pumpkin LO with my new black cat!

hi all!

well today is a day i wasn't sure we'd see - Pezza is FIVE YEARS OLD!!!!!!  for anyone who has been reading my blog since the beginning you know that she is adorable and QUITE precocious (i believe that's the nice word for holy hell handful yes?)  i raised the two boys by myself and they were nothing compared this little girl but man is she fun too!  Daddy is taking the afternoon off and pezza has requested breakfast (well brunch/lunch so daddy can come) at IHOP - excellent choice!  allllll my treadmillin' RIGHT down the drain!  then we will go out to get her a new bike.  her party is this sunday so i will be buried in the prep for that the rest of the week.

in other crafty news - my black cat has been mastered!  ok ok mastered is a little STRONG but i got my layout done!  some of you may remember i had planned it out in photoshop to get my sizing right.  as with ANY machine there was some learning to it in the beginning.  i have five different cricut machines and every single one of them had a learning curve and some rough starts so i wasn't too surprised, impatient but not surprised.  in addition i had the learning curve of the current Make The Cut software which i am also quite fond of!  now i planned out the layout for pumpkin picking BEFORE we actually went.  however, pez did not want to go to the usual farm she wanted to go to target.  well i used the layout anyway!

OMG OMG OMG i love the cuts!  hahhahhah!  i have long admired SVG cut files and i am beyond pleased at finally having done one!

I used a pattern set from little scraps of heaven called Scarecrow Friends.  how seriously cute are they?????  this is SO much more my style than alot of what is on the cricut cartridges.  i had purchased Make the Cut the moment it came out and then got busy so i never used it.  when i finally got back to it and began learning how to use it the PC lawsuit came down and i was stuck - i wanted to be able to update my Make The Cut to take advantage of all the fabulous changes andy was making to the program but if i did i would not be able to use it with any of my cricut machines.  So i was in the market for a new machine.  and i knew from the MTC forum that the Black Cat is the best of the best.  it is the largest, the strongest AND the most versatile - this thing can ENGRAVE METAL people!  I got mine from Sherri over at That's Scrap and she has been so over the top helpful as has Dawn of Thyme Graphics (the creator i believe) and all the folks on the Black Cat forum and Tyler from All That Jazz Supplies who has set up the Learning Center.

BUT back to the paper...i had to start somewhere right :P

i cut out a total of 331 pieces - yep!  this is the most i have ever done on a layout before i think.  i have to admit it was a bit intimidating looking at all those pieces.....

i got them organized in little piles for each item ready to ink and assemble.  At this point Pezza woke up and promptly SNEEZED right into the piles blowing them EVERYWHERE.
and yet she still lived to turn five today......

but i took them one pile at a time and got them done

i have to say after doing a couple and seeing how cute they were i was inspired to keep on going and had them all together in no time.  here are a few close ups:

in LOVE with these little guys

one super neat thing about doing this with Make The Cut and the Black Cat that had never even occurred to me before - i always type out my journaling - in this case i used Jolt.  now i can make my titles (here the date) in the SAME FONT and cut it out so they match!  YAY!

i do need to work on my assembly a bit as i put a couple things together wrong but it isn't anything too noticeable :)

I am quite pleased with my new Black Cat Cougar cutter and cannot WAIT to experiment and learn all the things it can do!  i have been collecting SVG files like mad!