April Fools Day Cricut Crawl!

Good Morning Friends! It’s April Fools Day so beware of anything that is said to you today or you may be the butt of someone’s joke! Speaking of jokes, today is also the April Fools Day Cricut Crawl at Fantabulous Cricut Challenge Blog! The challenge this week is to create a card with a joke on it and for me this was a huge challenge! I don’t really know any jokes, well not any goods ones. But I tried to  do my best and here’s the result (remember, be nice! LOL):

 

Any good guesses???

 

 

 

HAHAHA! Get it! A Buccaneer! (a buck an ear!!!). See,  I warned you!

I only used one cartridge for this card – Paper Doll Dress Up. I used the Pirate Boy but I did make some changes. First I used the hair (headwear feature) from the vampire doll on this cart instead of the pirates hair. I was going for that “Jack Sparrow” look! (I said I was going for that look - I didn’t say that I actually got there, lol). I sort of roughed up the hair with my scissors and also cut down his mustache a little on each side. Then I hand cut a bandana for his head and I didn’t give him his ‘hook’ hand. I then inked up all of the pieces before layering them together. I added Stickles to his shoe buckles and gave him a Stickle earring!

For the card front, I cut out the ship and the skull & crossbones, inked them and adhered them with pop dots.

Now go over to FCCB and see what the other Design Team members have come up with for this April Fools Day! And after having fun reading all of our funny jokes, why don’t you play along with us and create a card with a joke on it. Make sure that you use your Cricut in your creation and then link it to the FCCB.

Thank you for looking and have a very funny April Fools Day! Until next time, Happy Crafting,

St. Patty’s Day Candy Cracker

Hey guys! Do you know that St. Patrick’s Day is next Sunday? Well, I’m sure you all know that I’m not Irish, lol, but like my friend Danita said, “you can kiss me anyway”! Today is my guest designer day over at Cricut FANatics and I made this candy cracker for St. Patty’s Day.

It was so easy to cut out and put together. I used the CTMH Artist cartridge for the cracker cutting it out at 9.25”. There is also a cracker image on Tags, Bags, Boxes & More 2. The sentiment was cut from Tags, Bags, Boxes & More 2 at 2”. I would’ve loved using glitter cardstock for the “Good Luck” but I didn’t have the right colors so I used regular cardstock and used Stickles in Platinum and Lagoon to color the images. Before I cut out the cracker, I created a rectangle from CCR Basics and welded it to the cracker in the Cricut Craft Room to create a window in the cracker. After it was cut, I used Scor-Tape (Love this stuff!!!) to adhere a piece of transparency to the inside.

Instead of using ribbon as a closure, I wrapped some gold tinsel that I bought at Michaels last Christmas at each end. (Who knew you could use up your Christmas hoard for other holidays! Yet again, hoarding pays off, lol) It’s filled with lucky gold chocolate coins! Oh yes, it just couldn’t be finished without some green bling!

Now it’s all ready to ‘POP’!

I hope that you all have a wonderful St. Patty’s Day next weekend. Now I need to get to work on some Easter projects! See you soon and until next time, Happy Crafting!

Teddy Bear Valentine’s Cards

Here are two Valentine Bears that I made with the Teddy Bear Parade cartridge. I used Cricut Craft Room to weld two Bear images together to create them into Valentine’s Day cards. I’ll show you how easy this is to do.

My bears are 5”. I took two images of the bear base into CCR and then flipped the left image so that the two images will match up perfectly when closed. I then moved them just close enough to have the ears and hands touch. While the image is highlighted, a box will appear that says WELD and DON”T WELD. Make sure that you check the WELD button. The images will automatically be welded when cut. Here is the screen shot of what it should look like:

Next, I finished cutting all of the other layers out. I used two different kinds of brown cardstock for each bear, both by Core’dinations – Burnt Sugar (on the right) and Brownie. I also used Core’dinations in Black Soot and in red, white, and lavender glitter cardstock.

I can never just leave a project alone after it’s made! I’ve got to ink, distress, and add more “stuff”. For these bears I inked them first with Distress Inks, added Glossy Accents to parts of the bows and arrows, and then I added a little red heart to their bodies with red Stickles.

It’s really easy to make shaped cards from many of the Cricut images in CCR! I hope this has helped and inspire you to try to make some also. 

