Cooking with Cricut Home Decor Blog Hop

Cooking with Cricut is having a two day home decor blog hop and lots of blog candy can be found both at cooking with cricut and on some of the posts in the hop.

This is a two day hop that started this morning.

Head over to Cooking with Cricut to check out today's projects and be sure to come back tomorrow to see what I cooked up for tomorrow's hop!

Cooking with Cricut Challenge #82 National Card and Letter Writing Month

Fun challenge at Cooking with Cricut this week! It's National card and letter writing month. The challenge is to make a card you are going to send or a scrapbook layout that features a letter.

A while ago I saw a "box of sunshine" on pinterest. It was a gift box of all yellow things to mail as a surprise care package to someone. I have a friend I thought could use a little pick-me-up so I'm going to make her one. This is the card I made to put in the box:

I used Cricut Classic font for the suns, but found them to be a little flat and more like a flower, so I used that same cartridge to cut circles out of the patterned paper and used foam dots to affix them to the top. It gives the card some nice dimension while keeping it simple (this might be the first time I've used this cartridge! I bought it on clearance at Wal-Mart one day and just have never used it until now.) The yellow ink on the stamp blends in well, but it looks super bright and hard to read no matter how I took the photo.

So, do you have someone that you are actually going to mail a card to? I feel like this challenge is going to help us all communicate "the old fashioned way" and it will be a lot more personal than how we tend to communicate lately! So, head over to Cooking wit h Cricut and link up your creations. Can't wait to see what you come up with!

I am entering this project in a couple of other challenges. Scrap it With a Song "Beautiful Day" and Creative Inspiration Paints "Spring".

If you are coming here from Cooking With Cricut I'd love to have you back to see my other projects, follow my blog and leave a comment. I'll come check out your blog as well!

I am not supermom and that's okay!

Okay, so when my daughter  begged me to hand-make each and every invitation for her upcoming birthday party I will admit that I wanted to say no and go out and buy them. But, then the guilt set in. I make handmade cards and gifts for everyone else and even make cards I'm never going to send to anyone just to enter in challenges or what not. So, of course I said YES to her.  Then I went off to work for the evening. When I got home at midnight I found this on my craft table:

It's the Create-A-Critter book with several post it notes outline which animals and which colors she wants on the invitations. (My favorite part is "From Annie" as if there is another Type A/OCD six year old living at my house going through my cricut cartridges to custom order her invitations).

So, I set off to work. I hated this project from the beginning. She wants a jungle theme which I am just not into. She wanted to use Create-A-Critter which I feel burnt out with. But, I went with it and started cutting out sixteen of every animal. I cut trees, vines, etc; It took me hours. I went to assemble them today and looked at the mess on my table and the mere idea of assembling 17 invitations overwhelmed me.

I looked at the mess on my table and decided it was not worth it. (I actually tried justifying to myself saying the cost of glue would be too much, lol) I assembled two invitations and made color photocopies of them on photo paper to mail to her friends. I am actually very pleased at how they turned out and she is not disappointed at all.

My lighting is bad in the photos, but the photo copied one is on the left - I think they look fantastic and it was a lot less work!





So, in the end it's not what I had envisioned or what she had envisioned, but they are done and we both are happy with the outcome. Sometimes I need to step back and realize that I don't need to be super-mom and that if I'm stressing out over things like this it is defeating the entire purpose!

Cooking with Cricut Challenge #81 Card Outreach

Okay, this is seriously the best project I have been a part of! This week the challenge at Cooking with Cricut is to make "Thinking of You" cards for two amazing young girls who are battling with cancer. You make a card for them and mail it to an address listed at Cooking With Cricut; they will then send a package of thoughful cards along to these girls.

My first card is for a 6 year old girl named Emily who apparently loves pink, purple, kittens and horses (what six year old girl doesn't?) Emily is battling Leukemia.

You can read more about Emily on Madison's blog here.

For Emily I decided to go uber-girly and stick to what they said she loves!

This picture shows the folds a bit better. I used a guide at Split Coast Stamper to make the folds.

All cuts are from Kate's ABCs (other than the grass along the bottom which is from Create A Critter).

The next card is for Patty who is 13 and is battling neuroblastoma.

You can see more information about Patty and how to send her a card at the Cooking with Cricut website. In all the photos I saw of Patty I noticed how she loves fashion (make-up, sparkles, cute hats etc;). I also read on her caring bridge page that she sketches and designs dresses. So, I used Forever young to make her this:

The inside says "Be Strong"

I really hope you'll join in for this challenge. What better reason to make uplifting cards? Head on over to Cooking with Cricut and link up your project!

