This and that...

I'll put headings in here, so that those of you who don't care to hear about snake news can easily skip right over it. :)

Kauket (aka Ms. Snakey-Poo):

Kauket has been eating really well since we finally got her to eat a live pinkie awhile back. The only problem is, she will only eat live food. This is an issue for several reasons:

1. Live pinkies are really hard to come by. We have to get them from our breeder who lives about an hour north of us. You can purchase adult feeder mice from a pet store, but Kauket is still smaller than a magic marker, so she's not big enough to eat adult prey yet.
2. Live prey can actually hurt a snake. Seems hard to believe, I know, but adult mice have teeth and claws, and if they're upset enough they can gouge out a snake's eyes. Not really something you want to see happen to your lovely pet.
3. I just don't want to feed her live mice. I know it's a natural process and all that, blah, blah, blah... It still squicks me out. Did you know that a pinkie mouse who's no bigger than a dime can scream loud enough to be heard 20 feet away when a predator grabs it? It's disturbing to be completely honest. I'd much rather feed her something that can no longer object to being eaten.

So off and on we've presented her with frozen pinkies, only to have her literally turn up her nose at the offering and slither away. Who knew snakes could be so pretentious?

Well, between the snowstorm last week and our breeder's love of hunting (what is up with that Chad?), it's been a little over 2 weeks since Kauket has eaten. She was starting to show that she was not liking the starvation diet the other day when she began striking at her own reflection in the glass of the tank (I never said that any of my pets were smart). Watching her do this we thought that it might be a good time to try a frozen pinkie again. So off John went to get another "Gourmet Rodent" from the pet store, and we tried once again.

Once again, she snubbed the food. Picky, picky, picky, she's starting to act like one of my kids. Well the breeder had told John to smack her around with the thawed pinkie to try and upset her enough to strike at the food (I know it sounds abusive, but sometimes you need to use tough love on your kids), so he did just that, and after about 10 minutes of being whacked in the face with a dead mouse, she finally got mad enough to eat it.

YAY! No more pinkie squeals! Thank heaven for small favors.

The Cuttlebug:

I'm loving my Cuttlebug! I had a couple of people ask me about some of the techniques I'm doing with it, so I thought that this would be a good place to explain them (rather than in the comment section of my ASB gallery).

First off is the embossing folders...

On this money card Sue asked how I managed to isolate the saying from the rest of the saying in the A2 sized embossing folder.

The truth is... I didn't. :D

For this card I used one of the small 4 packs of embossing folders. It's the "Congrats" set, and it has 4 small folders with different congratulatory sayings in it. I found that I can place the small embossing folders on a portion of a larger piece of cardstock, run it through the Cuttlebug, and all that gets embossed is the part that's supposed to be embossed. It doesn't leave a residual line where the folder hits the cardstock, which is really nice. So it expands the useability of the embossing folders even more, in my opinion.

The next thing that I've been asked about is embossing with brass stencils, Fiskar's texture plates, and other different things, and the answer is: YES, you can! I took some old computer mouse pads, three to be exact, in different thicknesses. Then I cut them all down so that they would fit through the Cuttlebug. Now whenever I want to emboss something that's not specifically for the Cuttlebug I use the A and C plates, along with my mouse pad embossing cushions to build a sandwich that fits into the machine.

The sandwich should be built with the A pad on the bottom, the plate or stencil next, cardstock or paper on top of the stencil, mouse pad embossing mats, and last but not least the C plate finishes off your embossing sandwich. It should be difficult to turn the crank to feed it though, but not impossible. That's how you know you have the right thickness.

It works really well, and you're going to be embossing all sorts of fun stuff before you know it. Try bits of lace, or pieces of ric-rak; punched pieces of cardstock, or chipboard shapes make fun embossing tools as well. Look around your house, and I'm sure your imagination will take off! :)

Have a great day!