My First Vinyl Project

Last year, for our Cricut Club holiday Secret Santa gift swap, one of the talented gals, Michele F., decorated one of those clear re-usable plastic cups that are all the rage right now with a super cute Hello Kitty vinyl decal she had cut with her Cricut. Totally inspired by Michele's adorable cup, I went out and bought several sheets of vinyl and all kinds of plasticware to embellish.

But it wasn't till I was trying to think of something to send dd for Valentines Day that I finally decided it was time to learn how to cut vinyl with my Cricut. So after watching tons of video tutorials on youtube and lots of advice and encouragement from Michele, I finished my first vinyl project. The cutting party was easy... Cricut cut through the vinyl very smoothly and easily. By using a medium pressure setting and blade depth of 3, Cricut cut through the vinyl only, leaving the backing intact for easier removal of the cut piece from the backing. I used the wedding cake cut from the Sweethearts cartridge and doves and filigree heart cuts are from the Wedding Solutions cartridge.

 For the cover, I did a monogram, created on Make the Cut using  CK Calligraphy and Baar Sophia fonts. I learned alot about creating with vinyl by doing this project, but I there's still so much more I need to learn!

Here's the finished cannister with some "starter cash" that I sent off for dd and her fiance's Valentine surprise. They're busy planning their wedding and are learning how expensive weddings can be. I thought this might be a cute way for them to save up their pocket change for their "wedding fund"...a penny saved is a penny earned, right?

Sweet Treats from the Heart

Wow, Valentines Day came & went so quickly this year, I felt like I barely had enough time to finish what I wanted to do! Here are a couple heart boxes I sent off to dd and her fiance.

The boxes were created in Design Studio using the George cartridge, and once again, I used the re-sizeable scalloped heart cut created and shared by Okielady. Hello Kitty cuts are fron a sizzlits die, and the cute robot comes from the Robotz cartridge. The word "Love machine" is from the Don Juan font cartridge.

And look at this! Pulling down on the tab just below the die cut characters reveals a Valentine message and makes the characters pop up & stand! Neat, huh? My dear friend and fellow blogger, Patti of Creations by Patti recently posted a very cool New Years card using this mechanism and I just knew I would have to try one too. You can find the instructions & video tutorial for this "Sliding Pop Up Card" over at Kim Score's blog, Paper Punch Addiction. Kim's instructions are for a A2 size card with a sliding background which also pops up together with her character.

Since for my purposes I wanted just the pop up character on my boxes, I eliminated the background and miniaturized the sliding element so it would fit on the heart.

Here's a shot of the box opened with the goodies inside. Notice the box is not a heart shaped box at all, but instead, a triangular shaped box. Definitely alot simpler to put together!
Made a few more of these boxes for my friends who are young at heart. This time I used the squirrel cut from my favorite Create A Critter cartridge...

And for those who prefer purty over cutesy, I shared boxes of Louis Daar Tea Ceremony cookies. The box these came in were already so pretty, I simply added some gold ribbon and a heart shaped cut-out card to dress it up a bit.

These heart cut-out cards were inspired by the beautiful and intricate heart cuts on the 2010 limited edition Love Struck cartridge which I waited too long to decide I wanted. Unable to find that cartridge for sale anywhere, I decided to wing it on Design Studio. To create the cutfile for this, I used the heart shape with the silhouette function from the George cartridge and welded various flowers from George, Hello Kitty Greetings and Plantin Schoolbook inside.

After cutting with white cardstock, I stickled & prisma glittered the cutout and backed it with foam tape to a plain red heart. The banner (Wedding Solutions cart) was also adhered with foam tape for dimension. The whole thing was then glued onto a heart shaped card (hearts from George welded at the top) and it was done!

And finally, I want to share a super special Valentine treat I received from my friend, Heather...

Aren't these the absolute SWEET-est ever? I loved the look of the Hello Kitty treat bag, but when I peeked inside, I nearly fell off my seat when I saw these scrumptious goodies inside! Heather, you are awesome!

Hope everyone had a delightful day sharing the love on Valentines Day!

In Search of Prince Charming

It's been quite a few months ago that I made this card for dh to celebrate our 30th wedding anniversary, but with Valentine's Day just around the corner, I figured now was a good a time as any to post this. Decided to do a fun and whimsical card...I had seen this sentiment used on a card a while back and always wanted to try my own take on it.
Here's how it opens up...

I put the frogs on a pop up mechanism similar to the Sizzix Platform Spinning Die for the surprise element. This one was a cut file created in Design Studio and generously shared by Laurinda on her blog, Oh Scrappy Daze.

All the froggies on my card came from the Paisley cartridge, and I used Indie Arts for the "Smack!" and lips.Had so much fun with this...giggling to myself the whole time putting it together.Not sure if dh caught on to the humor, though. I had to explain to him that he was "the one with the crown...you know, Prince Charming". All he said was "Oh". Maybe he didn't want to be a frog?