I also have some good news! I will be teaching Cricut classes at The Crafty Scrapper in Waxahachie starting this weekend. This is a great scrapbook shop with so much to offer! So if you are in the Dallas/Ft. Worth area please check it out!

Thanks and until next time, Happy Crafting!

Minnie Mouse Scrapbook Page Layout using Disney’s Mickey & Friends Cartridge

Happy October everyone! I love that we are starting to feel a some cooler weather, even if it’s only early in the morning and later in the evening here in Texas. I can’t believe that there are only 3 more months left in 2010! This year has really flown by.
Today I made a quick Minnie Mouse layout using the Disney Mickey & Friends cartridge. Yes, I said quick and the Disney cartridge in the same sentence! Some people have told me that they stay away from these types of cartridges because of the layering and the time it takes to make some of the images. Well, it’s not that hard at all if you follow these tips and if you use Design Studio or the Gypsy. Now these ideas are definitely not new. When I first starting using this cartridge and hit road blocks, I either worked at it until I figured it out or I went looking for answers. So it will really help new Cricuteers and could be a refresher course for others. Just please remember that this is how I do it and for now it works for me!

These photos were taken on one of our trips to Disneyland when my daughter was a little younger and while there we took the tour of Minnie’s house. I wanted to make the layout about the house and although Minnie traditionally wears her red and white outfit, her house is very pink! I also gave the finished layout a bit of sparkle with Stickles! First, using Design Studio I took the border icon on page 109 and created an even longer border for the bottom of my page. The original icon only had 4 roses in a row. My new borders have a total of 29 roses! I welded 4 of the images together and then rotated the welded image about 45 degrees. You’ll find the rotate box in the upper right hand side under Shape Properties. This way you can get a longer border. Remember, on the 12x12 mat, you can’t cut a full 12 inches. Rotating my image let me cut my borders at almost 13 inches.

The sun, mailbox, and heart were all pretty easy to piece together. It’s mostly the images that have many, many parts, like Minnie’s house, that people have trouble with.  First, I took a look at  all of the colors of cardstock that I needed and gathered them together. Sometimes I even make a little cheat sheet for myself, especially if I’m not using the same colors that are in the handbook. Now here is the best part – there is no need to send your mat through the Cricut 8 times even if there are 8 different colors to cut! I’ll demonstrate using the Daisy Duck image on page 111. Using my Design Studio, I put all of the parts of Daisy’s image on the first mat. I cut it out at 4 1/2”. I then made a new page (you’ll find this by clicking on the View button) for each color and renamed each page according to that color. I then copied each part of the image separately and pasted it onto the page for its corresponding color. 

Here is the first page with all of the images on it.  Below you can see how I labeled my pages. Here is another page.

This is how I changed the image color. On each page, I right-clicked on the image and in the box that pops up I went to Set Preview Color and picked the color that matches the color of the cardstock (or close to it) that I was going to cut that particular image with. For example, on the page with Daisy’s bow, I set the color to pink because that’s the color of cardstock that I planned on cutting the bow out of. The only exception is white – I made those images a light gray to be able to see them.

I did this for each image that I was cutting. Then I created one more page that I left blank. When you are on that last page, click Preview (the EYE icon on the far left). This is what you will see -

This helps me with paper placement on my mat. Now all I had to do was cut each color of cardstock a little bigger than the image and place it exactly on my mat like the images are placed on that last page. Just like this -

When I loaded the mat and hit the Cut With Cricut button, all of the images cut in one pass – not 7!

This is what it looks like after cutting -

So I won’t get the pieces mixed up, I leave them on the mat and only take them off one at a time as I am layering my image together. For me, this is the easiest way to cut and assemble images with multiple parts. And here is the finished Daisy Duck -

I hope that you enjoyed this quick little tutorial (hey, it’s my first!) and that you can use it to create some wonderful layered images. And I hope that I explained it clearly enough so that those living outside of my own head will understand! lol
Thanks for visiting. Please leave a comment and tell me who your favorite character is from the Disney’s Mickey & Friends cartridge. Or, if Disney’s not your thing, what cartridge do you like that uses layers and which image on that cartridge is either your favorite or one that you have trouble with. I’ll be checking to see what you have to say.

As always, Happy Crafting,