AccuCut Craft Blog

Tuesdays with Tammy: Back to the Basics Part II

A Quick Note from Jen Cramer

Some of our blog readers may not know where AccuCut is based -- we're in a town called Fremont just outside of Omaha, Nebraska, where many of us commute from. If you're familiar with Omaha at all, you may know our city for Warren Buffett of Berkshire Hathaway, Omaha Steaks and the home of the College World Series. The Olympic Swim Trials are even going on here this week and we have one of the best zoos in the country.

But our latest claim to fame has been a lot of seriously bad weather. In early June we had two tornados go through Omaha in the middle of the night. Then this past Friday afternoon we spent some time in the tornado shelter at work not realizing the power of the storm that passed over us. Many of us went to our homes in metro Omaha and surrounding areas to find a lot of damage to trees and homes and not a lot of power. It's amazing what 80-110 mph winds can do. Some of us didn't have power even as of this morning. (You can link to some pictures from the storm recovery here.)

During these times you realize the importance of your community and you see firsthand how neighbors and family help each other when they need it most. You can't do much about Mother Nature but you can work together to pick up the pieces. It's a powerful thing to see.

Now back to Tuesdays with Tammy

Posted by Tammy Miller

On April 29th I talked about getting back to the basics. Where do you start if you are a new scrapbooking store? Sometimes we have to ask ourselves that question even if we are not new. Think of it as sort of a reality check. Do you have the basic shapes your customers are looking for: holiday shapes, accents, note cards, albums, tags and alphabets? These styles of dies are all must haves. Today I’d like to show you my favorite alphabet along with our top-sellers. 

Uppercase Tower is my favorite alphabet right now.

The nice thing about Tower is that it is so slim you can fit many of the 4” letters across the top of a scrapbook page. They will fit beautifully on the pennant die or use to iron letters cut out of felt onto a sweatshirt.

You can see how you even fit "FRIEND" on this Best Friends 12" x 12" page with room to spare.

This Jill's Room wall hanging uses die cut letters to spell out her name.

So what are our most popular alphabets for scrapbook stores these days? I would have to say Roman, Shout, Apricot, Typewriter and Black Tie.

As a scrapbook store customer it would be ideal to have access to at least two alphabets in its die cutting center. I would offer a traditional serif font (like Roman or Black Tie) in 2" to 4". Then complement that with a font that has a totally different feel, whether that is stylish (Apricot), bold (Carefree), delicate (Mattie) or fun (Shout, Tag). Definitely choose a different size by at least 1" to give more of a variety. 

How many styles of AccuCut alphabets do you offer in your store? I went to our website to see how many we have. I cannot believe we carry 66 styles of alphabets for you to choose from. Click here to find your favorites.

Looking ahead to Christmas...

Posted by Jen Cramer

As we were working on the upcoming CHA show booth the other day I started wondering about classes that scrapbook stores may want to offer for the holidays -- classes that could use AccuCut dies.

I was reminded of this NOEL project that Traci made using Cosmo Cricket paper. The letters are 7" high and would look great in my family room during the holidays.

I am interested in your opinions both as scrapbook store owners/managers and as the customers of these stores. Email me at blog@accucut.com or post your comments here.

Scrapbook store owners/managers:

• It may not be realistic to justify buying an entire 7" alphabet, but would you be interested if we sold a group of 7" letters to spell NOEL? What about other short words like SNOW? What else would you like to see?
• Would you rather buy a kit of chipboard letters and a specific line of paper? How many would you buy for a class?

Shoppers at scrapbook stores:

• Would you like to make a home decor project using oversized words at your local scrapbook store?
• What words would you like to see -- seasonal and nonseasonal (MOM)?

Thanks in advance for your opinions. If there is enough interest, you may see something offered in the near future!

PS: For the stores that are going to CHA next month, be sure to stop by and ask about our Class Idea Bank that will provide more than 20 free class ideas for October through November using one group of dies!

Projects for Mom... and a Challenge for a free gift!

Posted by Jen Cramer

Mother's Day is quickly approaching so I thought we'd take a look at a few "mom" projects today. And I thought we'd throw in our first challenge, but you'll have to wait until the end of the post to read about it. Coincidentally, both projects that we'll see -- a card and an album -- use AccuCut's Stencil Alphabet. 

I actually made this card a year or so ago for my own mom. I think that was when I started to fall in love with My Mind's Eye paper, but that's another story. : ) Now back to the card...

Sometimes when I need to design a card and I can't think of where to start, the easiest thing to do is to grab a letter die and make a cool monogram. Here I used the 2" Uppercase Stencil Alphabet to cut the M out of chipboard (after I adhered my paper). Then I just put another piece of coordinating paper behind the stencil so it would show through. (See Plaid Mom Card)

This also happens to be one of my all-time-favorite cards, the Buckle Card, that's 5 3/16" square folded. A $55 card die with crease... you can't beat that. I also like it because I can dress it up for weddings or I can make it fun and playful for a kid's birthday card.

The second "mom" project that uses the Stencil Alphabet (but this time it's the 2 1/2" size) is this Mom Album. The stencil letters let you see right through to the paper on the album cover.

Traci used the 5" x 10" album to cut the pages and even the clear plastic sheet that rested on top of the chipboard cover. The rub-ons were added to the front of the clear cover before she assembled everything.

So, do you want to know what the challenge is and what you can win?

E-mail a photo of a Mother's Day project you made to blog@accucut.com by Monday, May 12. Here are the details:

• You must use at least one AccuCut die (steel-rule).
• The project should preferably have the word "mom" or "mother" on it but that doesn't have to be made with a die. Use a rub-on, stamp, sticker, anything!
• In your e-mail, use subject line "Mom" and include a photo of the project (less than 150k please!) and the item numbers of the die(s) used.
• Be creative! We'll choose our favorite project and post the winner on Wednesday, May 14.
• The winner will receive a $50 AccuCut gift certificate!

Store owners: Print off this post and put it by your AccuCut machine. Your customers will love the chance to enter themselves too.

A gift for my sister

Posted by Jen Cramer

I've been meaning the share a photo of a Christmas gift I made for my sister Erin. The photo quality is not the greatest since I was in a rush to get it to the post office, but you can at least see how it was put together.

My sister and her husband don't have any kids yet so let's just say that their cat is a little spoiled. So I knew she would love it if I made her something she could display that had her cat's picture in it. I found this great shadowbox frame for a 12" x 12" page and then it was easy to put together.

She had sent me a photo of Bailey hiding in a blanket and I wanted that to take up much of the page. For the background paper I used Around the Block's Feline Phrases. Then I used AccuCut's Mat-Scallop die to cut the shape out of a brown piece of cardstock. I glued the mat scallop shape to the photo and then glued both pieces to the base sheet of cardstock.

Then I wanted to add Bailey's name to the page so I adhered some of the same dark brown cardstock to some chipboard and cut the letters out of our 1 1/2" Black Tie alphabet. I glued the letters down above the photo.

I thought it needed one more accent shape so I added a small Flourish #1, also out of cardstock adhered to chipboard to give it some dimension.

And it was done! My sister said she loved the frame and that it was worth the wait. I've found that people really enjoy gifts when you can make them yourself or put something very personal in them, so I try to make as many gifts as possible. And AccuCut dies make it so much easier to put them together.