The first year we were really still settling in and getting comfortable financially after relocating and finding new jobs in an expensive city.  We didn’t have much extra money or room to make getting a tree a good option.  I faintly remember taping up some twine on the walls, but honestly I’m not even sure about that.  The second year mom brought down a small metal tree about a foot tall that I put up on a shelf, and really that was the extent of our Christmas decor.

This year, however, I really got into the spirit and actually put up some decorations, including a tree!  We still don’t have tons of space since this apartment has really only gotten more cramped with crap since we moved in, but I felt the need to do a little something.  My mom came down for Thanksgiving again this year and this time she brought a small artificial  tree that she had extra. 

The tree came pre-decorated with fiber optics laced through the branches which is an great bonus!  Even though it’s not completely bare, it didn’t seem right to not have a few ornaments on the tree, so I created a bunch of easy paper ornaments to hang on the tree and around the apartment.  Paper ornaments seemed the best way to go because I didn’t want to have to buy and then store a bunch of cheap plastic ornaments and once the tree comes down, I can recycle the ornaments which makes a smaller impact on the environment (plus I reused old magazines for the paper to make the ornaments!).  Or maybe I’m just cheap.  But not lazy!  Even making easy paper ornaments takes a bit of time.  Here is the tutorial I used.

The tree is actually important in its own way despite its scale or make since it has a special meaning to me.  This was the tree bought and displayed in my Tota’s (grandmother) room when she moved into the assisted living facility.  She spent her last years there and every year we would take out her tree and set it up for her so she could have some Christmas cheer between our visits.  It was a hard year for us, the year she passed because it was right at the beginning of December so we had to face our first Christmas without her.  When I pulled the tree out of the box to set it up in our apartment this year, I really felt the connection I had to her through that tree.  I even have a picture of her nearby and whenever I’m looking at the tree lighting up it’s little corner in our livingroom, I think of my Tota and have a moment with her.  It brought her a little closer to me this year, and for that the tree is priceless.

Luckily Andrew had to be up early for a photo shoot for some press for his new website, Jotstack, otherwise we may never have gotten moving fast enough to get some quality sun-soaking time in.  The sun is setting earlier these days, after all.  But we had a quick breakfast, chose an interesting green dot on the map nearby that we’d never visited and were off!

Much to our delight, the Parker River National Wildlife Refuge was an incredible choice.  Honestly, it’s one of the best parks I think I’ve ever been to.  I fell in love with it almost immediately.  The park is a large portion of Plum Island, a barrier island off the coast of Massachusetts near the city of Newburyport (which we also loved, it’s so quaint!).

“Parker River consists of 4,662 acres of diverse habitats including sandy beach and dune, cranberry bog, maritime forest and shrubland, and freshwater marsh. The most abundant habitat on the refuge is its 3,000+ acres of salt marsh, one of the most productive ecosystems on the planet. The refuge marsh is part of the “Great Marsh,” the largest continuous salt marsh north of Long Island sound. The salt marsh includes not only the vast grasslands you see, but also the mud flats and open water salt pannes.”

The trails are all pretty short and easy, many being boardwalks which I’ve always loved.  My absolute favorite trail was a boardwalk through the marshes.  It was magical, I swear.  Upon entering, the trail goes through a thicket of a tall marsh plant and a cattail colony and due to the wind, the cattail down was blowing around while the cattails themselves swayed to and fro.  I’m telling you, I entered my own little faeryland on that trail.  Someday I want the swamp on my mom’s land to have a boardwalk and become a park, but that’s just one of my pipe dreams, so we’ll see what happens.

I know that Andrew really enjoyed the dune and beach side of the park that was exposed to the Atlantic.  It was very windy and although it was a warm day for autumn, it was still a bit chilly and with the wind blowing we really began to wish we’d worn hats when our poor ears started to ache.  We weren’t deterred and did our best to explore as much as we could.  We spent a good amount of time watching the tide roll in and out.  I’m not sure what it is about the ocean, but time passes differently when you’re near it and the colors that day were dazzling.

So if you can’t tell, I’m in love with this park.  It is definitely one that I will be going to again and again and highly recommending others to discover it for themselves.  If you have any suggestions of parks that you’ve visited that we should visit, please let us know!

As many of you may have heard, on 11/1/11 I soft-launched my new webapp, a free web-based note editing platform called Jotstack.

