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Welcome to a new feature on the candaCraft Blog! Every Wednesday we will be featuring a different blogger who is creating gorgeous projects using the Sure Cuts A Lot software. I hope that you will enjoy the creations and visit each blog to tell them how much you like their work.

This week’s blogger is Tracey Mason. Tracey lives in Maine with her husband and two children. Her oldest daughter is attending college in San Francisco studying Animation.  She is often found with her camera attached to her face or making something crafty with paper. Tracey is going on 8 years as a CTMH consultant, is a Stamping Royalty Contest Winner and has been published many times in Papercrafts, Stamp It & Memory Makers. She says there is a special place in her heart for the Cricut and she has a new found love of SCAL.

I first found the card above in her post HERE. I was immediately struck by the beautiful color combo and the striking chair image. That image came from SCAL designer, Paulo. Tracey added to the file by creating her own cushion, making it even more detailed.

Please make sure to visit Tracey’s blog: http://tmasonstudio.blogspot.com to see her other beautiful creations!

Did you see the Cricut and Sure Cuts A Lot software featured on the Ultimate Cake Off on Monday night? Well, don’t worry if you missed it because I have some pictures and videos to share with you! For weeks, Provo Craft has been promoting the fact that the “Cricut Cake” would be featured on the Ultimate Cake Off television show on TLC.However, the machine that was featured was NOT the Cricut Cake machine, but a Cricut Expression with a deep cut blade. Here is a picture of the Cricut Cake and the Cricut Expression. The differences are pretty obvious. Not only is the Cricut Cake a different color, it also has stainless steel carriage, cutting blade, dials, trim and roller. It has a totally different blade housing allowing for better cutting and protection from pieces of food entering the housing. All food contact surfaces are made of food safe material and there is a silicone keypad cover to protect the screen and buttons. It is possible that they were not able to get the Cricut Cake in time for the taping of the show and used the Expression and deep cut blade instead.

So, instead of seeing the Cricut Cake in action, we were excited to see the decorators using Sure Cuts A Lot to create characters for their cake! Here is a screen shot of their design using the Sure Cuts A Lot 2 software.

Watch the video clip below or HERE to see the Cricut in action and let me know what you think in the comments section.

I am so happy to announce that my monthly classes and crops have been scheduled for all of 2010! More details will be posted very soon, but I wanted to give everyone a heads up on the dates. Please feel free to email me if you have any questions or suggestions. The first class will be the return of the Stamp Club. This will be an all day stamp till you cramp with prizes, food and fun :)

I look forward to seeing everyone again!

2010 Class Dates

Classes will be held at the Williams Estates Community Building in the Middle River / White Marsh area of Baltimore, Maryland.

Some major changes have been made to SCAL2! These FREE updates have made this program even more useful than before.

These are the updates that have been made:

• Added Node Editing Tool to edit the nodes/points in the outlines
• Added Drawing tool to draw lines and curves, add and remove points
• Added Pause button to pause in the middle of cutting your projects
• Added Boolean operations under the Path menu for doing Union, Intersection, Exclusion, Minus Front from Back, Minus Back from Fonts between two objects
• Added option to convert text to outlines under the Path menu
• Added Beach and Newborn shapes to the shapes list

Many of the tasks that previously needed to be performed in Inkscape can now be executed in SCAL2. This is a major time saver. You can now edit nodes right in the SCAL2 program.

In the screenshots below, I imported a leaf SVG file and then edited the nodes to give it a different shape. Just imagine the possibilities!

Two new categories have been added to the Shapes Library. You can see the images for Beach and Newborn Shapes below. These shapes can be resized, layered, shadowed, and welded with other shapes and titles.

I’m sure that any of you that have been on the fence will now realize you NEED this program! You can purchase SCAL2 at a super low price HERE. The Windows and Mac versions are both available for download and/or CD version. There is also a coupon that will discount your ENTIRE purchase by 10%. The coupon is FEB14 and it expires at midnight EST on February 14th.

LA of FreckledNest.com had another really fun LA-TV episode last night. You can view the recording HERE. She created an adorable 4x6 photo album to hold all of your favorite photos and memorabilia of 2010. I decided to play along and created my own version. I really like the way it turned out. I also made a few cards with my left over scraps.

I wanted to come up with different ways to use Lauren’s Cutesy Cover template. My first attempt was to make it into a Popcorn Box! I created the Popcorn Box front and back pieces in SCAL2. You can download the file for free HERE! I added 1”x6” strips of cardinal cardstock to the front.

The Cutesy Cover template is actually sandwiched in between the front and back of the Popcorn Box. I did have to alter it a slight bit, but that is what is so great about these templates-versatility! For this project, open up the SVG template and resize it as large as you can it on a 12x12 mat. In the picture below you’ll see that I cut off the top flap and the top tabs. I then scored all of the fold lines at the tic marks and assembled the box.

The cute popcorn springing out of the box was made is SCAL2 with a file I found on the blog, Creations By K8. I cut it three times and adhered wire to the bag using Pop Up Glue Dots (I got them HEREon sale!) I covered the back with a piece of black cardstock. To get a more finished look, you could cut the black shadow six times and adhere those to the back to fully cover it up.

Here is a close up of the tag. I stamped the popcorn image twice so that I could pop up just the box. The stamp is from a retired Stampin Up set called Comfort Food.

If you use the Popcorn Box template, I’d love to see what you created with it. Please leave a link in the comments section.