New Favorite Treat

If you love lemon meringue pie, try the Dairy Queen Lemon Meringue Pie Blizzard. It is now in my top 3. My other favorites are the Pumpkin Pie Blizzard and the Choco Cherry Blizzard.

Non-Stamping Money Saving Tip

I love really good quality exfoliating products and was willing to shell out dollars to get a very fine abrasive for my face. I learned the hard way that the cheap stuff, made with fruit pits can cause skin problems. The shards of pits can be sharp and can invade a pore that is open and can take literally years to work it's way out. My dermatologist figured out what was going on and said it was not uncommon.  I was paying about $25 for a bottle of nice exfoliator when I read in a magazine that Queen Latifah said her dermatologist confirmed what her grandma told her--that baking soda is the best exfoliator out there. I keep a plastic jar of it in my shower, sealed tight, and with a couple of silica gel packets (like come with medicines to absorb moisture) tossed in. Use about 2 t. on your wet hand in the shower and lightly rub your face and upper neck with it. If your skin is very sensitive, don't rub hard until you find out how much you can take as it is a fine but concentrated exfoliator. I have found it does 2-3 times better job than my expensive stuff. I like what it does for my legs and feet, too.

Pros/Cons (so far) with my Silhouette Cameo

Pros:

Not a huge footprint. Even though I got the bigger one it is only 6 1/4" wide so it sits right on the edge of the right side of my computer desk.

Not nearly as noisy as previous machines.

Good grids and rulers for positioning. I find it much easier than anything I have had.

Definitely cuts smoother.

*Probably my favorite thing is that I can make cuts of all my dies in black, scan them, and load them in the computer.  AND---I won't be buying plain outline dies anymore. I will still want some of the more intricate ones (see below)

My second favorite thing is that you can make a cutting file for any stamp you own and you get to choose if you want it the size of the stamp or bigger.

You can put everything on disc so you never lose it. I have not done this yet (fingers crossed).

Much easier to replace blades. No adjusting necessary, just pop it in.

Price--if you can get it on sale. I feel it will soon be paid for since I am selling dies and will be buying fewer dies.

It has made some of my old stamps feel new again!

Good tech support for all your questions and they answer them quickly.

Easy to dust. It is smooth without little places to collect dust.



Cons:

There is a learning curve.

Initially learning where to store things on the computer was annoying to me.

You will find some download purchases a real deal and others not so much.

I think the Designer Software should have come with it from the beginning.

Intricate dies like doilies are harder to get to look nice and cut completely. They also cut very slowly.

For me, the original eraser feature wasn't all it was cracked up to be. I have not tried the Designer Edition one yet, but I hear it is better.

There is a more extensive manual you can download, but it is much easier to watch lots of You Tube tutorials. Sometimes it is hard to find an answer to something but I have found tech support to be just excellent and fast.

Silhouette Part 1

So, I decided to take the plunge again. I have owned a Cricut and a Slice in the past. They worked alright for the technology available at the time. I have been thinking about a Silhouette for a couple of years, but truly was afraid it would be too complicated for me. When it went 30% off for a day this summer at a site I use, I decided to take the plunge. I knew I had 2 weeks of vacation coming and committed to an hour total per day of trying to learn to use it, if only in 5 minute increments to save my sanity.

I will have to say, it turned out better than I thought. I was able to make more progress in 30 minutes than I expected to make in several hours. By the third or fourth day I was using basic functions fairly well, but still having a bit of trouble remembering the order of the commands (still do now and then).

By the time I had had the machine a month, I realized that I was going to need the Designer Studio Software and when it went on sale at Overstock.com, I purchased it. Warning here--it took over 2 weeks to arrive and I just got it yesterday. I am just beginning to learn it. The reason I got it was because I see so many cute SVG files for sale or free that I knew I wanted to add the option to download those too.

The files from Silhouette are about 99 cents each, extremely easy to download and use and store, and best of all you can resize anything!

Tomorrow I am going to post the pros and cons that I see so far.