I wanted to share a little bit of the story behind this great service which is already growing popular among my inner circle of friends and family with tons of flattering feedback!

Why not use pen and paper?

I’m a big fan of Moleskine journals, classic pocket-book sized notebooks that are simple, durable and handy. These notebooks date back to use by creative geniuses like Van Gogh and others. After a year or two of using these journals I realized the limitations of the physical medium: they didn’t accommodate my [primarily] idea-driven rapid-prototyping note taking process. I still use Moleskines religiously but more for quickly iterating through UI designs or for making visual charts/diagrams. For everything else, I turned to the digital medium in search of a solution…

The search for an app that did what I needed…

My search for a web-based note app led me in many directions. I found a few apps specific to my phone software (in fact the mobile app market is super saturated right now with downloadable solutions) but many of them didn’t have a web interface that I could plug into when I was working on my laptop (most make you switch back and forth between phone and computer or force clunky sync’ing features?) or were too bulky/flashy.

I found a pretty sophisticated solution called Evernote but the problem with Evernote is that it’s actually TOO sophisticated. I think if you are looking for the digital equivalent of an entire binder full of “stuff” (read: photos, videos, links, scraps, notes, etc) then Evernote is perfect, but if you are just looking to scribble your thoughts down quickly and effectively, you’ll end up looking elsewhere like I did.

I found one other solution that I liked and this one was actually pretty close to what I was looking for. It’s called Simple Note App written by Simperium…I’ll take my hat off to them. Their product is fast and simple which is exactly what I needed. My main issue is that their app isn’t convenient for inspired, flash-of-an-idea sort of moments where you just needed to write something down immediately. They require you to login and then get started. Plus with auto-save, I found myself worried about what exactly was getting saved (do I wait another moment to make sure my whole list was stored?). Also, their organizational features made me feel like my notes got hidden too easily.

“I’ll just build it myself”

After so much searching for something so simple, I determined to make my own solution. I put my web development and design skills to work having just been freed of a few projects from my free-lance firm The Concept Engine. Ironically, the entire project was spec’d out in my Moleskine journal! I started work in June, 2011, defying the summer heat in an AC-less crammed apartment. And much to my wife’s vexation (and my cat’s jealousy), I immersed myself in the project for the next six months.

Building Jotstack

Wait. Six months to build this thing? Yeah, I have a day job as the Local Media Marketing & Sales Manager for an eCommerce giant. So it took a while.

The Build

I realized very quickly that the core of the project would be a note app with inline-editable input fields that DOESN’T require a login to get started. After all, in the fever of an inspired moment where your fleeting idea is on the verge of disappearing, the last thing you want is to have to remember your username/password to Evernote and then have to click your way through to a new entry. In fact, Jotstack is built to facilitate the creative process in under 2 clicks from any part of the site WITHOUT having to even log in (make sure to log in to save, though!)

Just like any good entrepreneur out there, I did absolutely no homework before getting started and on instinct decided on using PHP to write the project, going for a web nouveau (trendy, 2.0-ish) styling scheme.

Early into development, and after talking to friends about what I was working on, it seemed to make the most sense to really button up the project into something a little more scalable/deployable than just my own personal web solution. I was going to build an entire platform for creative writers, list jockeys, and other idea-people just like me who needed a site just like this.

So I put even more time, sweat, energy, after-work work hours and weekend work hours into the project than I originally intended, and I’m really happy with the result.

The Result

It’s been a wild ride and I’m thrilled with the way things turned out. I’ve got a great looking site that achieves the primary goal I set out to accomplish. You can get jotting as soon as the site loads without even logging in- from registration to stacking is about a 10 second process and the inline-editable fields make jotting about as quick as it gets! I’ve received great feedback and the first group of users to sign up is already reaping the benefits of the platform.

I’ve also got a great stack of feature requests / new functions that other members have suggested (like social functions, note tagging, many others!) I think Jotstack stands above and beyond others apps and has the potential to achieve a lot more for people who enjoy writing creatively or are in need of a fast, organized way to keep track of ideas/thoughts.

Giving Thanks

With such a great platform and a fast-growing membership I can’t help but look ahead to a big future for Jotstack and its possibilities. But thanks is definitely due. Firstly, I’d like to thank my beautiful wife Shelby, whose patience, feedback and sacrificed weekends gave me the bandwidth to write so much code which made Jotstack possible.

