Elmo Party

This is my first time as a contributor to Tuesday Treats. I just love working with my Cricut and creating gift items for friends and family members.

I used the cartridge Elmo Party to make today's project.

Supplies:
Cardstock: all from Stampin' Up
Adhesive: ATG 714, two way glue pen

Directions:
use the CrayonBx cut.
cut at 8.54 inches
box is cut Basic Black cardstock
Elmo is cut from Real Red cardstock
eyes and oval are Whisper White cardstock
nose is Pumpkin Pie cardstock
crayons are Real Red, Brilliant Blue, Glorious Green and Yoyo Yellow cardstocks




"i heart you" is from Create a Critter. It is cut at 1" from Basic Black and Real Red.













I used my Zutter Bind It All to create two little books that go inside the box. These little books will hold photo of the people I love. The pages are 4"x3" and there are 10 pages in each little book.



Play with this cartridge and think of it as more than just a "party" cartridge. There are lots of great uses for the cute creations.

You can see more of my Cricut creations at www.iLoveToCut.com

Two Page Layouts with a Single Mat

Hi Everyone! It's Ohhh Snap with my first Guest Designer post here at Tuesday Treats. When the gypsy first launched every bit of the image had to be on the mat or nothing would cut at all. Thankfully that has changed! The large background mat is made with two 12 x 12 inch sheets placed side by side on a 12 x 24 inch mat using the 10th image  from Create A Critter with the Phrase feature with the size set at 19.54" height. The height for the smaller mat is set at 10.54". The apple and tree are also from Create A Critter.

The font is from Cindy Loo. I attached the negative cut to the right hand page with some painters tape on the left side. I used it to place the letters on the page. Leaving it unattached on the right allowed me to open it and make sure I had only glued the letters to the page. I used the journal mat to make a pocket for more journaling. The paperclip is from Fabulous Finds and the middle and top of the paperclip is glued to the extra journaling note. Most of the paper comes from the August Club Ruby Designers kit featuring Sassafras Lass.

Fun and Easy Cupcake Box!

Hey everyone, my name is Kimberly and I am so excited to share this project with you!  Be sure to stop by My Craft Spot for more fun projects and vidoes!  I don't have the 'Life's a Beach' cartridge, so I decided to use George and my Gypsy.

This box was soooo fast and easy to make! You can download the free gypsy file on my blog! Just click on the 'cut files' tab and download the file (3" Box).

 Be sure to watch the video to see how I put it all together!



Have a great day!

Life is a Beach Inspired Project

Hi Everyone!  It’s Wini from LooneyBugDesigns here with your inspiration for the day.
 
As much as I love this months cartridge Life is a Beach (LIAB), for some reason I do not own it yet.  Even though it is on my list of cartridges to get, there are others that I want more so I decided not to go out and get it right now.  Instead I turned on my Gypsy and started looking over the images on LIAB for inspiration.  I loved the Orchid Image and decided I would use that as my inspiration.
Next I needed to pick an Orchid type flower from a cartridge that I do have.  I decided to use 50 States since it has so many different flowers and found one that I liked.  I placed 4 flowers and the matching layer on a mat on my Gypsy and used my favorite feature Hide Contour to erase all the parts I didn’t want.  I LOVE THIS!  Here is a picture of my Gypsy Mat all ready to cut.

Now why did I use 4 flowers?  Because that is how many fit on the paper that I was planning on using.  No other reason then that.  I cut them out of white paper so that I could color them with my Copics any color I wanted.  I love to start with a blank canvas.

I airbrushed the Leaf on all 4 of the bottom layers (I only ended up using 2 of the bottom layers but I colored all I had in case I made a mistake – and besides it is so fun to airbrush! I ended up using 3 colors of green and a hint of pink on the leaves.

Next it was time to color the flower layers.  I airbrushed the tops and backs of all the flower layers so that I could curl them up and add lots of dimension to the flower.  The flowers have 3 colors of violet, some pink and on the top sides (sorry didn’t get a picture of that) some yellow in the center.  I shaded them lightest in the middle and darkest along the outside edges – because that is the way I thought they looked good.

Next I layered my flower, curling up the edges as I went and added some yellow Flower Soft to the middle because I felt it was too flat.

My last step before putting my airbrush system away was to color some cream ric-rac to match the flower.  The dimension on this card is perfect and reminds almost more of a Lilly Pad flower then an Orchid but I still like it anyway.

Remember just because you don’t have a cartridge that someone used on a project doesn’t mean you can’t make something.  I love to improvise and add my own twist to things.  So break out your cartridges and imagine what you can make with them!
Thanks for visiting today and come back Tuesday for another great LIAB Project. 
Wini aka LooneyBug aka PoohBearBaby from the Cricut  & Circle MB’s

House Swarming!

