Surprise! Thank you Melin for 100 challenges at Cooking With Cricut

It's a surprise blog hop today for Melin, the leader at Cooking with Cricut who has organized 100 challenges as of today. She thought today's post was just another regular challenge that she had created, but Jen had a marvelous idea and SURPRISE, a blog hop celebrating Melin and the work and time she puts into Cooking With Cricut.

Melin started the Cooking With Cricut challenges in October 2010 to encourage crafters to find new and
different ways to use their Cricut cartridges.  And she has accomplished that and so much more!  She
has given scores of crafters a place on her Design Teams which quickly turned into a sisterhood of
women, who care for each other; who encourage each other; who lift each other and their families up in
prayer; and who have shared their hearts and their art through many outreach projects.


If you came from Jennie B's blog, Java Jen's Creations, you’re in the right place!  If you’ve joined us in mid-hop and would like to start at the beginning, please head back to Cooking With Cricut – you won’t want to miss any of these awesome cards!!


Melin welcomed me to the Cooking With Cricut family despite the fact that I am relatively new to paper crafting and have a blog with a very small following. The challenges give me the inspiration and nudge to craft more often - she really has helped me grow in my crafting and skill over this past six months. (This was obviously the inspiration for the card I made her!)

I used the cartridge Freshly Picked for this card. The papers are Coredinations which I embossed and sanded to bring out the color in the bottom layer (I love this paper, and it looks so much prettier in person!)

Thanks so much for hopping with us.  We hope you’ll join us and leave your own “thank you” in the
comment section for Melin at CWC!  Now it’s time to head on over to Jessica's blog: The Creative Stamper Spot – she’s the next stop on this party train!

And once again, Thank you Melin for all you do!

Back to School?!?! Cooking with Cricut Challenge

I can't believe I am typing these words...it's almost back to school time! For me this year is a bit bittersweet. My daughter is headed BACK to school, but my son starts his first day of kindergarten. Our first year with both kids in school and I cry at the drop of a dime about it! I have been mentally preparing for this for months and have come up with some fun little ways to make it more fun for them me. Let's face it, they aren't heartbroken over this, it's me that needs the emotional support!

Anyhow, I came across this awesome project to put jokes in your kids lunch boxes. You can find the original blog post and jokes here.

I took her jokes, cut them out and added them to a card I made using Cricut Classic Font.

The apple is cut from Cricut Classic Font. I used my gypsy to flip/weld two apples together to create a card. I also cut the circle from that font as well. (Apples are 2" in height and circles are 1.8" tall). I tied the stem with a twine to keep the card from opening up and accidentally giving away the punch line.

I know I won't keep this up all year, but as a fun first week back to school idea I am super excited. They love the little jokes on the side of their Gogurt at breakfast, so this is sure to be a big hit!

Back to school projects are always my favorites, we would love to see what you have come up with. Head over to Cooking With Cricut and link up your project. We can't wait to see what you create!

3 Birds on Parade

Today I am showcasing my newest (and quickly becoming my most favorite) Cricut cartridge: 3 Birds on Parade. I have a quirky sense of humor and love to craft fun, bright projects so this cartridge is perfect for me!

Today I have made a few different projects to show you so you can see a few things this cute little cartridge has to offer.

Fist, the banner I made for my son's birthday. (He wanted a "camping birthday" which ended up being a ton of fun. Cook out, tent in the back yard and a cake that looked like a giant S'More...yum!). Anyhow, this little bird was perfect for his banner:

This project also shows you the font on this cartridge. At first I wasn't super crazy about it, but it has grown on me. The cut out in the center of each letter is a birds foot, so you would need just the right project to use it on. The font is also very chunky.

The next projects is a set of 4 Christmas Cards. I looooove these little guys!

These birds do take a lot of layers, but they are well worth it. They each have a very cute little expression that goes with them as well (I just struggled to get it cut small enough for the front of the card as they are pretty precise cuts. They seem like they would be better cut quite a bit larger than the 1 inch height I was looking for).  The caption of each photo tells you what the expression included on the cartridge is for each of the birds.

" Baby It's Cold Outside"

"Be Jolly"

"Deck the Halls"

"Happiest Holidays"

 My last projects are not something you would expect to see from this cartridge. I spend a lot of time on Pinterest and am currently obsessed with the trend of silhouettes of little birds. I used the base of one bird to create these two cards.  I cut the larger birds at 1/2 inch and the small birds on the sympathy card are 1/4 inch (teeny!). The embellishments and expressions are both stamps. I like finding cuts on cartridges that you can make things with that are unexpected. This bird would typically have two layers over this black shape to created an adorable little bluebird.

I hope you have enjoyed today's showcase and would love to see projects you have made with this cartridge. There are a lot of other cuts I can't wait to use (such as a super cute pirate and a superhero) but I haven't had the right occasion (yet!)