Cricut Classes at The Crafty Scrapper

Hey crafty friends! If you are going to be in the DFW area this weekend and need a little help with your Cricut skills, I’ll be at The Crafty Scrapper this Saturday teaching 2 Cricut classes:

Cricut 101 – Saturday, June 1st at 10:30

This class is for those who are just getting started with their Cricut Expression!

Cricut 102 – Saturday, June 1st at 2:30

In Cricut 102 you will learn even more tips and tricks using your machine!

We always have a great time at The Crafty Scrapper so call the store and sign up today!

The Crafty Scrapper

308 South College

Waxahachie, TX 75165

972-923-3151

Until next time, Happy Crafting,

 

Oh Baby! Fantabulous Cricut Challenge #161

Good morning! It’s time for another challenge on the Fantabulous Cricut Challenge Blog and the theme this week is “Oh Baby” – create something for a new baby. Well, my project, at first glance, doesn’t really look like it’s for a baby – no pastels, baby booties, stroller, etc. but it really is for a new baby! I created this for my new grandson, Charles! (Such a BIG name for such a little baby! LOL) And he is new – in fact, today he is exactly 4 months old! So this is what I made for his room -

It’s a framed split letter monogram with his name in the middle! I should have take a better photo because I don’t think that you can tell by this one that the vinyl is just on the glass and there is no back to the frame. I did it in a “big boy” color and frame so he could keep it in his room for several years.

I learned how to do this during NSD this month over on the Cricut message board. Our wonderful and talented Narelle did a tutorial on her blog. So please visit her blog here – The Non-Crafty Crafter – to learn exactly how to make this with your Cricut. Narelle did an excellent job of explaining how to do this and she even has a video! (Thanks, Narelle!) You’ll only need to use the Cricut Craft Room and the alphabet cartridge of your choice! I used the Plantin Schoolbook cart to recreate my Split Letter Monogram! But the possibilities are endless depending on your font and design. It’s very easy to do, too!

While I had my vinyl out, I continued to create a couple more projects with it – another gift for baby Charles and something for Memorial Day. I’ll post those this week so please stop by again!

Thanks for visiting and until next time, Happy Crafting!

Happy Mother’s Day!

I want to wish all Mothers, Grandmothers, and Mother-like figures out there a very Happy, Crafty Mother’s Day! It was 30 years ago this September that I became a Mom for the first time and now that child has his own child! So this will be my first Mother’s Day as a Grandma!!! I also wish a very special Happy Mother’s Day wish to my own Mom who has seen over 70 Mother’s Days!!! Mom. I love you always!!!

A Tri-Fold Mother’s Day Card

Good morning crafty friends! As promised here is another Mother’s Day card that I was inspired to create from Split Coast Stampers with some Cricut cuts thrown in! It is called a Tri-Fold card. It looks difficult to make but I was surprised by just how easy it was. I can’t wait to make some more of this type of card!

I made this card for my Mom and red is her favorite color. I think she’ll be very happy with it!

Below is looking at the card from a slightly left angle…

And this next photo is looking at it from the right side…

I started with paper from DCWV called The Four Seasons stack (beautiful papers in this stack for each of the seasons with texture and some glitter!). After hand cutting my card in a cream cardstock, the patterned paper, and the mats in red cardstock I then decided which Cricut cuts to use to dress up my card. I used three different Cricut cartridges for the embellishments: Florals Embellished, CTMH Art Philosophy, and Flower Shoppe.

The “Happy Mother’s Day” sentiment, was cut from Florals Embellished @ 1.88”. I added some Stickles to the little pink flower and adhered a flat-backed pearl to the center. This cart has some wonderful Mother’s Day sentiments!

The two butterflies were cut from Art Philosophy @ 1.5” and 1.25”. I adhered the two layers together just between the wings–not the wings themselves – to give the butterflies a little more dimension. Then I placed two pearls in the center of the smaller one and three in the center of the larger one.

This next part was really an afterthought. While I was waiting for my bug to cut something out, I started playing around with the DCWV paper that was left over. One of the motifs had this envelope surrounded by roses and had “A Tribute of Love” printed on it. How perfect for my Mom’s card! So I did some ‘fussy cutting’ around it on three sides. The left side of it already had a straight edge because it was on the edge of the 12x12 sheet of paper so I just aligned that side up against the edge of that card panel and adhered it. I added a small pop dot under the right side of it so pops off the card a little bit.

The middle top and bottom sections were a little too plain so I added some pearl flourishes.

Now for the card front! I made the flower from the Flower Shoppe cart and I LOVED how it came out! I used paper from a 6x6 pad by Echo Park called This & That and cut it out @ 3”. The flower I used from the cart was the <FUN> shapes on page 16 in the handbook. I’ve been on a flower making kick lately (can’t you tell by my previous posts? lol) and this flower was so much fun to make! It was inked and rolled before I adhered it together and added a large pearl to the center.

And there you have it! This years Mother’s Day card for my Mom! I think that it’s safe to show it here because Mom is 93 and not very interested in surfing the web, lol! It wasn’t that long ago that she asked me to explain what “that word I keep hearing about means?” The word was “Google”! I cracked up! But can you just imagine all the things that she has seen and has lived through? I’ll be so lucky and blessed to live as long and still be able to tell you who I am!

