It’s Playtime: Making Memories’ The Slice

I’ve got some vacation time scheduled pretty soon during which I’ll be tearing into This D*mn House once again; planning for that time is well under way. But this weekend, I get a reprieve (except for yard work).

I’m going to a baby shower for my boss on Sunday. But Saturday? The morning and early afternoon belong to the Monkey Girl and scrapbooking. What a great way to start off the weekend of an incredibly goofy week!

I’ve been scrapping for more than 12 years. (You likely don’t know that.) I have an incurable love of tools. (If you’ve been reading the blog for any amount of time, you no doubt know that.) It would seem then that eventually these two worlds would converge. Well, that happened a few weeks ago.

It happened when the mother, of all people, pointed out a really low price on a cordless die-cutting machine by Making Memories, called the Slice. (It was part of a huge sale at Tuesday Morning’s.) I’ve seen this machine on TV, online and in stores. But last night, I got to see it in action because I now own one!

The Monkey Girl is the queen of the Cricut. It’s a very cool machine, but I’ve always felt like I needed to possess an engineering degree to know how to use it and I have to bug the Monkey Girl through each successive step to ensure that I don’t break it!

I took the Slice out of the box, read the instructions and little more than 5 minutes later, I was cutting letters and shapes! (You can see some of my handiwork in this photo.) In fairness, I’d read tons of reviews both before and after I bought the Slice. I heeded several of the warnings I’d read. I am happy to report that I experienced none of the problems that I read about in 20 to 30 percent of the reviews.

While I am not yet completely versed in its operation (it also has a draw and an embossing function), the only problem I’ve really had so far is that I don’t know how to easily judge where to place the Slice to maximize the paper I’m using. I misjudged mightily only once.

On another cut, I managed a bit of overlap. But other than that, I had no problems with cutting the letters and shapes OR in removing them from the cutting glass. The only other complaint would be that the instructions are less than comprehensive. And, instead of being contained in a single booklet, they’re spread out between a booklet and several single sheets of paper.

Granted, you can’t program a word or phrase in a single cut like you can on the Cricut – unless that’s a shape on the disc. (I’ve not tried that yet.) And, while there apparently is a hands-free adapter, you have to hold it while it cuts. (Not the case with the Cricut which cuts unassisted.)

The Slice cuts so quickly though that it’s not that big a deal to do letters individually or to hold it in place while it works. Especially when you consider that I paid less than half the price of a Cricut and the design cards cost half as much as the Cricut cartridges. The “bundle” I bought came with a cartridge and I bought another one last night on Overstock.com after failing to score any of the three I had bid on at ebay.com.

Unlike the Cricut, the Slice:
· Weighs two pounds.
· Fits into a smallish handbag-style case. (Making it very easy to store.)
· Can be used with or without the power cord (if you’ve let it charge up for at least an hour) No scrambling to find an outlet or messing with extension cords to use it!
· Works with cartridges that are not much bigger than a postage stamp.
· Can cut items only up to 4 inches as the machine itself is only 5 inches wide. (This may be the dealbreaker for most people. But after cutting at 1- and 1.5-inch settings and cutting a 4-inch tag, I can’t imagine that it will be too limiting for me.)

I cut out a tag and about 20 letters of varying sizes and the little machine still seemed ready to do more. I also found that Overstock.com sells lots of Slice products and they also had the best price for the carrying case for it AND for a 12x12 cutting glass.

So, um, yeah. I’m a little addicted now. You've been warned ...

Picture This

A recent visitor to my office commented, "You have a lot of pictures in your office."

That is a fact. They should see all the pictures at This D*mn House!

In my office, there are pictures of the Ozman, and of Tigger and Toby. There are pictures of me with my friends. There are pictures of some of the coolest places I've ever been, all snapped by yours truly. (These include Cancun, Seattle, Ocracoke Island, and Rocky Mountain National Park.)

At home, multiply that by 30 or 40 and you might be getting close. Mostly, these are family photos from four or five generations, with a few friends thrown in for good measure. It's probably close to a 50/50 split of those I knew and those I never met. Their faces cover almost every wall both upstairs and down except for the bathroom.

Downstairs is home to my collection of Creative Memories scrapbooks. I think I have seven or eight now, each with at least 90 pages. Do the math. It's a mind-numbing number of pictures.

But I've always been something of a shutterbug, shooting pics since age 7 or 8. I much prefer being on the viewfinder side to the lens side.

The purchase of a digital camera last year only made the images multiply exponentially. But here's the funny part. A few nights ago, I discovered an exposed, yet still undeveloped, roll of film. After nearly a year of shooting almost exclusively digital, I miss the mystery of dropping off the roll to see what you got. This one, however, really is a mystery as I don't even recall shooting anything with it.

Watch for me. I'll be the geek at Walgreen's flipping through the photos as they walk out the door ...