I am entering the Pink/Purple card into two challenges:
Celebrate the Occassion "Just Because" challenge
Cutie Pie Challenge "Favorite Stamp" (I L-O-V-E my "Oh Happy Day" Stamp! Got it in the dollar bin and use it for lots of different projects!

Once Upon a Princess Cartridge Showcase

Once Upon a Princess

I am so excited to be doing my first cartridge showcase for cooking with cricut. I opted to do one of my favorite cartridges, Once Upon a Princess (only with a fun twist!).

Anyone who makes projects for little girls can see what a GREAT cartridge this is: fairies, butterflies, beautiful dresses, cupcakes etc; What isn't to love?? Well, if you ask my son there is a lot not to love about it! He's 4 and always complains that I don't have a cricut cartridge for a prince too. So, this showcase I opted to use the princess cartridge to make projects for my little prince!

First is a castle. The minute he saw it his jaw dropped and he said "way cool mom!"

I used Coredinations paper and embossed it in stone with my big kick. After embossing it I sanded each piece to reveal the brown and gray colors below (seriously, this Coredinations paper is the coolest stuff ever, perfect for a project like this, for sure!) My son said "wow, how'd you do that??". 

I have made the castle before, and the last time I made it it was a lot bigger. I will say, the bigger you make it the easier it is to assemble, however this smaller castle is much more sturdy and he is able to use little lego guys to play in it and it is holding up pretty well even after a couple of weeks.

I am entering the castle into the Throwback Thursday challenge at My Creative Time.

The next project I made was crowns: one for him and one for his teddy bear.

 The crown cuts in two pieces which connect together by slipping the front piece into the slots on the back piece (this way you can adjust for your child's head size). I made each piece 12 inches long for my son and 7 inches for the teddy bear.

My last project is to show one of my favorite cuts on Once Upon a Princess - you could use it for any party. It's a generic card that has "You're Invited" cut on the outer edge.

I made this invite for a Magic Show themed birthday party. I used my gypsy and added the oval cut out on the front of the card (each page of this cartridge has a "gem" feature and there are several cute shapes that would work as cutouts like this.)  The sentiment "Magical" is also from Once Upon a Princess (it had a fairy wand on the end of the word, which I simply cut off for use on this card to make it more boy-ish).

I am entering this card into the Children's Card Challenge at Cuttlebug Spot and 

in the birthday card challenge at My Sheri Crafts.

The bunny and top hat are cut from Create a Critter (top hat is an accessory and I just flipped it over). I accordion folded some paper on the bottom of the card and used foam squares to affix "magical" to it.

I have used this cartridge for lots of other (more girly) things - see the links on the side of my blog and it should pull up everything else I have used this cartridge for! It has a very sweet font, tons of tags and lots of little girly images. I hope you enjoyed my projects and have inspired you to create for you little princes, too!

Mini Princess Dress Cards

We made an art kit for my daughters friend and she wanted me to make some "princess cards" to put in it. I don't own any Disney cartridges so I had to put on my thinking cap! I pulled out Once Upon a Princess and realized that a lot of the dresses could be altered to look like the Disney Princesses' gowns. It's amazing what merely changing the colors of things alters how they look!

I have now realized that I gave them away before I took photos of them other than these few. I had to take bits and pieces of different dresses and hide some aspects and weld other aspects together on the gypsy. (Snow whites red stripes I think were supposed to be shoes, lol)!

All in all they turned out to be very sweet little note cards that the girls adored!

Baby Bath Gift Set

To go along with the crab card I made for my last post this is the gift. I got the idea off of pinterest (of course!) I took a frappucino box and covered it in coordinating papers. I had some sticky-backed ribbon that applied over the top and edges to make it look more finished. I put two hooded towels, baby body wash, and a bottle of bubbles inside.

All the cuts are from my cricut. The sides have a crab border from Life's a Beach placed over an embossed pink layer. (I was annoyed with myself when I realized I forgot to emboss the brown paper before adhering it to the frappucino box, but decided pulling it off and trying to fix it would probably only make matters worse!)

The front and back have cuts from Once Upon a Princess. That cartridge has an adorable little mermaid on it that I have been waiting to use,  and this was the perfect occassion!

 The eyes of the mermaid are cut out. You can cut cheeks and lips in pink to glue on, however I opted to draw a nose and mouth (this is just further proof to me that I NEED some peechy keen face stamps, haha!)