Friday, September 23, 2011

Cricut Craft Room Series #3 - Tools on the Toolbar

Hello! I worked hard today to try and get another video up in my Cricut Craft Room Series. I actually made two and somehow I've lost the file. It was a short video so I don't mind recording it again... but my time is limited this weekend. We have big plans so I won't be able to get to it till Sunday night <<sigh>>... but... for now... here is my 3rd video in the CCR series.
In this video I go over the toolbar that goes across the top in CCR. I hope you enjoy it. If you have any questions please leave a comment. Don't forget to subscribe so that you don't miss my next video! :)
 Have a great weekend!!!

Friday, September 16, 2011

Add Cricut Digital Handbooks to your iPhone and iPad


One of the things that I love about my Gypsy is how portable it is. I can take it to the doctor’s office, my children’s sporting events, road trips… anywhere. While I love my Gypsy and all its features, one thing I really missed was having my handbooks. When I first got my Gypsy I had a bag that I carried my handbooks in with me. Soon, as I acquired more cartridges (lol… not that I buy them all the time… right hubby)… the idea of taking the handbooks with me any longer became too much of a hassle.
Then… I learned that Cricut .com had ALL the handbooks in digital format on their website. I have an iPhone so I could look them up. But connections aren’t always that great in doctors’ offices or at Cross Country meets. Then I realized that you could download the handbooks in PDF format and sync them to your iPhone. So that’s exactly what I did. I’ve created a tutorial to show you the process if you are not familiar with it. Feel free to skip to the steps that you need to if you already know how to do this. But this is how I did it from beginning to end. I’m still pretty new at this whole blog thing so I did the best I could to show you images of what I did. Feel free to ask questions and as always… please leave a comment. J



1.)    Go to www.cricut.com. Click on the “Information” tab at the top of the page.

2.)    Click on “Cartridge Library” This will give you a complete list of ALL the Cartridges that Cricut has to offer.

       

3.)    In the “Handbook” column, click on the “view” link for the cartridge that you would like to download. A separate window will open with the digital handbook.

***Notice, there are some cartridges that do not have a digital handbook yet and some of the Lite Cartridges only have a picture of the insert.***

4.)    Scroll to the bottom RIGHT hand corner of your screen. When your mouse hovers over the corner of the screen a small toolbar will appear. Click on the icon that looks like a disk.

5.)    A “Save As” screen will appear. Choose the folder location where you want to store you PDF handbooks. You can choose a folder and then add “New Folder” as I have. I’ve named mine “Cricut Handbooks – PDF Files. Edit the name to how you want it to appear in your iPhone. As you can see the Cheerful Season  Creative Memories cartridge has a default name of “CheerfulSeasons.cw”. Alter this to your choosing. Remember… this is how it will be listed in your iPhone.

***The iPhone app will list your titles alphabetically under the “Titles” view. So if you want to keep your Cricut handbooks separate from you may want to carefully decide how you want to name them. ***

6.)    Next you will need to open your iTunes and connect your iPhone (or iPad) to your computer.
7.)    In the top left hand corner click on “file”. In the drop down menu click on “Add file to library…” (I was unable to get a pic of this)


***I went through and opened every handbook and deleted the extra pages with the different languages on them. If you want to do this, you will want to do it before completing the next steps***


8.)    The “Add to Library” dialogue box will open.
9.)    You will now locate the folder you saved your handbooks in and open the files to add to your iTunes

10.) With your iPhone connected to your computer, click on your device (as you see in photo, mine is named “Angie’s iPhone 4). Choose your iPhone.

11.)Click on the "books" link at the top of the page. Check “sync books”. You can then choose to sync “all books” or “selected books”. If you choose “selected books” as I have, you will need to check the books that you want to sync.
12.) After you are finished selecting your books (pdf handbooks), click on “sync” in the bottom right hand corner of the screen.

Now all you have to do is wait for your iPhone to complete it's sync and then all your Cricut handbooks are now mobile and ready to take along anywhere your iPhone will go. 
I hope this was easy to understand. If you have any questions please feel free to ask. Have a great weekend!! J

Cricut Craft Room Series #2 - Adding Images to Mat and Mat Layers

Well... after working longer than I care to admit on this video... I finally got it completed and uploaded to YouTube. In this video I cover adding images to your mat from both the Overlay view and the Images view. Also I show you how to add may layers to your project, the purpose of the "fill mode enabled" option and the different options you have when it comes time to cut your project with multiple layers.
I hope you find this video useful and come back for the rest of my series. In my next video I will cover the tools and adding fonts to your project. 
As always... I love comments. Feel free to ask questions, make suggestions or make a request for my next video. Enjoy :)


#3 Cricut Craft Room Series #1 - Basics

Yeah! After a lot of frustration and a lot of waiting I was finally able to get my third video uploaded to YouTube last night. I am absolutely in love with Cricut Craft Room. So I wanted to do a series of videos going over the basics of the programs. I learned a lot by just jumping in and pushing buttons, but there was more trial and error than anything. I hope that I will be able to pass on some useful information and inspire you.
This is the first video of the series. If there are any questions you have or something specific you'd like me to cover please leave a comment here on my blog and/or on YouTube. Don't forget to subscribe so you don't miss out on the upcoming videos. I'm actually planning on making the second video today... keep your fingers crossed for me. :)
Hope you enjoy it, and thanks for watching!

Sunday, September 11, 2011

I'll Never Forget

I was visiting some other pages today and ran across this video that we all are probably familiar with. Ten years later I still cannot wrap my mind around this. It still seems impossible that something like this could have happened to us. It's amazing how people have united. My prayers go out to all those who lost a loved one that day. And my deepest respect and prayers to all those that survived.

This video is still hard to watch.

Cricut Imagine Basics

Yeah... I made another video. I hope you all enjoy it. In this video I just go over the buttons and functions of the Imagine. I hope to start making some videos of some actual projects. I'm also interested in what kind of videos you may want to see. So leave a comment with your requests and suggestions.
Thanks again for watching :)


I've decided that this video will be the first in a series. While I quickly went over the basics of the Imagine in this video, I will be going a little more in depth on my next videos. I really look forward to making and sharing these videos with you. I also hope that you will leave me suggestions on things you may want to know about. 

Thursday, September 8, 2011

My FIRST video! Cricut Craft Room and the Imagine

Hello ladies! Today I made my first video. I'm not super happy with how it turned out but I do like the simple page layout that I was able to make using Cricut Craft Room and my Imagine. When I was editing the video the quality seemed so much better than when I played it back on Youtube. But I worked really hard on making this video and doing all the editing that I am just going to go ahead and work with this one. I will have to figure out a better way to get the quality I want for the next video. AND... I'll work on my narration. Feels a little dry to me... well... ALOT dry to me. LOL!
However... for now... here is my video. I used Winter Woodland, Christmas and Mr. Frosty Imagine cartridges. I only used white cardstock.


Hope you enjoy it. And don't forget to leave comments. I always welcome a little constructive criticism so please feel free to say what you think. It will only help make my next videos better.  Thanks!