I’d also like to thank everyone who I mentioned the project to – I don’t think a single acquaintance had discouraging things to say or thought it was a bad idea. I’m also grateful for really accessible and open technology today like the jQuery and MooTools frameworks as well as sites like stackoverflow (can’t even count how many times they helped me figure out weird code issues).

One last shout-out to the Tech Startup Scene here in Boston – it’s definitely promoted a culture of innovation and entrepreneurship that made me feel comfortable to take a risk like this in my spare time, developing an idea into something tangible. They say Boston is like the Silicon Valley of the East Coast…no doubt we have a lot to offer and I look forward to contributing to the culture with this great platform.

Register for free at Jotstack.com

Jotstack.com

It’s not about generating original content; I’ll be the first to say that Shelby and I experience and do a fair amount of “stuff” – enough so, that content shouldn’t be a problem.

So what’s my excuse?

Motivation. Yep, that sly pang that plagues us all. It takes a lot to motivate me and once motivated, it takes a lot more to sustain any writing momentum from the moment of inspiration through to finally hitting that blog “post” button. But I have a great motivator this time…and I won’t pass up on the chance to share a very special occasion: our first year wedding anniversary.

Shelby and I booked a trip on Cape Cod to spend a relaxed long weekend in Yarmouth, MA at a beach resort called Red Jacket in celebration of our first full year of marriage. We live in Boston and over the two years that we’ve enjoyed the city we’ve heard nothing but great things about the Cape. So it was finally time to make the trek out to the nearby Cape over Columbus Day weekend. And we are certainly glad we did it.

While the resort itself wasn’t the most glamorous place in the world, we enjoyed 3 days of awesome activities, and our room was right on the beach…can’t complain too much about that. Let’s dig in:

We arrived Friday night. Saturday morning we got up bright and early for a delicious resort breakfast. From there we booked it to an eastern town called Orleans where we rented some bicycles to ride up the cape. Enjoying the a gorgeous view and the smell of the ocean, we rode just about 30 miles up and down the coast, stopping at a few choice scenic locations followed finally by landing on a private beach where we wet our feet and enjoyed a sandbar as the tide receded and the day came to end.

We returned our bikes and started back towards Yarmouth. Before leaving Orleans, though we decided to stop at a neat looking café that Shelby had a feeling about, Hot Chocolate Sparrow. It turned out to be a worthy stop – such an awesome little café with a great vibe.

The next day Shelby woke up at dawn to watch the sun rise over the beech. I met her for breakfast followed by an hour-long couples’ massage – amazing. We then walked over to the beach and did some sunbathing/reading for a while. Throughout our stay, the local Yarmouth seaside festival was happening downtown, so we spent the afternoon at the fair where we checked out many local crafters/artists with some neat concepts.

At the resort, the staff and other guests were buzzing with Columbus day plans – gearing up for an evening of fireworks and free hot chocolate (right up my alley). Eight-o-clock rolled around and we set up some chairs on the beach with some blankets and our hot chocolate. The fireworks were AMAZING. The only thing that could beat such a great, relaxing holiday evening was the expectation of the following day to come: our 1 year wedding anniversary, with plans to visit Martha’s Vineyard.

On the final [full] day of our trip we woke up bright and early and grabbed a quick breakfast before meeting the ferry to Martha’s Vineyard. I should probably re-emphasize that this was our first time to the Cape, let alone Martha’s Vineyard. While we had a great time, I wasn’t too impressed with the Cape (maybe folks oversell it a little bit?) but the Vineyard was absolutely incredible.

We took the traditional (slow) ferry out to MV, arriving around 11AM. The first thing we did was rent a pair of scooters. First time on a scooter/moped as well! As amazing as Oak Bluffs seemed (first town in Martha’s Vineyard right off the boat), we decided to save the best for last and head down the isle a little bit. We rode down to Edgartown, home to many celebrities – a very humble, quiet village with a sweet lighthouse and classic New England feel. Words simply can’t explain the feeling you get from these little towns. Edgartown in particular is as close to “quaint” as you could ever be – it was amazing. Shelby and I had lunch here and then ventured up to Vineyard Haven (another town at the top of the island).

Along the way we stopped at a landscaping yard – home to beautiful orchids and unique flora for sale (some at more than $400 a pop!). At our lunch earlier in the day we were told of celebrities like Ted Danson, Larry David and others having visited recently (among others like President Clinton) who apparently have summer homes on the island. You could tell that the area we rode through was a likely location for many celebrities to live because of the size of mansions and the number of private driveways along the way – and then we ran into the landscaping yard.

