First projects as a Cooking with Cricut DT member! Woo hoo!!

So, have any of you seen the clip of Kristin Bell on the Ellen show discussing a sloth? If you haven't  you need to check it out. Quite possibly one of the funniest things I have seen in a long time, and it about sums up how I felt when I found out I got picked to be on the design team for Cooking with Cricut. Watch the whole thing...it is worth the 3 min and 43 seconds. I promise.

Anyway, I am overjoyed to be joining the group of crafters at Cooking with Cricut and even more excited that our first project is in Celebration of Dr Seuss and Read Across America.

Dr. Seuss was an interesting challenge - there isn't a Dr Seuss cartridge, afterall!  I wanted to incorporate several different stories into a little treat bag for my kids.

Thing 1 and Thing 1 are cut from a digi stamp from Melin at Paper Crafting World. I had never used a digi stamp before, but loved these for this project (since I often call my kids Thing 1 and Thing 2, lol). I printed her image out on 3 colors of paper, handcut them and layered them.

The bag is cut from Mini Monsters. 

(I used my Gypsy to hide the mosnster face that was supposed to be cut into it as I just wanted a plain bag.)

Next came one of our favorite stories as a family "Wocket in My Pocket". The Wocket is cut from Mini Monsters and is actually a card (Mini-monsters has a card version of each monster on the cartridge). In the middle is what  wocket is really supposed to look like.

Next came the treats for inside the bag. First I made them each a bookmark. This is cut from B is for Boy. I only cut the base layer of the fish and used the gypsy to hide it's scales and face. I hand cut the oval eye and drew in Seuss-Like lines/face to make it look more like the fish from The Cat in the Hat.

And then for my favorite part. Green Eggs and "Hamm". I used my Toy Story Cartridge to cut out Hamm (the piggy bank from Toy Story) and attached it to a bag of green foil covered eggs). I didn't label it just so I can see how long it takes my kids to figure out :)

I hope you enjoyed my project! It was so much fun to make (Can't wait to give it to the kids!)

Head over to Cooking with Cricut to link up your Dr Seuss project or a project that encourages reading!

Decorate to Celebrate's Halloween Challenge!

I am so thrilled to be asked to be a guest designer at Decorate to Celebrate for their Halloween Challenge this week. It is my first time being a guest designer for anything and this is one of my favorite blog challenges because it isn't cards - you have to use your cricut to come up with different projects.

This week the theme is Halloween Party. I made this candy bar centerpiece which, I think, would make an awesome door prize or 1st place prize for a costume contest.

The papers are from various companies and various packs. All the cuts are from Mini Monsters.

Supplies:
1 pail (I used a brown metal pail on sale at AC Moore for $1.98)
A package of lollipop sticks
A styrofoam ball
Fun-size Halloween Candy

I lined the pail in paper by taping two identical pieces of 12x12 paper together. You turn it over and trace the top of the pail with a pencil as you roll it across the paper. Repeat the step by tracing the bottom of the pail.






Cut it out.

Affix it to your pail (I used Glue Dots)

I cut the "Trick or Treat" from Mini Monsters and just layered a few different coordinating papers in squares behind it. I used my corner rounder on all the corners and embossed the solid orange paper using a Fiskars template with my Big Kick.






 I then put the styrofoam ball in the pail and used hot glue to attach the lollipop sticks to all of the candy. (In retrospect I should have just used tape, I think the hot glue probably melted some of the chocolate, lol.)
 I stuck them all into the styrofoam ball.

I then cut out a few shapes/words from Mini Monsters to decorate it with. I attached each of these to a lollipop stick and inserted them into the styrofoam as well.

 

Here a few more pictures from other angles:

 I'm already thinking about how I can make these for Christmas with Candy Canes and Jingle Bells!
Thanks to the ladies over at Decorate to Celebrate for the challenge!

Monster Baby Shower

So, my brother's wife is expecting and is not finding out what she is having. We were throwing her a shower and didn't have a gender, a theme or any clue what we wanted to do. My sister Rebecca (at Crafting Misfit) and I decided to do a theme with a cartridge we both had since we'd be working on it while living a bit over 3 hours away from each other. Then we thought of Mini Monsters and came up with some really cute projects!

I made the invitations using a variety of multi-colored papers. I then just made color photocopies of the card to mail out. I love it, personally. Boy or Girl? LOL. Of course one guest did say they were "very cute owls". The title on the back was  "A Cute Little Monster is on the Way!"

Next came the fun part - decorating!!

For favor bags I made the monster bag from mini monsters (30 of them...I never want to make another one again!). We filled the adult ones with colorful Lindor Truffles and the kids got Skittles and Starbursts.

I also made my first banner (I made Rebecca string it, though - and it was totally her concept. It's just that her Gypsy broke so she was at a loss of how to actually use the buttons on her Cricut I think ;)

 

I was excited to get to use my Big Kick to emboss the letters :) I'm still getting the hang of it, but I love it.

Because I am a tad over-ambitious I also decorated the silverware (only did a single layer on these monster, though! lol)

Then, perhaps my favorite project was the poster where we made people guess what she was having!

Rebecca made some super-cute centerpieces as well. (It was actually amazing how long we hemmed and hawed over which faux-flowers to buy for them).

Then I made a cake. Ugh - what a disaster. I had such a cute vision, but who knew it would be so muggy in Maine on a September day! This was how it came out - I was totally disappointed but it was still a big hit. I've been waiting for the perfect occasion to make a rainbow layer cake so was super excited to do it this time!

Overall it was an awesome day and I had a lot of fun making the projects (even if it was exhausting!) I can't wait to meet my new niece or nephew, and knowing my brother it is sure to be a little monster!!

I'm entering this into the following challenges:
Scrappy Mom's Stamps (mini moster challenge)
Decorate to Celebrate (Baby party!)