Thanksgiving Placecards

Gosh, I have been away from my blog for so long! I've used my cricut here and there, but haven't had good reasons to make fun projects like I did when I was on the Cooking With Cricut design team over the summer. But, it's Thanksgiving and I'm hosting at my house so I wanted to make some cute place cards.

I used Cricut Classic Font and Mother's Day Bouquet for these cards.

I found a tutorial here at Doodlebug Design blog on how to make the pumpkins  I used Cricut Classic font to cut the circles that make the pumpkins,  free cut the stems by hand and the leaves are From Mother's Day Bouquet.

It was fun to dig through my orange prints, which I don't usually use!

I am entering these place cards into several different challenges:

Twisted Tuesdays (Thanksgivnig theme with a food on it)
Party Time Tuesdays (Color Inspiration)
Creative Inspirations Paint (Thankful for you)
Die Cuttin' Divas (Thanksgiving)
Exploring Cricut (Count Your Blessings)
My Craft Spot (Thanksgiving)
Paper Playtime (Anything Goes)

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!)

Retro baby card

I found out this week that a friend is expecting and I am so excited for her! In congratulations I made her this baby card. The elephant is cut from birthday bash (I didn't put on all of his parts, sometimes I think there are too many parts on cricut cuts when you are making them small). The stars are actually from Mini Monsters. I have yet to find a go-to star that I love on any of my cricut cartridges, sometimes I just want a basic star! I tried to use some retro colors since I have so many in my stash (and I happen to think retro baby things are the cutest).

The inspiration for this card came from a few different challenge blogs.

Celebrate the Occassion: Use at least three stars

Scrappy Mom's Stamps: Retro

Dorcerela Creations (sketch challenge...so helpful in determining my layout!!)

Adorable Christmas Tags

A long while back I saw some tags on Etsy that I A-DORED. I searched and searched to find out where the stamp had come from and felt like I had won the Christmas Jackpot when I finally found them.  The stamp makes a tag from Santa Claus and I love it. It is one of my favorite scrap supplies I have, lol.

I use the stamp to create these precious gift tags:

The tag is cut from Cricut Classic Font. I then embossed "Merry Christmas" onto it. I stamp the messaged onto a rectangle and glue dot it to the reverse side of the tag.

It's cute, right? 

It was sort of serendipitous that the embossing folder I wanted to use was the same size as the stamp!

I sold these at a craft fair and they sold out (well, I only made 4 packs, but it was a small craft fair, lol). This Christmas in July assignment has me getting ready for next year (so maybe I'll have more than 4 packs available!)

In case you like the stamp it is Inkadinkadoo Christmas Tag Wishes (Find it here on Amazon)

The embossing folder is a part of a Sizzix Christmas pack (found here on Amazon)

It Christmas in July at Cooking with Cricut!

It is no secret that I love Christmas more than anything else in this entire world. I might love Christmas more than I love my husband, LOL. I'm not *quite* as crazy as Jamie Lee Curtis in Christmas With the Kranks (I don't have any holiday sweaters or vests, I promise!) but I due tend to be a little over the top.
Plus, Christmas is the best time for crafts! I remember being at Girl Scout camp over July 25th for a couple of years. We would all hang socks in the dining hall and the would be filled with fun things when we went to breakfast the next day. Who doesn't love an extra reason to celebrate Christmas in the middle of the summer?!?

Here is a set of four  Christmas cards I made using Create a Critter. I figure I'll put them away and give them out with teacher's gifts or things like that.

I have to say that it is sort of great to make sets of similar cards (pretty time efficient).

One of the criteria this week is to use some sort of scraps on your card. I love saving even the tiniest of scraps, because a  lot of my create a critter animals need just small pieces of certain colors to complete. I was able to use the scrap of black and orange to make the penguins.

The snowflake in the top corner is the cutout from the O in the word JOY. I didn't see the sense it tossing it away when it was perfectly cute! I just added a mini button to the center.

I would love to see what you come up with for Christmas in July. I have lots of other Christmas crafts made and ready to post to my blog so I'll add some more this week!

Head over to Cooking with Cricut and link up your projects!

I am also submitting this to a few other Christmas in July challenges:
Cutie Pie Challenge
My Craft Spot 
Bitten by the Bug