My new Silhouette Portrait

I have been eyeing the Silhouette in all its manifestations since the original came out.  I already had a Cricut and several cartridges, so I couldn't justify the $300 buy in for the Silhouette.  Finally, last fall, I decided to sell my Cricut on Ebay so that I could pay for the Silhouette Cameo.  Well, the Cricut sold...with all of its cartriges, but I clearly am not a saleswoman.  My Cricut with 12 cartridges sold for less than $250.  I also underestimated the cost of shipping, so long story short, no Cameo for me, but also no Cricut!  This was a sad state of affairs.  I never bought letter stickers for my scrapbooking while I had my Cricut; I never realized just how expensive they were.  Suffice it to say, that my recent scrapbook pages have a lot more of my own hand on them.  I did buy a set of clear letter stamps, which is nice, but I still missed being able to cut my own dies on demand. I heard about the Silhouette Portrait around Thanksgiving, and was super excited...partially because at $100 less than the Cameo, it was a lot more reasonably priced, but also because my new scrap space in the basement is significantly smaller than my old space was and the smaller size would fit perfectly.  I thought I might get it for Christmas...No Dice, but I did work out a deal for my sister to buy it for me in exchange for babysitting services and since she didn't get around to getting me a Christmas present.

I'm pretty excited for my new machine to get here, and I'm sure I'll have a ton of things to say about it. Maybe I'll even do a review of it in comparison to the Cricut.  Maybe. In the mean time, here's my first attempt at playing with the software.  It's an 8x8 chevron background.  I have to be honest and say that I don't know if it will work.  I'll let you know when the machine gets here.  Download it here.