Summer Camp Fun (aka Cricut Mountain Make-a-thon)

Love my new collection of pins! (the bag was mine)

Last week I went to summer camp, also known as Cricut Mountain Make-a-thon.  Three jam-packed days of creativity, new friends, and so much fun!  I've always loved summer camp - swimming, hiking, s'mores over a campfire, and my favorite - arts and crafts.  Cricut's Mountain Make-a-thon definitely delivered on the last. 

While it was announced back in May, I didn't decide to sign up until mid-July.  I really, really wanted to do something fun, because this summer has been filled with a number of not fun things, like deciding I need to let go of my studio outside the home (and figure out what to do with everything that's lived there for the past ten years!)  Signing up so late, a number of the classes were already full, but I easily managed to fill my schedule.

My biggest goal - to test drive Cricut's new Maker.  With it's expandable set of tools, it's designed to cut everything from fabric (with the rotary cutter blade) to chipboard and balsa wood (using the knife blade), as well as the normal suspects (paper, vinyl, etc.) that their Explore Air cuts so beautifully.  Over half of the classes I took were hands-on, using the Maker, and I got to watch it cut fabric, interfacing, fusible batting, felt, chipboard, paper, vinyl, iron-on and even crepe paper, as well as use the new scoring wheels to create a super-sized rosette. 

I started out with a card-making class - couldn't pass up the chance to learn a new-to-me pop-up mechanism. 

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Debbie O'Neal had designed on over-the-top card complete with pink flamingos, pineapples and a colorful toucan.  I stuck with dead-simple to make it easier to focus on how the pop-up works.  It's going to be such fun creating designs that work with this! 

We cut 4mm chipboard and patterned vinyl to create this cute banner

In "Cuts Like a Knife" I learned the knife blade doesn't try to cut all the way through thick materials in one fell swoop.  Instead, it makes multiple, very-precise passes.  It took fifteen passes to cut the 4mm chipboard shown above.  In the edge-on shot, I tried to show both the thickness of the chipboard, and how cleanly it cut.  

Sample projects from "It Cuts Like a Knife" class

I spent the first day literally running from class to class, and discovered that there was no 'passing period'.  If the schedule said Class A ends at 10:30 and Class B starts at the same time, they mean exactly that.  It meant I was a little late to several classes, because I had something like five classes all lined up, back-to-back.  Oops! Back in my hotel room that evening, I rearranged my schedule for the next day to give myself a little more breathing room. 

First up on Day Two? Audrey Fixation's Amazing Zipper class.  

Day Two - The Amazing Zippered bag

In an hour and a half, I cut out the fabrics, interfacing and fusible batting (using the cutting wheel), and FINISHED the phone case - including my first zipper in probably ten years.  Cutting, ironing, and stitching, done!  Wow. 

I finished a several projects on Day Two - I took this photo that evening as evidence

My biggest surprise of the Make-a-Thon was how much I loved their newest line of Easy-Presses. 

The newest Easy Press, in three sizes, from the Cricut website

Going into the conference, I thought I'd only want one if I really got into iron-on designs.  Cricut cleverly had several projects, including some universal make-and-takes, that used the different sizes of Easy Press.  We also used them in the sewing classes to press fabrics.  They are so neat!  My 10-15 year old iron had taken a fatal fall from my ironing board just before I left.  This left me in a vulnerable position, where I was way too susceptible to the lure of the bright-and-shiny.  Can you guess where this is going?  Yep, the smallest press followed me home, really.   We'll see how much I love it once I've used it a bit more at home.  At the very least, it's base design makes it much less likely to plummet from my ironing board.  :)

One of the classes I exchanged into was Lia Griffith's "Magical Crepe Paper Flowers".   I was waitlisted, but luckily a few someones didn't show up, so there was room.

Lia Griffith's crepe paper flower bouquets on the left, my bloom on the right

In just an hour, I made this Iris/Tulip hybrid (it looks more like an iris to me, but I think it's supposed to be a fancy tulip).  I could have used a little more time to blend the pan pastels, but I definitely got the picture.  This was another dangerous, dangerous class!  I'm now the proud owner of a signed copy of Lia's latest book, Crepe Paper Flowers.  I can't wait to try out some of her other designs.  Even better?  If you have a Maker, the book includes a download code to cut all of the pattern pieces. 

Breakfast time friends

Each morning started with a lovely buffet breakfast, usually followed by a general session.  This was a great time to meet others who love to create as much (or more) as I do.  Including Dewana, the admin for the Cricut Design Space Facebook Group, and a number of her friends from that group.  Such a creative group!

In each corner of the main ballroom, the Cricut Team set up themed Design-scapes for a little extra inspiration.  My favorite was the child's bedroom.  Chock full of ideas.  Love the animal appliques, and how they turned one into a stuffed animal!

Cricut Design Team's "Child's Bedroom"

Cricut Design Team's "Wine & Cheese" dinner theme

They had a selfie 'scavenger hunt' in order to earn the pins I showed earlier, hence my mug at bottom left.  And every day, we received another goodie bag, from Michaels, Joann's and Cricut! 

Conference Freebies in addition to class supplies.

