Pazzles Inspiration Creative Cutter
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I have a resale license to sell scrapbooking supplies, and this is my newest inventory item. This machine is my new happy thing in my scrapbook world. Last weekend I traveled to St. Charles, Illinois near Chicago to the Scrapbook Expo at the Pheasant Run Resort and spent 2 days with my buddies Thea and Klo (Pazzles guru) learning how to use the Pazzles Inspiration machine and demoing and selling it to scrapbookers.
Frankly, it’s freaking awesome. People kept coming up and saying, “Okay, what does this thing do?” And we’d have to say, “Everything!” You can cut out your own titles, design and cut out your own die cuts, window clings, vinyl quotes for the wall or other items, make your own rubber stamps, make iron ons for shirts. This machine will cut through chipboard and acrylic and fabric. I don’t even know how to use it well enough to know how to do everything, and I can already say it rocks. We made me a window cling for the back of my car to advertise my website. I think I showed the cool T-shirt that Klo made me a while back here on my blog. Here are some things I made while learning how to use it at the expo.
Here’s a cool title guru Klo made for my daughter (Klo hurt her feelings once and made her cry so she was trying to make it up to her). Their newest CD just out has a lot of Disney-ish princess images and fairies and dragons and castles and cool stuff. I love it. Tinkerbell is from that. (By the way Klo, Summer says thank you and she loves it, but she’s still mad at you!) hehe
If you’re a good drawing artist (not me!), then you can freehand draw pictures on the software and cut them out. You can download clip art from the internet or scan pictures from books or coloring books or your kids drawings or whatever and it will cut them out. You can even scan photographs and cut them out. I’m a font person and I have a lot of them, and this software will use any true type font you have on your computer (or download free off the internet) so you don’t have to go out and buy cartridges or disks or whatever like some of the other cutters on the market. You CAN buy CDs if you want. Pazzles has some pretty cool ones, like the one with Tinkerbell, but with a little more time you could just make your own. Personally I like the convenience of not having to make my own!
I also love it because you can “weld” your letters together for a title and cut it all out in 1 single piece all hooked together instead of each letter individually and then trying to line them up straight (can’t do it). You CAN cut them out individually if you want, but you’d have to be crazy! haha
My friend Klo (Pazzles design team and demo person) has a blog here where she shows free video tutorials teaching people how to use it, and she has a great way of explaining things. The videos are great for people who tend to be visual learners and want to SEE how to do it.
So the machine sells for $599.00 plus $35.00 shipping. What saves you money in the long run is that you don’t have to buy the cartridges or disks or anything else to go with it. You also don’t have to buy diecuts anymore! Make your own! It comes with a cutting mat and a cutting blade, so you will need to replace those eventually and they inexpensive. The blade goes through 1,000 cuts and the mat lasts for 70-100 cuts. Included is also 60 fonts already on there and 300 images already on it to get you started. They also offer a 90-day phone support and a 1-year limited warranty. It is shipped directly to you from the Pazzles company. If you’re interested, contact me. You can purchase one from me through my Paypal widget just to the right up there at the top of my blog securely. I also have it available on my website at www.summerrosescrapbooks.com but to purchase it you would have to fill out the contact form and let me send you a Paypal invoice (don’t have a shopping cart yet). I do accept credit cards and you don’t have to have an account with Paypal to use it. If you have any questions, feel free to contact me. I can also provide you with a brochure by mail if you’d like.
Filed under For Sale, Summer Rose Scrapbooks, Scrapbooking | Comment (1)Mom sick.
So my kid’s sleep schedule does not want to adjust to school nights. I made the mistake of letting her stay up until 11 p.m. during the summer, and now I’m paying for it. Her bedtime is supposed to be 8:30. I figure if I get her there by 9:00 it’s good. Well, I can lead the kid to bed but I can’t make her go to SLEEP!
