When I decorate the mantel it is all white and silver with just a touch of red.  This Santa is going to look great among the reindeer, sleigh and other frosted and glittered items.

Click on the picture so you can see all of him.

I’m going to replace the green velvet ribbon with a red ribbon to get that touch of red in the mix.

He is going to go great with my white Nutcracker, don’t you think?  I need to get all of my stuff out so I know what I have and I don’t buy something twice.

So this Santa was $34.99 @ Michael’s  but I had a 50% off coupon and got him for $17.50 which I think for this much glamor it was worth it.  Now, there is a large silver vase that I think I need and then there is some shiny crystal branches….oh the list could go on and on.  Now is the time to use the 50% of coupons on the Christmas items because they will put the Christmas items on sale for 30% off and you can’t use a coupon on them when they go on sale like that!

This Labor Day week-end we went to Canton .  For those of you who are not familiar with Canton, every first Monday of the month there is a huge trade day in a little city called Canton, Texas.  There are acres of new stuff, old stuff, things you grew up with and things you never knew existed.  This is a great place to people watch and it is also a great place for food.  It is the greatest girl friend trip you can do together.

When we (usually my 2 daughters and my best friend)  go there is always a game to see who will make the first purchase.  Once that first purchase is made, it is easier for everyone to get in the mood to spend.  This family of girls loves to shop.  Also, Canton has several vendors that carry my favorite flip-flops …Yellow Box Shoes.

I’ll try to get some pictures up of the great finds and there are some real cute $1 finds at M’s, they had a 50% off coupon for Labor Day and then when you bought something you get another 50% off coupon for next week.  Well, I’m buying some Christmas items now before they put them on sale for 30% off and coupons can’t  be used on them.

So stay tuned……..

This is the finished product.  We ended the post yesterday where the bag has now been cut and it is in two pieces.

We have the two pieces and in this photo I have already folded and scored the lines.  When you cut using the Cricut, the Cricut will cut a little slit where the score lines go.  Some people don’t like these lines and they will use the hide contour feature to eliminate them.  I like the little slits because they show you where to put the fold lines.

I won’t go into how to fold and tape the purse, once you get the fold lines in place it pretty much falls into place.

Here is the stack of purses, and once you start putting them together you get a rhythm going.

I cut an embellishment out of Tim Holtz’ die cut and imported it into my SCAL and then copied it over again until I filled up a 12 x 12 mat.

This was so easy and loved the fact that I could cut a bunch at one time, instead of cutting one at a time through my CB.

So, I used the Cricut and cut out everything we needed.  We did 60 medallions, 60 circles with a computer generated Thank You, 60 TH frames, 60 cream flowers, 60 gold flowers and 60 black flowers.

All it took is 5 of us one night to make the bags up.  The fun part was getting together and getting to know everyone.

Thanks lady for your dedication.  Thanks Mom for being such a trouper and helping.

I hope you learned something through these two postings.  I apologize for the posting and it being out of align sometimes you just can’t make these things do what you want them to.   Thanks you for visiting.

Our church had their first banquet to raise some capital for buying a building and the expenses in the coming months.

The banquet turned out great and I thought I would show you some of the things we did.  We made the table markers using my Cricut and various cartridges, easy peeazy!

This is the little gift “bags” we made for each woman that attended.  These are totally made out of card stock except for the tissue paper and the gift inside.

I thought I would show you a couple of tips that I discovered while making this “bag”.  This is going to be broken up into two post because of the length.

I used the little bag on the Tags, Bags, & More cart but on a 12 x 12 mat the largest I could get it to cut was about 5″.  Even when I tried to fool the machine using a 12 x 24 mat it still would not cut very large.

So to solve that issue we decided we would us a 12 x 24 mat and 12 x 24 card stock along with sizing it in Design Studio.  Well, that would have been fine if we hadn’t waited until the week before the banquet to figure out we needed it.  Needless to say we couldn’t get the cs ordered and shipped in time to use.

Using the 12 by 24 mat I positioned the bag to cut right on a fold line for the bag.  The bag is cut at 20.4″ by 11.5″.

Tip: By doing this you could cut the bag in half and assemble it using two pieces instead of one continuous piece.  Allowing you to use 12 x 12 cs instead of 12 x 24.

We used two 12 x 12 pieces of cream card stock.  I laid the first 12 x 12 cs on the end of the mat that I was going to feed through the Cricut first.

The second piece of 12 x 12 cs I overlapped it on the first by a 1/4″.  So, just to be clear the first piece of cs started at the 1″ mark and went to the 12″ mark.  The second piece of cs started at the 11.75″ mark and went to the 23.75″ mark.

This is the other end of the 12 x 24 mat.  You can see the second piece of the 12 x 12 cs is short by the 1/4″ I overlapped.

