided to work on it on my own and look at the problem logically. Only thing I had changed was reinstall wacom intuos5 medium. I already had it there and I think reisntalled it over. So I went and uninstalled wacom and wow problem fixed CS5 working. Then I reinstalled wacom and now both work. Saves me having to call.

Silhouette studio update v 2.2

Hope you all have updated your silhouette studio - it is now version 2.2. And atleast it has fixed the moving files in the library. User files weren't moving after that 1.9 update and now yeah it does. They sure listen and work on it and fix it. I am so glad as it is good news for my cameo!
And check it out now we can see the ratchet blade under cut settings and it is default. So if you are using old sd model you have to change it to caps before cutting.
To know more about update releases and what each do check out this link
http://www.silhouetteamerica.com/faq.aspx?solutionid=629

 

Zing or cameo?

That's such a tough tough choice to make. I would say go for both! Thankfully I do not have to make such a decision as I already have the knk which sadly I have not yet played with as yet but the power of that machine - wow! Zing is a baby sister to my knk maxx (actually my eagle lol) compared in power zone but still to see the settings on the control panel gives me a rush and I'm sure the zing will have almost the same effect. But when it comes to print and cut silhouette with it's optical head is unbeatable king! While optical head has problem reading on dark paper or some say vellum I say why would a person print on dark paper for printing and cutting? Very rare! The machine tracking it for you is great!
So the ultimate choice comes down to what to do you do most ? cut many types of materials or print and cut? Then you gotta choose  Zing for the power to cut many materials or silhouette cameo for print and cut. And frankly some say MTC then zing but I do not hold water to that as silhouette studio is very powerful especially the designer version and you can always take that extra step and go between many software - svg  files are so compatible between software.
Isn't that a tough decision? :)  I would say  just buy one for yourself and ask or hint strongly the other to your loved one as gift lol and that way you have got yourself covered ;).