“But mom, I’m not tired.” Well, what am I supposed to say to that? If she’s not tired, she’s not tired! You can’t force her to fall asleep! Believe me, I would if I could. So we do this back and forth thing for a couple hours, her getting out of bed and me telling her to go back to bed, she’s got to get up early and I don’t want her to be grouchy in the morning, her saying she’s not tired, she can’t fall asleep, she can’t help it. But then she’s not even TRYING to sleep. She’s reading a book or playing a game or petting the cat. Until finally I’ve lost all patience, and frankly I don’t have much to begin with.
But I’m trying to handle things well because I don’t want the last thing my kid remembers as she falls asleep is that her momma yelled at her. That’s not a good way to fall asleep for either one of us. So last night I got silly. Usually that’s her daddy’s job but I figured I’d give it a try before I resorted to pulling my hair out and duct taping her to the bed. I sat on her bed and took her in my arms (she’s 8; not an easy feat people) and then was rocking her like a baby with very big exaggerated movements and singing Rock a Bye Baby all silly and acting all stupid and the more she laughed the harder and more exaggerated I rocked her until we were both about to fall off the bed when suddenly she says,
“Oh, please stop that now. I’m getting Mom Sick.”
The kid seriously makes me happy.
Summer Says…
Today Summer went into a gas station for me and got me a bottle of pop to drink and herself a donut and a bag of chips. What a combo, huh? Anyway, her hands were pretty full with her purchases and my change and she came back out to the car and said…
“Man, it’s a good thing I didn’t have to carry a massager or I would have DIED….from HEAVINESS.”
WHAT?!? Well, what do you mean a “massager” I asked her. She replied, “You know, like the massager chairs.”
Well, of course that makes perfect sense that she would have picked up one of those at the gas station.
Have I mentioned before how much this kid cracks me up?
Filed under Summer Rose Scrapbooks, Life, Scrapbooking | Comment (1)Heartbroken.
Do you ever take photos on your digital camera and then forget about them? And then days or weeks later you take your memory card and upload the pictures to your computer and you’re like “Wow, I forgot I took those photos.”? Well, that happened to me today. See, a week ago I had to take one of our 2-year-old cats to be put down. I agonized over the decision for months.
I’ve spent the last year taking this cat back and forth to 2 different vets to try to figure out why she’d been urinating in places that are NOT the litter boxes. Weird places, like she jump up on our bed and pee on the quilt WITH ME UNDER IT. Or if I went to Walmart and came home and left the plastic bag on the floor with groceries in it that needed put away, she would come in and pee on the bag. Or bubble wrap that got dropped on the floor. Or a piece of paper that had been knocked off my desk. Or the poor dog’s bed.
I talked to friends about it and researched the internet about it and I prayed to God about it, looking for some sort of sign that I was making the right decision. It was hard for me. And it was one of the hardest things that I’ve had to do so far in my 8 years of being a mother. I wanted to be honest with my daughter so she could say goodbye to her kitty. But it was hard because she wasn’t outwardly suffering in an obvious way, except that she never gained any weight and people were constantly asking “Don’t you guys feed that cat?” and even though she was born in our house and has lived here since she was born she never wanted us to pet her or pick her up or anything like that. It was strange.
Anyway, the day before I told my daughter and she asked me to take a picture (she’s the kid of a scrapbooker, you know), so I did. It was heartwrenching. And then when I saw it again after I downloaded it to my computer, it broke my heart all over again.
Sometimes being a mother sucks, and this has been one of those times. When your kid is sobbing and says to you, “Please don’t do this to me Momma,” it’s like the worst thing ever. I’m having a really hard time with it, with letting go and knowing that I made the right decision. There HAD to be something wrong with the cat even though the vets couldn’t find anything. I’m having a hard time dealing with the guilt and getting the actual event out of my head (the actual experience at the vet was HORRIBLE). I literally haven’t had a good night’s sleep since. So right now I struggle and I hope that with time the guilt goes away and our hearts mend a little. I don’t think I’ll print this photo, though. It’s not a good reminder and there are plenty of other happy photos taken with the cat.
What a week………….