We arrived at Vineyard Haven and picked up some ice cream while exploring this cute town’s main street. There were a number of neat shops along the way, and Shelby picked up some postcards to send out to friends later on.

To finish off the day, we went back to Oak Bluffs (where we landed earlier in the  morning) to spend a few hours touring this major village. We casually rode our mopeds around the area just taking in the scenery when we happened upon a line of houses – one of which was called “Shelby’s Chateau”. We had to stop and take a picture. Interestingly enough, the owner came over and took a picture of us in front of his home – we spoke with him and the wife for a while (they were New Yorkers, and we found some common ground around Ithaca).

The rest of the day was spent in Oak Bluffs touring the famed Gingerbread Houses around the Tabernacle, and walking around the town. The houses, and area were just absolutely beautiful – Shelby and I can’t recommend visiting  Martha’s vineyard enough – it was overall a great time.

To top off the night, we took the high-speed ferry back to Yarmouth and went to grab a seafood dinner (for Shelby) for our anniversary.

Overall this trip was absolutely incredible – one of those surprisingly awesome vacations that proved itself memorable despite being in the same state (let alone the same country!) I know we’ll be coming back (if for nothing else going to Martha’s Vineyard) and hope that the next one will give us the chance to share the Cape with others – whether it be friends, or family.

However, this isn’t a post about our vacation on the Cape since Andrew has already written all about it (to be posted soon), and I’ve got a different topic in mind.  The 1st year wedding anniversary is traditionally considered the paper gift year, and although I’m not a traditionalist, I am a paper crafter so this was right up my alley!  Who am I kidding?  I think the traditional gift is cute and will probably follow it in the future anyway.

I’ve had an idea of a Tunnel Book that I’d been wanting to make for Andrew for a long time and I finally had the excuse and drive to motivate me to actually do it!  My procrastination was not set aside, though, since I literally waited until the absolute last minute to make it which made for a very frantic two day effort right up until we left for vacation!  But, I got it done and I love it (and so does Andrew).

With the help of my Silhouette, I was able to do it much quicker and easier than I would have otherwise, thank goodness!  I learned more techniques with the software and was able to trace & cut an actual image of Andrew under canopy as well as the model of airplane he jumps at Finger Lakes Skydivers.  This tutorial helped me learn how to trace my own image to be cut.  The trees and clouds were stock images I downloaded from the Silhouette online store.  The background is an image of the sky from our most recent trip to Anapoima, Colombia that I printed out.

My only complaint is that somehow I measured something wrong and the book won’t actually lay flat like it is supposed to, instead it bulges because the first three layers are larger than the last background layer.  Now that I have this concept down, I may make more to sell, or remake an old favorite I have but I’ll just have to be certain the dimensions are correct so it will lay flat properly like a true book should.

I finally finished sorting through my thousands (literally!) of wedding pictures recently so that I can finally start working on some of the projects I had in mind for them.  Using my mom’s birthday as my first deadline was key because I’m not really good at getting anything done unless there’s some sort of deadline.  Otherwise I either won’t be motivated to get started or I won’t get it done.  Anyway, with the pictures sorted and ready to be printed, I made my mom her official wedding album.

Once again, my Silhouette machine played a part in the process.  I found some really great watch/clock hand cut outs to use as borders which really fit in with our wedding’s steampunk theme.  I used clock hands when I made the boutonnieres, so although it’s subtle, I know that it ties in nicely.  I interchanged the Silhouette cutouts as borders with ribbon in my wedding colors, purple and green.

The album is a side-bound book (also known as stab or blockbook binding) using ribbon, instructions from Creating Handmade Books by Alisa Golden.  I had never done this type of book or binding technique before so I suppose it wasn’t so surprising that I came across so many setbacks.  I really should have made a small prototype just to anticipate these issues, but with the deadline I didn’t really have the time.  Gluing everything down took way longer than I expected and a few of the pages still stick to each other a bit even after I went through and cleaned it up as much as I could.  My biggest set back was due to how large the book itself ended up being.  I narrowed the pictures down to the top 80 that I thought my mom would enjoy and 40 pages + 80 pictures + borders = a very thick book!  The side-binding would have looked terrible if it had just been bound as is.  Luckily I came up with a quick solution by making wedges with some spare Styrofoam I had left over from Kairi from Kingdom Heart‘s keyblade for the Video Game Party.  I had originally intended to have this be a book that my mom could carry around in her purse to show relatives and friends but, obviously, it is much too big for that.  Even with the wedges keeping the binding flush with the thickness of the pages, it’s not a super strong bind for a book this size, so in the future I would only use it for smaller journals/albums/books.  Either way, I got through it and I’m 90% happy with the result.  Trial and error, it’s a learning process!

