Having a ball with my eCraft

Santa isn’t very good at keeping secrets – he made it kind of obvious that he was bringing me a purple eCraft for Christmas. Hubby has actually played around with the eCraft more than I have, and he finally figured out how to get it to cut out the template from How About Orange to make these cool 3D balls from CB2:

I picked up a big pack of scrapbooking paper at HomeSense, and now I’m having fun making balls :-)

This is the first one I made, so I used colours that aren’t my favourites in case there was a screw-up.

Of course, I had to make one in purple & turquoise :-)

And a beach-inspired ball in blue and light brown.

These balls are so much fun to make, especially now that I don’t have to cut out each of the twelve pieces to make them! Now I need to work on some other projects that I’ve seen. I think I’m going to take a shot at something like this next:

Happy weekend!

I’m linking my eCraft project up to Feature Friday FREE-FOR-ALL {#3} at Five Days 5 Ways – check it out! You’ll find lots of inspiring projects, and you could win a stencil from Cutting Edge Stencils.

Silhouette Cameo or eCraft Die Cutter?

I’m obsessed with balls. I need more balls. Lots of balls. Small, medium, and large sized balls. Colourful balls. 3D balls. These cool 3D balls that I found on Pinterest:

The image linked to a how-to at How About Orange. Jessica saw these balls in a CB2 catalogue and decided to figure out how to make them herself. Jessica was kind enough to share her templates for making the balls in three different sizes. So far, I’ve made a practice one with  plain white computer paper and an official one with thicker lavender paper.

Whoops, didn’t think to cut inside the black lines on the white one. I got smarter with the purple one and not only cut inside the lines, but made sure that the sides of the pieces with no line marks at all faced out.

They’re really easy to make, but it takes forever to cut out the twelve flower-shaped pieces that make up the ball. And this is why I decided that I need a Silhouette for Christmas. With one of these babies, I can make balls to my heart’s content, because the Silhouette can cut out all the pieces for me.

I really don’t know much about the Silhouette – I’m assuming the Cameo is the latest and greatest incarnation? Of course, being the analytical guy that he is, hubby did some research and came across a similar product called the eCraft Die Cutter. The eCraft is cheaper than the Silhouette, so hubby thinks he can convince me that the eCraft is the way to go because it comes in purple. OK, that might work :-)

It also doesn’t require a mat for cutting certain kinds of paper. I’m not sure what that means, but I guess that’s a good thing?

if you have a Silhouette Cameo or an eCraft Die Cutter, I’d love to hear how you like it and what kinds of things you’ve made with it. It’s not a cheap machine, so I want to make sure it’ll be able to do all the things that I want it to do with it – like make balls! And maybe some of these cool things, like frosted vinyl:

3D art:

Even throw cushions:

I think Shelly at House of Smiths might be the Silhouette queen:

Oh yes, these balls are just the beginning!

If things go according to plan this weekend, I’ll have some project reveals for you next week. If not, well, I’ll have to come up with something else for you ;-)

Happy weekend!