Filed under Life, Scrapbooking | Comment (1)Kings Island Adventure.
I literally last went to Kings Island in Ohio 25 years ago for a class trip in the 8th grade. I don’t remember what it looked like back then, but I sure don’t think there were water rides back then. My aunt was taking her daughter to Kings Island for the weekend and invited Summer to go, and I went along. The most memorable part of the day at the park for me was when my camera broke. It was during this log water ride thing.
Here we are going up……..(this was when the guy said maam, you need to put away your camera)
The kids sat in the front row, but my aunt and I had the strategy of sitting in the back seat so that we wouldn’t get as wet as the others. Yeah, that didn’t work out really the way we had planned.
Now here are some other people coming down the hill. It’s not a REAL tall ride, but when you hit the water at the bottom it’s a splash like you can’t believe! See the bridge in the above picture. You come down the hill and then go under the bridge in the log. That’s also the bridge that riders walk back across AFTER they’ve ridden on the boat ride, and it’s timed just perfectly so that as you leave the ride and walk across the bridge the next boat is hitting the bottom and you get wet as you try to go across. Somebody really put some thought into that!
Here are a couple shots I got of the boat hitting the water and going under the bridge. It’s crazy how long the huge wave lasts after they’ve hit the water.
So here’s the part where the camera broke. The kids quickly figure out that if they stand still on the bridge the next boat will splash them, so you can’t get them to leave! It literally is so powerful that it knocks some of the kids off their feet, but they love it. So I decided to get a little closer to the kids so I could capture the looks on their faces when the huge tidal wave came over the top of the bridge and got them.
However, I didn’t realize that I was TOO CLOSE. There I was poised, focusing, ready to snap the photo and then quickly turn away, but instead as I was taking the picture the wave hit ME and just literally drenched my entire left side from head to toe, including the camera. I’m sure the look on my face was priceless. I turn to look at my aunt like “What the hell just happened?” and she is cracking up because the lady standing next to her KNEW what was going to happen and said, “Watch that lady taking the photo. She’s gonna get wet and she has no idea.” Nice, huh? Thanks alot for the heads up lady!
Summerism.
Last night I walked into the living room and found Summer lounging in the recliner with her feet up…….wearing my high heels that I had left sitting out. I said, “Uh, Summer, what are you doing?”
She said, “Mom, I’m following in your footsteps.”
This kid cracks me up!
Filed under Life, Scrapbooking | Comment (1)Twins Baby Mini Scrapbook
I haven’t written much lately because I was dealing with a week of food poisoning. Boy, was THAT fun…….not so much. Then I was busy making this mini scrapbook. My cousin’s wife is having twins in a few months and my aunt hired me to make a baby book to give as her gift at the baby shower. She specifically wanted it to be pink on one side and blue on the other because they’re having a boy and a girl and she also requested that I do a layout for each month so when it was all done they’d have a year of photos. So this is what I came up with. Click on the photos to make them open up larger so you can see the details better. (then use the BACK button to get back here and see more)
beginning page (for photo of them at birth)
first month spread
second month spread
third month spread
fourth month spread
fifth month spread
sixth month spread
seventh page spread
eighth month spread
ninth month spread
tenth month spread
eleventh month spread
last page (1st birthday photo as month 12)
What do you think?
I think I’ll be putting this into my etsy shop for sale as a custom order.
Filed under Summer Rose Scrapbooks, Scrapbooking, Projects | Comments (2)A visit to the Budweiser Clydesdale horses.
We live near a town where there is a fairly large Budweiser beer distributor, and a few weeks ago we had the opportunity to go there and see the Clydesdale horses. Okay, first of all WOW. They’re so beautiful! The word my dad used was “majestic,” and I think that sums it up pretty good. When we arrived about 9 a.m. they were getting their morning exercise of a long walk around the area in a field. What’s so cool is that there is actually a man between the 2 horses in the photo below. Can you see the man? No? That’s cause these horses are so HUGE!
Here’s the Budweiser dalmation after their walk. He tagged along behind them the whole way. He was a cutie and came over to Summer and let her pet him.