Thank you for visiting today! I always appreciate you stopping by. And, if you have time, please leave me some blog love (a comment) because those always make me happy! So until next time,

Happy Crafting,

Quick Tip Tuesday–Fantabulous Cricut Blog

Good morning crafty friends! As you may know, I am on the Design Team for the Fantabulous Cricut Challenge Blog but I also write the Quick Tip post there every Tuesday. You can go back to see all of my Quick Tip posts HERE! But today I decided to also posts my tips here on my blog. For the month of May I will be sharing crafting tips AND organizing tips each week. This week we’ll talk about brads and eyelets.

If you are anything like me, you are always looking for new ways to organize your stash of scrapping supplies. I remember when I started this journey many years ago, my entire stash fit into a small 8” x 10” container, LOL, but today not only do I have an entire craft room but supplies from that room have somehow started overflowing into others rooms! (No, really, I have NO IDEA how that happened!!!)

So my first quick tip has to do with brads and eyelets. Yes, I think we all still have them in our stash whether you want to admit it or not! I personally like to keep my brads and eyelets in containers that I can grab and go. So I separate mine by color (or color family) and put them in those little Tic Tac containers then those go into a slightly bigger clear box. I have one clear box for big brads and one that contains mini brads. I use this same system for my eyelets.

If I’m going to a crop, I can just grab the box that I want or just take a few of the smaller boxes containing the colors and/or sizes that I need.

And speaking of brads, did you know that you can take plain silver or gold brads and change them to any color that you want? Well, as long as you have some different colored embossing powders and VersaMark!

First, take your plain brad and dip it into your VersaMark pad.

Next dip it into your color of choice of embossing powder.

Now heat your brad with a heat gun. Make sure you use a pair of crafting tweezers to do this last step! After it’s heated, you can dip it again into the embossing powder while it’s still hot and heat it again to create a thicker coating.

Now you have a brad with a custom color! Try experimenting with different colors of embossing powders.

Here are a few different colors that I tried. I used Platinum, Interference Blue, and Green.

How do you store your brads and eyelets? Comment below and share your storage solutions. Next week I’ll be back with another organizing and crafting tip.

Tomorrow I’ll have another Mother’s Day card to share. It was made using another tutorial from Split Coast Stampers so please be sure to stop by! Thanks!

Until next time, Happy Crafting,

Mother’s Day Card –Fantabulous Cricut Challenge #159

Hey there my crafty friends! I hope everyone had a great weekend. There was so much going on these past couple of days – Saturday was National Scrapbooking Day and yesterday was Cinco de Mayo! And today is the Mother’s Day card challenge on Fantabulous Cricut Challenge Blog. Come on over and join in on this weeks challenge and not only will you be inspired by my fellow Design Team sisters, but you’ll have a special card that you created yourself for Mother’s Day next Sunday. Now here’s my Mother’s Day card -

I wanted to try some different card-making techniques that I came across on Split Coast Stampers. They have wonderful tutorials for so many different kinds of projects. So I combined this Lever Card with some Cricut images to create my card. The photo above is what the card looks like when it’s closed. Now this is what it looks like when opened -

Cool, huh?

For the front of my card I cut out the birdcage from the Bloom Lite cart at 3” and used pop dots to adhere it to the front ‘lever’ panel. I had forgotten how much I liked this cart – there are some very cute images on it! (The digital version is on sale now at Cricut.com.) I stamped a sentiment onto cardstock and punched it out and adhered it to the bottom front of the card with pop dots.

For the center panel, I cut out another birdcage from Bloom also at 3”. For this birdcage I decided that I wanted it to ‘hang’ from a tree branch that I cut from Serenade at 1.4”.  The branch is adhered so that it stretches across both panels. I then threaded some twine through the top of the cage and tied it around the end of the branch.

The butterfly was a part of the second birdcage image and it has three layers, two of which are popped up with pop dots.

I wanted to add a Mother's Day sentiment to the last panel but most phrases were a little too big for this spot. I needed something no wider than about 1.5”. Here is just one of the reasons why I love my Cricut so much (ok, I know that should be plural as in CRICUTS!, LOL). You have the ability to manipulate the images to your liking! For instance, the “I love you” sentiment from the Artiste cart is actually one long phrase that measures 2.7” wide. I really couldn’t make it any narrower because it would’ve been too small to read or even to cut out nicely. At 2.7” wide, it was only 1.11” tall! So I left it as it was, and after it was cut, I hand cut the word “love” from the rest of the sentiment and rearranged it into a vertical sentiment!

Here’s a screen shot of what the phrase originally looked like in the Craft Room:

I think it looks pretty good in it’s new arrangement! So there’s another challenge for you – if an image doesn’t work for you, change it!

So there’s my Mother’s Day card! (Sorry the colors in my photos are the way they are. This paper is so much prettier IRL! It was just hard trying to get it to look that way here!)

Now head over to FCCB, get inspired by the other Design Team member projects, and then join in on this weeks challenge!

If you’d like to learn how to make your own Lever Card, go to the tutorial here on Split Coast Stampers.

Don’t forget to check back tomorrow on Fantabulous Cricut Challenge Blog. I write a post there every Tuesday with Quick Tips! I’d love to hear some of your comments about my tips!

Supplies used:

• Cricut Expression and Cricut Craft Room
• CTMH Artist, Bloom, and Serenade Cricut cartridges
• Sentiment stamp, label punch, patterned paper – Stampin’ Up
• Twine – Pink Paislee
• Ink – Tim Holtz Distress ink pad
• cardstock, adhesive, pop dots

Until next time, Happy Crafting!