Gingerbread house

I have been having problems with the video, so it will have to wait. I did figure out the problem, but now I have a horrible sinus infection and can't talk LOL -
In the mean time, here are pics of the house I am building. The windows, tree and doors were made with SCAL, but the cuts are the same as the Christmas Solutions cart. I added snow all of the place and will had more pages. Right now, there are only three, just to show how the house will lay. The first page goes only to the right of the door. The second is full to the right, but does not include the first peak that is red-that's the last page. It will be very thick and as soon as I get my voice back, I will post videos.

SCAL- Making a shaped Album

This will be a step-by step process and will be take several days so please come back often for the rest of it...

I am making an album for a Christmas craft show that will be happening in December. Since it is so far off, I find myself puting this off, but I just can't do that.

First thing I did was try to find some paper that I want to use for the album. If you want the entire thing to match, then buy a paper pack and use the papers from that. I chose a Martha Steart paper pad. Now for the shape.

I got my initial shape from the Winter Woodland Crcitu cartridge and played with it in Inkscape. I will be posting a video here later to show the steps on how I arranged them in inkscape.


The book will have 11 pages and will be aprox 11" X 11"- so a nice sze. The hardest part is figuring out original design and then each page design. Embellishing is the funnest and therefore, the easiest.

Off to make the video on how to do the design in Inkscape.
Oh and before I forget, here is the pic of the design I will be using.

Lib It Up

The creators of Sure Cuts a Lot have a companion piece called Lib It Up. Scal Lib it up is a free download. Lib it up creates little library files of all your svg or .scut files. It organizes them and makes them easily accessible via the shapes window in Sure Cuts a Lot.

I have started to incorporate .lcut files in my svg mult cut downloads. You put the lcut files in the library folder where you installed sure cuts a lot. Believe me once you get into the habit of using the libraries you will never want to guess about which svg to use again. I also love the fact that it can theme my svgs so that when I am creating I can quickly see the images of the svgs I have.

Susan Bluerobot has a tutorial for it here-

You can get Lib it up Here-

I hope this helps

New SCAL Posts coming soon....

Sorry for the long delays here...I have been on vacation for over a month and just got back.

I am in the process of making a Ginger Bread Shaped Album and will be giving some explinations here, so stay tuned....

SCAL- Making Circular Text

1.You need to have a picture editing program on your computer - I use Paint.NET (This is not the Paint Pad Accessory which is on your computer). You can download this free program - you should have this, its great - from `PaintDotNet.com`.
2. Go to Microsoft Word.
3. Click Insert, Picture, Word Art.
4. Click on one of the plain black styles in the top row. Type in the text you want. Click OK.
5. Click once on your text. The Word Art box will appear. Click the "A" which looks italic. (It's in the middle of the toolbar).
6. Click on the circle icon.
7. Now right click on your image, and click on Format Word Art.
8. In the Layout Tab choose "In Front of Text". Then click the Size tab and type the same number in the height and width (for example 6 and 6) Then OK.
9. Now right click again and click Copy.
10. Open Paint.net. Click Edit, Paste - then Expand Canvas.
11. Now you can save your file. Click File, Save as - make sure to change the file type to .jpg.

Now you can use this file in SCAL

In order to use circular text with an iron on, you will have to flip the text in Inkscape:
You will have to follow these directions if you want the item flipped.

Open Inksacpe, Click File,Import - find the .jpg file you just created
Once it is in the window, click Object, Flip Horizontal. The click File, Save As, and type a name (I usually make the name the JPG name and "flipped" , so I know which file is the flipped file).

You now have an SVG you can cut with SCAL.

Open SCAL, then Import SVG and find your file -resize if necessary and cut.