Here’s another one where you can see how much taller they are than this man. His head comes up to around the height of their mouths. And these weren’t the biggest ones!
They have beautiful stalls where they are kept. They are covered in fabric and each horse’s name is embroidered at the top of the stall. Embroidered! When they came back from their walk, they each got a drink and then they were put back in their stalls. Which, by the way, we were standing next to and when the horses walked by us it literally shook the ground like an earthquake under out feet. It was awesome!
Anyway, so THIS is the part of the trip where it got kind of interesting. And I’ve been mulling it over in my head to try to think of a way I could tell this story without offending anybody that reads it, especially someone who may be a customer some day and get a bad first impression from this particular post on my blog, but I figure what the hell, ya can’t please everybody right?
So as we are standing there, me and my dad and step-mom and Summer looking at these horses all lined up in a row like the photo below getting a nice butt view while they’re eating their hay or whatever it was……..
when my 8-year-old daughter points to the horse directly in front of us and says to me, “Momma, what’s that pink thing sticking out of that horse’s wee-wee?” I thought I was going to die. My dad immediately cracks up, so I said, “Ask your Papaw.” The look on his face was priceless, people. Wish I’d gotten a photo of THAT. Okay, so I am really not ready to have this conversation at this point in time, but I’m all about telling the truth to my kid and explaining things and all that crap (what am I thinking?) so I whisper to her that it’s his penis, his private parts. We’ve discussed HUMAN private parts but not HORSES for crying out loud!
I live in a very rural, farming type of county, but I’ve never had a horse, or ridden a horse (though I would love to do so), and haven’t been THIS close up to a horse before, so I can’t really explain to her why there’s this darker “thing” hanging down there which the pink penis is sticking out of and “Momma, how come that horse’s penis is sticking out farther than that one’s? And look, that one’s is shorter and that one’s is longer” I don’t know, people! What the hell is wrong with these horses anyway? Um, is anybody else ready to go home now? I think we’ve seen enough, if you know what I mean!
I’m pretty sure I’ll be making a scrapbook page about that!
Filed under Life, Scrapbooking | Comments (4)Altered Dog Treat Container
Here’s a cute little (big) peanut can (could also use coffee cans) that I altered with dog print patterned paper and some ribbon and turned it into a dog treat container. It sits on our piano by the back door so that when we bring the dogs in they can have a treat if they behave. Wish it was that easy with kids!
and here’s the lid
What do you think? Cute?
I think I’ll use some kitty papers next and make a smaller one for the cat treats. Have I mentioned my hubby taught one of the cats to catch? No, I’m not kidding.
Filed under For Sale, Summer Rose Scrapbooks, Scrapbooking, Projects | Comments (2)Father’s Day Scrapbook in a Box.
I showed a sneak peak of this right before Father’s Day, but I couldn’t show the whole project or any of the photos inside the album cause my dad reads my blog! (Hi Pops) I must say, from his reaction I think he rather liked my little Father’s Day scrapbook. It’s a little Petaloo accordian scrapbook that came in a little box for gift giving, but I altered the outside of the box also to be the album cover and used adhesive to attach the book inside so it unfolds out of the box when you open it. Here’s what it looks like lying flat on my counter.
Here are a few views of the pages closer up while lying flat.
Here it is standing up and opened on display.
Here it is just opened and unfolding out of the box.
and a little more….
and the last bit unfolding out of the book.
Here are closer views of the individual pages. These were so hard to do because they’re only 4 x 4 inches. So really your photo takes up the whole space and there’s not much room for a lot of “scrap crap.” I tried to keep it as simple as I could so the focus would stay on the photos.
The book cover and spine can be seen in my previous post in the link at the beginning of this post. I think I’ll put these up for sale for $20 as a custom order in different themes in my etsy shop at www.summerrosescrapbooks.etsy.com.
Filed under For Sale, Summer Rose Scrapbooks, Scrapbooking, Projects | Comments (2)