I pulled the cs down in this photo so you could see how it didn’t quite make it to the end.  When I got ready to cut it I lined everything up so it would cut straight.

Here is what the 12 x 24 mat looks like.  I took painter’s tape and placed a piece at each corner and one in the middle to hold the cs in place.  Since the cs is overlapping in the middle I wanted to be sure it would stay stuck in place.

I also took some re-positionable tape and ran it down the middle so when it cut the second 12 x 12 cs wouldn’t pop up.  I discovered after cutting about 20 of these that was not necessary.  My Cricut was cutting it without any problem.

We had about 60 of these babies to cut out so I was so excited when the Cricut cut them without any issues.

It cut through the two layers “like butter”.  I did monitor the blade to ensure no small pieces of paper was getting caught and ever so often I would make sure the housing was secure.  Also, each time I loaded the Cricut I had to tell it we were using a 24″ mat.

When you remove the two pieces you will have one that has 1/4″ lip on it that the original design did not have.  That is exactly what you need.  Tip: When we overlapped the cs it created a tab that we will fold to attach part 1 of the bag to part 2.

I cut this extra tab here off even with the top of the bag.

Cut this one off square with the bag.

Click on the picture to enlarge it, this is what the side should look like after you cut off the two ends I showed you above.

Once it is folded it will give us the tabs we need to create the bag.

We’ll pick up on this again in tomorrow’s post.  Thanks for stopping by and leave me comment or if you have a question you can contact me through the contact tab at the top of the post.

It was a perfect fit.  I’m always amazed how 5 total strangers can meet at a given time and instantly like each other and feel like long friends.  Thanks for making my day so enjoyable.  All of you are so talented.

How cool is this!  Tim is so much fun and when I asked if he was tired of signing his name, he remarked I’m always humbled every time someone ask for it.

This is Tim’s curio cabinet he made and this is what we spent the day replicating (with our own twist).

The time past quickly and I didn’t get mine finished, but when I do get it completely done we’ll re-post.

Thanks for stopping buy and leave me a comment.  I would love to hear from you.

So stay tune, things are gearing up here at Talent is Optional. com.  See, I told you I was busy!

Our church is having it’s first church wide banquet and we have been busy designing some thank you bags to give away at the banquet.

This is the table marker that will be on each table.  This is just a glimpse of what we did and I hope to have some additional pictures of the final product.

I want to give  a shout out to Leo over at SVGCuts.com.  Late one night this week (I mean around 10:30PM) I was having difficulty trying to get an image in Trace Bit in SCAL.  I couldn’t even get it to work right in Inkscape.  By chance I contacted SVGCuts.com via e-mail and Leo responded right back.  He gave me a different version of SCAL to see it would hold up better to what I was trying to do.  Then I finally told him I thought I was doing something wrong and explained to him what I was trying to do.  He e-mailed me back the next day and solved my issue.  Wow!  I was so impressed that he took the time and stayed with me until we figured it out.

During the process of designing and getting the Thank You bags built I learned a couple of tips that might make your life a little easier.  I’ll be sharing them over the next few post as I share some pictures and tutorials on how to make the Thank You bags.

All I can say, is my Cricut Expression and Design Studio save me a lot of time and cut like a work horse through 55 bags and all the embellishments.  Sweeeeeeet!

Alright so I really didn’t need another tape dispenser! However, I received an e-mail from Flowers to Flourishes and they had a great price, so I bit the bullet and order it.

This is the new pink ATG that is smaller than the big 714 or 700. This one has been made with the crafters in mind. When you purchase this particular ATG they donate money to the Susan Komen Cancer Research (nice).

It also comes with two rolls of the gold 1/4″ wide tape that is acid free/photo safe. A roll has 36 yards of tape and depending on how you buy it, it can be as low a $1.25 a roll (you have to buy 12 rolls) or around $10.00 if you can find it at your local craft store. The Pro Glider’s tape is only 13.3 yards and runs $8.99 a roll. Now I didn’t figure in the 40% coupons that you can use on these from HL, M’s or JA’s. But it doesn’t take a rocket science to see that this will pay for itself in a short period of time just on the savings on the price of the tape.

Now, this is not particularly pretty, and what you are looking at is the backside of the instructions on how to load the machine that is kept inside.

I took out the card and used some of my favorite pattern paper and dressed up the chipboard instructions.

Now that is more like it. I was reading on a message board where you could spray paint them but I like the Hot Pink with the Black/White Hounds-tooth. Besides with keeping it hot pink it reminds me to pray for those ladies that are battling Breast Cancer each time I pick it up and use it.

Hmmm, this will not replace all of your tape runners because the size will not enable you to get into places but this will take care of most of them.   I think I am going to be one happy girl!