Gong Hay Fat Choy! Year of the Rabbit

To celebrate Chinese New Year, I made up twenty more Year of the Rabbit boxes to share with  family at our Chinese New Year dinner celebration and to pass out to our friends. These look almost identical to the boxes I posted at the beginning of the year, but actually are alot smaller.

Here's a photo with both boxes side by side for a size comparison...

As mentioned in the earlier post, the larger box comes from an original Design Studio cutfile created and shared by Tanya Strom over at Custom Crops. I decided this time that I wanted to try a smaller sized box that I could use to hold some pizzelles. It took me a while to figure out (I hate geometry!), but after several tries I finally was able to create a cutfile in Design Studio using George and Plantin Schoolbook for a smaller version. This smaller trapezoid box measures 5 inches across at its widest point at the top of the box and little over 3 inches at the bottom. Happily, resizing the rabbit to a smaller one was really easy with Make the Cut.

But as I hastily tried to put together twenty of these boxes...you know what they say about haste and waste... I did my classic boo-boo and ended up cutting twenty rabbits in pink instead of white.

Couldn't stand the thought of trashing all those pink bunnies, so I decided I would use them to make "lucky money envelopes" (lai si)...

The cutfile for the envelopes was simple to do with George and Design Studio, and I used some washi paper from my scrap stash to decorate the envelopes.

Xin Nian Kuai Le! Have a Happy New Year!

World's Best Dad

Chose to do yet another accordian flag book card, this time for a birthday card for my dad. Really like that these are fairly easy to put together and are really fun and quite impressive for the recipient to open. For the front of dad's card, I used the globe cut on the Locker Talk cartridge and a Darcie bear image rendered into a cutfile using Make the Cut (MTC).

I made this into a trifold card so I would have an extra page to add a sentiment and used ribbon tied into a bow to keep the card closed.

Here's what the card looked like on the inside when fully open with the flags in place. Used another Darcie bear image created with MTC and trophy is cut from a very old Sizzix die. Alphas on the flags are from Plantin Schoolbook.

And here's the top view showing the pleats.

The finished card, tied closed with it's bow, went into this box created with printed cardstock from DCWV. Used a simple belly band and medallion embossed with a "Happy Birthday" Cuttlebug die to decorate the box and it was ready for giving.

2011 Hops in Like a Rabbit

Happy New Year! For my very first project of the year and in celebration of the Year of the Rabbit, I made up a little over a dozen of these large trapezoid boxes filled with goodies to give to relatives at our New Years get together. I found a Design Studio cutfile for large chipboard boxes created and shared by Tanya Strom over at Custom Crops.

Tanya's cutfile was for just the right size box I was looking for, but because it was intended to be constructed from chipboard and tape, the sides of the box are not connected in the original cutfile.  Since I wanted to use cardstock instead to make my boxes, I tweaked & modified Tanya's file in Design Studio a bit by welding the sides and bottom together, adding scorelines for folding and tabs to the sides that needed to be glued.

The finished size of this box is large...about 7 inches wide, 4-1/2 inches high and about 3-1/2 inches in depth...and takes 3 sheets of 12x12 cardstock to create. The bottom of the box is reinforced with two layers of cardstock, which makes it sturdy enough to hold at least a dozen or more cookies.

To decorate my boxes, I wanted to use washi paper, but with each box requiring 1-1/2 sheets of 8x11 paper, and over a dozen boxes to embellish, I knew I would run short. Instead, I used a scanned image of some washi paper I had, printed up on Ice Gold Text. The rabbit is a cutfile created using Make The Cut (MTC) from an image found on the internet. Filled the boxes with goodies and finished it off with some ribbon tied into a bow.

In the Nick of Time (...barely!)

Our family Christmas cards barely got to the post office in time this year. (Note to self...no more paper piecing for Christmas cards!) Those little reindeer from Create A Critter are adorable, but piecing together 180 reindeer (2 per card) took way too long to do!
Our card this year was a swing style card. Took me a while to figure out, but I managed to create a cut file for it in Design Studio, which made cutting and scoring the card base pretty quick. I used Bazzill Bling (Feather Boa) for the base card and patterned paper is from the Provincial Princess collection at Lettering Delights, printed on ice gold text.

Holly and leaves are from a Martha Stewart punch, trees are Quickutz, and as mentioned earlier, the reindeer are from the Create A Critter cartridge. Font is LD Charming Bold. As a final touch,  a small red rhinestone was added  for one of the reindeer's nose.  Sadly, I didn't have time to do anything much else creative this Christmas, except matching tags for take out boxes filled with cereal mix for dh to take to work....

and a half a dozen more gingerbread houses, this time in a larger size, so I could fill them with pizzelles.

The larger sized houses were about 3-1/2 inches wide on the bottom. Photo on the left shows the relative comparison in size.

Wrapped these in cellophane and shared them with friends. Really had fun making these larger sized houses, they were a lot easier and came together a lot quicker than the earlier tiny version. Only wish I had more time to make more! Maybe next year...

Hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas this year! And here's our Latte....

wishing everyone a "Merry Chris-MOOSE!"