Happy Birthday Julie

Happy birfday to you

Happy birfday to you

Happy birfday dear Jewleeeeeee

Happy birday to yewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww!

 

Yup...it's another Ladybug's birfday and that's our Julie's...only one left this year..... mine!!!!! I started making her card EARLY and ended up scrapping it at the 11th hour cuz I wasn't happy with it. Made another which I mailed yesterday only to fiddle with the first and now wish I had of sent that one hmph! I'm showing you the second one today cuz I made it with my NEW TOY!!!

 

First things first...this is what I've been teasing you about....

 

Ta dah!!! What do you think? Do you know what it is? It's only the Joy Trouvaille die cutting machine! I've got the Cuttlebug and the Big Shot but you can't use any of the larger dies in them so I've been hankering after one of the Big Guns...The Grand Calibur or the Sizzix Big Shot Pro. Only problem is the GC hasn't been getting great reviews and the SBSP is too expensive and too big to store. After seeing Laurie's card on TLT though I knew I had to make a move.

I met up with Lynn and Elaine for a coffee then a quick trip to Craft World. When I was discussing the GC with Donald he mentioned the JT which I'd never heard of. He said Gaynor and Karen loved it and would use it ahead of the GC. Throwing caution to the wind I bought it and the Grand Big Scallop Circle dies.

I know it's not the prettiest of things...in fact it's pot ugly! But it's all about the performance right? When I got it home I googled JT for reviews and it all started off pretty good then went rapidly downhill. I found Ikki's Cuttlebug Cupboard who has been reviewing JT since January and she's had problems with cogs breaking and embossing folders not going through. The cog problem was similar to the GC's and was fixed early on but the main problem since seemed to be certain embossing folders were to thick to go through. It was looking pretty bleak...I hadn't even taken JT out of it's box. I emailed Gaynor and she reassured me that if I wasn't happy I could exchange it so with that in mind I got a couple of embossing folders of different thicknesses and ran them through and guess what? It didn't break! In fact the impression was very impressive.  Once I got started there was no stopping me and I broke out the dies and started on Julie's card and this is what I came up with...

 

 

It's not square...yay me lol. It took a while to love it but now I do. Ideally I would have had a brown border of some sort beneath the pp but I didn't buy the Grand Circles and the large Nestie circles were too small.

I'm not sure what has impressed me more...the JT or my circle sentiment!!! I've failed miserably in the past trying to make one but when I saw Gaynor's card it inspired me to try again. After almost 2 hours of googling and playing I gave up...failed again. I emailed Gaynor and she pointed me in the direction of this blog. It was the best tutorial I've seen for circle sentiments...so easy and if I can do it anyone can. Thank you Gaynor :-D

 I'd love a few more of the Grand dies and I hope to pick up another one or two (but they're silly expensive so probably just one) at the craft show at the SECC next week :-D I've only used the JT for a couple of days and so far so good. The only negatives at the moment are the plates aren't clear and the the suction works great on my kitchen table but not on the work surface in my craft room. But those aren't enough for me to exchange it....yet! I'll let you know how I get on but if any of you have got/had a JT I'd love to know what your experiences are.

Ok...that's it for today...I'm off to play some more with JT (shame it wasn't Justin Timberlake lol) so hopefully I'll have more to show you soon.

Thanks for stopping by...hope you have a great weekend.

Catch ya later x