Christmas Present from my Boys & Kristen too!!

My husband and I received an awesome Christmas present from our boys this year, they always give us such wonderful gifts and this year was such a special one. This is Gustav our newest family member and boy were we so surprised when we opened the box, he wasn't in it, just a dog bed and some toys, my husband and I had such a bewildered looks on our faces and then Willie my youngest comes through the door with this adorable puppy, we were both just so taken back.


Gustav, Black and Tan Piebald Dachshund

 There is a story to this puppy, my husband and I both would stop at Puppy Love from time to time, it's where we bought our other dachshund Freckles, who we totally adore, and this little guy has been there since the summer.  I was telling my son about him and how old he was getting and he really needed a home soon.  A couple of days after Thanksgiving I checked the website and he was gone, I felt sad because I became attached to him but happy that he was bought and had a new home, I told my husband and he was happy that the little guy had a new home now too. Well little did we know that new home would be ours.  Willie and Kristen went over to see the puppy and then told Alfred, Rory and Kevin, and they all agreed to get him as our Christmas gift.   They had him for a couple of weeks at their place and kept the whole thing a secret, what a wonderful present!!  Thank you Alfred, Rory, Kevin, Willie & Kristen, you are the best son's a Mother and Father can ever have and Kristen we are so lucky to have you as part of our family!!!


Freckles, Red Piebald Dachshund
 
 Here's the new brothers together!!

My thoughts on the KNK Zing so far

I've been busy making projects and really getting to know my new Zing. For the most part I love this machine, though there has been some problems with it.  For me the machine is very easy to operate, I love the the whole setup of it, my problem is the blades or the blade holder, not sure yet which it is.  KNK did discontinue the regular standard blades and replace them with a detail standard one with a different offset.  I only used the standard blade in the beginning, I couldn't get a good cut from it so I switched to the deep cut blade which was better but still very inconsistent. My cuts would come out fine and then all of a sudden with the same settings on the same paper, the cut won't join correctly or some of the cuts on the paper would be excellent and then half not, I have ruined a couple of nice projects because of this and it's very frustrating. So I'm kind of thinking it's my blade holder, but I sent back my two standard blades to get the replacement ones from KNK, I'll test these and see if my cuts are better, if not I'll look to have the blade holder replaced.  I did order the Eclips blade holder and that works wonderful in the zing, I'm getting awesome cuts with that, so at least I can use the machine.

 Here are a couple more projects I made with the Zing.

This is a card I made for my son's birthday, I used a mixture of glue and shaving cream to get the ale foam, really comes out great.  One of the features I totally love about the Zing is the draw and cut, I used it to write the Happy Birthday Kevin and then cut it out.

The print n cut is great too, after you calibrate it the laser is very easy to use and I'm very happy with some of the pnc I have done.  I printed out the toy soldier and then cut it out on the zing.

 A pretty little Angel, I used the eclips blade holder on this one.

Here it is with a battery tealight inside.

Enchanted Cardinal

SVGCuts has this really nice kit Enchanted Sparrow, and I thought how pretty to make it into a cardinal for winter. I used the wing from the kit and added it to the cardinal from Christmas Cookie Party. The holly is from the 3D Wintergreens kit. I think I'll make one for all the seasons, it also would be really nice to make as a gift for someone. The paper is Echo Park Wintertime Digital paper pack, love this paper!! Everything was cut using my new Zing in Make the Cut.

Advent Calendar

Hi everyone I bought this Advent Calendar from Silhouette I fell in love with it the moment I saw it on someone's blog, I knew I had to have it. The kit is made up of this wood box which is very nice and sturdy and you get a gift card so you can download 25 boxes and draws for the calendar. I don't have a sihouette so I had to capture each draw from Silhouette Studio so I could bring them into Make the Cut, not a problem just a little time consuming but it all worked out very well. The paper I used is Authentique Wonder and all the embellishments are from SVGCuts.com, except the numbers they are Kingthings Willow font and I did a print and cut on my Zing which saved me some time.

Some of the collections I used from SVGCuts are

CHRISTMAS MORNING

CHRISTMAS COOKIE PARTY

CHRISTMAS IN THE VILLAGE

COMET'S CANDY LAND

HOLIDAY TREATS

ROCKIN AROUND THE CHRISTMAS TREE

SANTA'S NORTH POLE WORKSHOP

WINTER BLISS SVG COLLECTION