Hello!  What's the buzz? :)  My name is Michele aka Dancingarden on the cricut messageboard.

So my craft table is trashed, and this project is why. :)
This month the focus is on the Sentimentals cartridge. I thought at first I'd do a scrapbook page, as that is my main choice of projects, but I kept looking at this beehive and bee and couldn't come up with a page idea, but I did come up with a gift box idea.

The box is my 6 sided iris-lidded box that I designed last winter on my Gypsy, and offered up in this post on my blog. The downloadable gypsy file for the box is on that post as well as instructions for assembly of the box; so I won't go into detail about making the box base.  I love this box even though it isn't perfect, and I'm glad I'd created it because a hexagon box was perfect for a bee themed project. :)

So first I cut my box out in brown cardstock. (all cardstock and printed cardstock for this project is DCWV)

I apologize for the quality of the pictures of my gypsy screen. This is a view of the filigree cut that is layered over the box. It's actually the beehive filigree layer welded together a few times with another little scroll-y thing to fill in the spaces. Here's what it looks like cut out.

I ran the filigree through my 5" xyron and adhered it to the box. You can see the beehive shape a lot better below. On the gypsy, the filigree runs off the page. I did that ntentionally; partly because I had trouble seeing the box edge through the filigree layer to see how close to the edge I was. And partly because I was lazy and figured it would be easy to just snip off the excess filigree, which I did. You'll notice I did not allow the filigree to run over the tab that is used to adhere the box together.

Once the filigree was attached, I assembled the box as directed on my blog's box post. As I mentioned in that post, you have the option of the top closing with the iris concaved or with it sticking up. For my beehive box, I chose the top sticking up.

I created a small shaped card from the beehive on my gypsy. It is attached with tiny rectangles, and one beehive is flipped so that the front and back will match when they are folded together. Here's the gypsy screen of the little card.

After cutting out the card, I decided to try something I hadn't done before. Some time ago I had bought one of those mini marker holders and a marker set but I hadn't used them yet. I took the card off and flipped it white side up on the mat. Then on my gypsy I wrote out a sentiment message for the inside of the card, and had my cricut write the message with the mini marker. It worked okay. My positioning of the card wasn't quite exact but it was still okay. I do think I'd rather have the gel pen holder and the gel pens though. Here's the sentiment on my G:

You can see the inside of the card below.
After assembling the card and bee layers, I stickled them all (filigree only) with Cinnamon Stickles. Once they were dry, I wound some craft wire into springs and attached them to the backs of the bees and the back of the card.

I tied the card onto the box with ribbon, and I'm done!

This box is perfect for a candle or other small gift. I plan to buy a beeswax candle to go in the box. :)

Please visit this post on my blog to download JUST the box cut file and view assembly instructions.

Or, please go to this link to download the entire cut file for this project: box, bees, card and all.

Thank you for looking and I hope you enjoyed seeing this project!

Michele (aka dancingarden)

Heritage Charms

Hi everyone, Lori (the Cricut Lady) here. I was assigned Heritage. Honestly, I would say this is my least favorite cartridge. But this just proves you can use all of your cartridges for something.
I made charms. Wine charms, gypsy stylus charms, book marker charms, bracelet charms. You name it there are really alot of uses for charms.
The Steps:
1) Select you design. I used the silhouettes because I thought the would be good for wine charms.


2) Place your shrinky dink material rough side down on your mat.


3) cut your design. Make sure to use multi cut as it is a thicker material 2 works 3 is better


4) punch a hole larger than you would like your final hole as it will shrink with the plastic


5) Draw a design or write a name on the rough side of the shape (Names need to be written backwards)



6) On a Baking sheet place a piece of aluminum foil


7)with a Popsicle stick (yes, these things can be used for anything) I held down a tiny corner and heated with my heat gun (embossing heat gun)


8) Kinda press down while still hot if it is not completely flat



9) Put a jump ring or a split ring into the hole and run ribbon, wire, twine etc.. through the jump ring.


10) place the piece around your favorite stemmed glass (This is the only stemmed glass in my house, but it is so cute. I love it



11) enjoy your work.

Hope you come up with some uses for this.
Keep creating!!
Lori

Heritage Brooch

Hi!  It’s Wini from LooneyBugDesigns.  I am poohbearbaby on the Cricut Message Boards.  I am honored to be your designer for today.  I would love to share my Heritage inspired project with you today.

I have always associated Brooches with Grandmothers.  I don’t know why but just the word Brooch makes me think of my Grandma.  I don’t remember any of my grandmothers wearing a brooch so I am not sure where the association comes from – just my weird way of looking at things.

