New/Old Toys- Rediscovering My Wishblade

Foreword: I wrote this post in November. Yes NOVEMBER, and for some reason just never got it out. I decided to go ahead and publish it since I'm still playing with the Wishblade, so just imagine that it's November as you're reading. Got it? November. You do have your turkey ready for Thanksgiving, right? Cranberry sauce and all that? November.

I decided several weeks ago to pull my Wishblade out, dust it off, and play with it again. After seeing these adorable cupcake toppers in Simply Handmade, I really wanted to make some for myself and the Wishblade seemed the easiest option short of buying a selection of ginormous (and expensive) scalloped/circular paper punches.

I searched around a bit for a scalloped circle cutting file before landing on this blog with a fabulous free dingbat font that includes every shape I could ever want- scalloped circles and squares, little frames and tons of other great shapes. Perfect to use as the base for cupcake toppers!

Then I ran into another snag. Since I last used my Wishblade I have switched to using Macs and gone through an OS upgrade to Snow Leopard. Yeah, it's been a while since I played with my cutter. :) This called for an upgrade to the new Create and Cut Plus software for Wishblade. Just a warning for those running Snow Leopard- it is not officially supported by Xyron for C&C+. I installed the software on both my iMac and my MacBook. It runs flawlessly on the MacBook but crashes on the iMac, and both have the exact same versions of Mac OS X. I also tried installing and running the software under Windows XP in VMWare Fusion on both Macs. It worked perfectly on both Windows installations, so hopefully it's just the Snow Leopard installs that are hit and miss.

If you're doing the upgrade for your Wishblade on Windows, you'll need to go here and also download and install the Wishblade 2.2 Software to get the proper drivers. I recommend that you do this before you install C&C+. It would have been nice if Xyron would have included the drivers with Create and Cut Plus!

My Wishblade's first workout after the new setup was to cut cupcake wrappers (file purchased here at 2Peas) and toppers for my Dad's birthday. I blogged about it in his birthday post, but I love how it turned out and thought I'd share the photos again here.

I also started (yes, started, because it's now February and I still haven't finished them) these cool window cards.

The cutting file for the cards was also purchased at 2Peas. One day I may actually finish them. :)

Now that the Wishblade is back in action, I've got all kinds of plans for it, including tons more cupcake wrappers and toppers!