Honestly, the binding technique itself isn’t very difficult and making the book with blank pages would actually be a rather easy project for anyone who’s interested.

Here’s some information on the Green Team: “the Poland Spring Green Team, a corps of 30-50 volunteers per game who will spread throughout the seating bowl during inning breaks to gather plastic bottles and educate fans on recycling. The Green Team is the first of its kind in professional sports and is comprised primarily of local college students. All team members wear specially-designed hats and t-shirts featuring the new Red Sox recycling logo.”  If you know me well at all, you know that I am an avid advocate of recycling and have always tried to encourage people to recycle more.

It was a nice bright, sunny autumn day, the kind I love.  It wasn’t too hot which was great because I was walking up and down stadium stairs for three hours carrying bags that got pretty heavy when filled.  A lot of people were really happy to see the recycling effort and I bet they were even happier that they didn’t even have to get out of their seats to do it!  I even had an all-access pass and wandered around some of the fancier, private booth areas upstairs, along with the seats right on the in-field!

Although I enjoyed my day overall, it wasn’t all pleasant, and not in the way you would expect when you’re picking up empty beer cups and the like.  The concept was very poorly organized.  We stood outside for more than an hour before someone from the park came to let us in and when we finally did get in, we had to stand around for a while longer while they got us the proper badges and clearance to do what we were there to do.  Plus everyone was supposed to get shirts and a voucher for a hotdog, and they only had two t-shirts (I got one!) and no vouchers.  The instructions on where/how to get bags and what to do when they filled up weren’t clear and two out of three of the stations we were to go to either didn’t have bags (crucial) or gloves (less crucial, but nice for hygiene).  THEN a few times we got yelled at by the security guys because we were standing in one area too long holding up traffic.  One guard even said we couldn’t collect during the game, only between innings, which made no sense to me because we would be causing even more traffic-holding-up issues between innings when so many people are trying to get to more beer and/or bathrooms!  I thought they were extremely rude!  Here we are volunteering our time for a good cause and they want to treat us like that!  I just disregarded the various grumpy guards and continued my collection somewhere away from anyone like that.

But hey, I’m not going to complain too much.  I got to go to the game for free.  However, I watched next to none of it because it’s a bit disorienting to walk up and down the stadium and keep track of where such a tiny ball is.  A few times when I was close to the in-field and there were a few pop-flys our way I was certain I was going to get hit because I wasn’t paying attention!  I’ve never been to Fenway before either, so that was a cool experience.  It’s a neat little park, being the smallest and oldest in the country.  I really enjoyed the juxtaposition of the old school manual scoreboard against the fancy brand new monolithic HD scoreboard among other charms of Fenway.

All in all, it was a great day and a great experience.  I love the cause, it’s something I really believe in.  And hey, I’m already that person digging through trash cans to recycle the cans and bottles other people were too lazy to bother recycling (even though more often than not the recycling bin is right next to the garbage *sigh*).  I’m excited to see what other adventures I will have w/ Rotaract!

***Oh, and the Red Sox lost against the Tampa Bay Rays, 5-8.

I sent my first request out to 13 people, and to my surprise, every single person wanted to participate!!  I was so excited I got to work right away.  I call this first traveling journal the “Fleur de Lys” journal because of the pattern of the paper used to cover it.  I bought that paper in Italy when I was traveling with Angela back in 2008 and have been holding onto it for a special occasion.  Since there were so many people involved in this journal, I wanted to include everyone in the Intro on the first page, so I used my awesome Silhouette machine to cut out a background of everyone’s names (and nicknames).  The journal has been sent off about a month ago and is already on it’s third recipient!  I know it’ll be awhile with so many friends participating, but I am so excited to get it back and see what everyone added!

Unfortunately for me, I had two very dear friends move away from Boston shortly after I made my first traveling journal, so I made a second as a going away gift to keep us in touch too!  Boston certainly hasn’t been the same without them, but I’m so excited about their new lives in other corners of the country and can’t wait to read all about their new adventures.