I decided that I wanted to make a brooch for you but I didn’t want it to be made of paper and therefore look off – so I decided to try my hand at cutting fabric with my Cricut.  I had this picture in my head of this flowered brooch that was somewhat old world looking.  Where did the image come from?  Your guess is as good as mine but it was there.   I had never tried anything quite like this but thought I would give it a try.  Here is the brooch I came up with:

I started my project by picking out my fabric and trim.  I didn’t know what exactly I was looking for – but I wanted it to look a little vintage (which is typically not my style).  Here are the fabrics that I choose – I LOVE the way they look together.

I chose two fabrics for my flowers because I wanted them double sided.  So I fused the butterfly and the blue fabrics together to make a single two sided fabric.  I also fused the green dotted fabric to itself to make that two sided (with the same fabric on both sides).  You can’t really tell from the photos but the blue fabric has silver thread in it so it really sparkles in the light.  I thought about tea dying the fabrics and the lace but that was just too vintage for my style – so I left them as they were.

Next I set up my file on the gypsy.  I used the blackout feature on the Home Decor Cricut Cartridge to get the flower I wanted.  I turned the real dial size feature on (see the a button is highlighted in yellow) so that I could get the exact size flowers that I wanted.  I then sized the width of my flowers starting with 2.5” and going down in 0.25” increments to 1.25” – 6 flowers in all.  I put my fabric on my stickiest Cricut Mat and away I cut….

Now here are some things to keep in mind when cutting fabric:

1. Use a new blade
2. Don’t use thick fabric
3. Don’t put your images too close together
4. Don’t cut too fast

Do you know how I know all this?  Yup – I didn’t do any of those things and big surprise, my fabric didn’t cut very well.  I will have to try it again when I get some new blades.  So in the meantime… I cut my file again using some scrap cardstock – traced it onto my remaining fabric and cut them out by hand – UGG – Remind me to ALWAYS HAVE SPARE BLADES ON HAND! I hate to cut by hand – the Cricut has really spoiled me!!  Anyway here are my cut out flowers.

Starting with the smallest flower – fold your flower almost in half and hot glue the center together (yes I discovered that hot glue works best for this project – who knew?).  Fold the next flower the other direction and glue it to the first section.  Continue until you have just the largest flower left.  I folded this the same way as the previous flower so that the back of my flower would look uniform. I know that I didn’t describe this process very well – If anyone is interested in seeing a video of how I did this just let me know in the comments and I will make one up and get it posted.  Here is my finished flower.

I then took two strips of the green fabric and folded them over to form leaves.

I glued the two leaves onto the back of my flower.  I played around with them giving some extra tucks until I had them looking just how I wanted them.  Here is what my flower looked like when I was finished.

I wanted to add this really soft ivory lace that found – so I glued that to back of the flower.

I think it really added a lot of charm.  It was just what I was imagining!  I love it when that happens!!!

To finish up my brooch I glued the flower to a chipboard circle and attached a 1” pin backing.

I love this close-up of the brooch – I can’t believe that it turned out so close to the picture I had in my head when I started!

Victorian Note Card Purse

Hi My name is Randi aka Coralz from the cricut mb. My day to be guest designer is here, I am so excited to share with you my project. I have had my Gypsy and my Cricut since the day they were each first released and I love everything about them. I love teaching and sharing my projects I have made with my Gypsy, I hope you enjoy this one. Pop over to my blog http://www.craftycricutcreations.blogspot.com/ to see more.

My assignment for this was to use page 30 from the Forever Young Cartridge. If you have re numbered your books that would be button number 7. Using my 12x12 mat, I chose 5.60 as my cursor size and then I rotated it to fit. I then used the girl from button 7 at 4 inches and welded her to the flap.
On mat number 2 I layed out all my pieces. I cut in brown the girl topper, the monogram C (from elegant cakes cart) and the shilouette image for my note card fronts. I also layed out some flowers. I wanted to create a distressed flower similar to the ones made with the Tim Holtz tattered flower die. You need 2 lg 1 med and 1 small to get this look. I just use random flowers from this cartridge. Mine measurements are 2 at 3.10, 1 at 2 and 1 at 1inch. I used a 10mm pearl for the flower center.

Here to create the note cards I used the oval also from page 30 button #7. I placed 2 on my mat at 3 1/2 inches. These fit into the gift bag nicely. I made sure they were side by side and that their Y axis were the same. Then I highlighted 1 and hit flip. After this I grouped them together and nudged them until they slightly overlapped. Once I previewed and saw the weld I highlighted the whole image and hit copy/paste (by the way I love that button) and duplicated it 3 more times rotating 2 of them until they all fit on the mat

I used 2 sheets of Cosmo Cricket "Something Special" 2 sided cardstock, 1 sheet of Bazzill Carob Brown and some plain white paper for the flowers, smooch spritz and lots of pearls to finish up this project. I hope you like it and I can not wait to see your version.