Cricut also gave us all of the images and fonts used in the various classes, whether or not you actually took the class.  So I can try out Anna Griffin's scoring wheel designs at some later date.  The biggest challenge, was fitting everything into my small carry-on sized suitcase and the tote bag from above.  Especially since we received the Bright Pad as a parting gift at the end of the last day. (It's not small!)

Can you tell I had fun?  I've been home a week now, and I'm still jazzed by all the possibilities.  Just need to finish moving the studio home, and then I'll have time to create....

Girls Rule, Especially at Geek Girl Con

This weekend I took a side trip out of the regular world into the wonderful, amazing, zany world of Geek Girl Con.  A world of games, science, imagination and fun where women took center stage for a change. 

Panels ran the gamut from sneak peaks and hosted play for upcoming games, to in-depth looks at the demographics of various genres fan bases and their actual representation therein, to DIY science and art projects, to a panel on building realistic fake languages and hardcore STEM panels such as Droid Building 101: Build Your Own Astromech and Build Your Own 2G Phone With that last one, the first 20 participants participated in the workshop, everyone else was welcome to simply listen in. 

For myself, I ended up skipping most of the hardcore panels this time and settled into a schedule of make-and-takes and games, including a group story building workshop. 

Saturday opened with a little Betrayal at Baldur's Gate

Betrayal at Baldur's Gate starts as a territory exploration game.  You and your fellow explorers build the board a tile at a time, gathering loot, battling monsters and uncovering periodic mysteries as you go.  Until the game suddenly turns into a pitched battle or adventure game, where your party must learn to work together to defeat the threat.  Worse, it may turn out that one of your party members is a betrayer, in which case you must defeat them to win the game. 

The designers at Avalon Hill have written 50 different scenarios for the second half of the game - circumstances within the game determine which one you will face.  As far as I could tell, every table in the room was faced with a different scenario, which makes for great replay value. 

I was the only one at our table who hadn't played the earlier version, Betrayal at House on the Hill (totally non-D&D). We encountered a pve (player vs environment) scenario.  We lost spectacularly, but it was still a lot of fun.   If you're a long-time D&D fan, the game has the right feel.  If you've never played D&D before, it's a fun adventure game (according to tablemates who fell into this category).

D&D Dinosaur Races with the Adventurers' League

My appetite whetted for some real D&D, I stuck around to play a new adventure from Wizard's of the Coasts'  Tombs of Annihilation.  Wizard's hosted a hands-on game.  Totally unexpected, they gave each of us participating a dice bag with dice.  At the end of the game, they surprised us again with free minies - we each received a random 4pack!   

Sunday, I joined the local branch of the Adventurer's League for another scenario.  My fellow players were a mom who'd never played before and a passel of tween girls who'd played for the first time the day before.  This time we got to go to the Dinosaur Races!  Complete with cool maps and minis perched on dinosaurs. 

I've also learned there are sort of two different organized, drop-in D&D groups around here - the Adventurers' League and Pathfinders.  I'm such a geek!

But enough gaming, I did attend a few panels, too.

The Force is Female panel speakers

My favorite thing, hands down, about all of the panels I attended?  The speakers were predominantly women, unlike most other cons I've attended where at best there's a token female panelist.

a photo from a PAX 2017 panel for comparison

Back to the GeekGirl panel, I fear that I didn't stay through the full talk.  I discovered I was no where near a hard-core enough fan.  I hadn't watched any of the auxiliary series they referenced and couldn't begin to match their level of analysis of the source base as they referred to characters and scenarios with which I am wholly unfamiliar.   

Even still, much of what they said resonated with me.  One of the panelists also happened to be an engineer.  She noted that in one scene (I think from Rogue One), there's a call for engineers and a bunch of guys come running.  Her question, 'Where are the women engineers?'  I had noticed this too; that while the new movies were getting better about female leads, they still had a long way to go including women in bit roles outside of female stereotypes. 

Speaking of Star Wars, I happened upon these wandering the halls:

Daleks and Droids wandering the halls

And I learned a few new crafting techniques, including a great one for making quick, inexpensive masks.

My mask is lower left, but other participants let me photograph theirs

My mask, at the lower left, is unpainted.  The woman who made the black one in the upper left corner designed hers to fit over her glasses!  How cool is that?  These were all made using tinfoil and masking tape, that's all except for the paint.  

Moro and San from Princess Mononoke

I'd say at least half of the attendees showed up in costume.  Many were of their favorite characters, like this fantastic duo from Princess Mononoke, but just as many were their own original designs.  I  wish I'd taken a photo of the member of the Women's Badminton Protection League, dressed in slightly steampunk, but very proper Victorian attire complete with a spiked badmitton racket and shuttlecock 'grenade'.  Instead, I was focused on taking a photo of the band playing just outside the windows.

Band busking just outside the conference center

Equally cool were the men who attended the con.  Men of all ages; fathers, brothers, sons, boyfriends and friends of women.  Having a blast.  I'd say the male to female ratio was the opposite of other cons I've attended such as PAX.  A refreshing change.  The con also seemed much more relaxed.   I kept finding myself wishing my sister and her boys were in Seattle - there were so many panels and workshops that seemed perfect for one or another of them.