I call the second journal the “ASA” journal simply because it’s all of our first initials.  Nice and easy, plus I couldn’t think of anything else.  “Polka Dots”?  Nah.  I took a bit more time with the Front page and Intro page layouts (separate pages in this journal) because I wanted to give them a chance to get settled in their new homes before the journal arrived.  Both pages were made using my Silhouette and I must admit that I am very pleased with the final product.  I have yet to really test the limits of my Silhouette but every project teaches me something new and I really had to surmount some software issues with this project!  Got to be creative with the product as well as with the approach!

Both journals were made with the Coptic Binding Stitch that I initially learned in a Bookbinding course I took in college.  It had been about 5 years since that class, though, so I had to use a few resources to remind me how to do it.  Creating Handmade Books by Alisa Golden was my primary source, but she calls the method a “Chain Stitch” so I had a hard time realizing that her book could even be a resource (however the book is really fantastic, great explanations of tons of different book making techniques).  I also used this Youtube video to get a better physical sense of what was going on.

Anyone else want to participate in a traveling journal?  I would love to keep in touch, or if you’re interested in starting one up with your group of long-distance friends, let me know!  I would happily take commissions on designing a handmade journal for you.

Wedding Card

Andrew and I attended the beautiful wedding in Brooklyn, NY of a DJ friend of Andrew over the 4th of July holiday weekend.  I decided to re-purpose some of our left over wedding invitations to make this card.  It seems such a shame to have all that lovely, precut (and embossed!) paper go to waste.  The gold heart on the front pops out from the card a bit due to the Iris folding technique I used.

Natalia’s Birthday Card

I re-purposed our wedding invites for this card as well.  All shapes were cut out using my Silhouette, it was probably the most I’ve used it for a single project thus far!  Natalia is currently an intern for a NYC based company that designs and installs rooftop gardens and that’s what I was trying to create on the front.  I didn’t quite get the look I was shooting for and should have sewn the flowers on for extra dimension instead of gluing.  I used cardstock and random magazine clippings – the birds flying in the sky clipping is my favorite part of the card.

Get Well Soon Card

For this card the Origami design is the center point.  Amalia and I also made cards with this origami design for Father’s day, but forgot to take pictures.  Pardon my calligraphy, it feels a bit sloppy to me because I hadn’t done any calligraphy since the hundreds of invites I wrote out for our wedding!

I also have a few other bigger projects in the works currently that I hope to be able to share within about a week’s time!

The Silhouette can really do a lot but for now I’m just sticking to the basics.  Its software comes with many complimentary images and you can also purchase additional images at their online store.  The sweeter thing is that you can design your own images as well so you can pretty much cut any shape that you can imagine.  However, I haven’t mastered how to do the many things this machine is capable of doing yet, so I have only used the complimentary images thus far.  Here are a few of the projects I have done so far:

First Project: Mother’s Day and Birthday Cards

This was definitely a “getting my feet wet” kind of experience.  I had a hard time getting the paper to load and cut properly initially.  Paper needs to stick to the loading sheet, which is a sticky sheet of plastic that keeps the paper being cut in place so the lines all get cut cleanly.  If the paper doesn’t stick strongly enough to the loading sheet it will slip during the cutting process and the cutting will continue regardless, ending in a ruined sheet of paper.

Second Project: Mother’s Day Card 2

Once I got the hang of the whole loading sheet thing, I decided to get a little more adventurous with my design and media.  I sifted through an old magazine I was going to recycle and found a page with a pretty color scheme on both sides.  I used this sheet for the flowers and the “MOM” letters.  Since I had some extra Colombian flag ribbon left over from the wedding, I thought it would be nice to use it since this card was for my mother-in-law who is living in Colombia.  So far, this is my favorite card.

Project 3:  Kitty Thank You Card

This card allowed me another “getting my feet wet” experience since I had to set up and use my photo printer for the first time.  I also designed my first “original” shape to cut – the paw prints.  There were paw prints in the store, but the design is so simple I just made my own.  Hooray for firsts!  This card was made as a thank you and instructional card for a friend who pet-sat our cats while we were in Senegal for a week.

A fourth project was attempted, but I still haven’t quite figured out how to import my own designs to be cut.  Hopefully that is something I can work out soon because I have lots of plans for using this machine!