Wednesday, August 31, 2011

Hello Friend cards for Operation Write Home

While I am on my spending freeze for 2 months I am trying to get 30 cards made for Operation Write Home. I have gotten about 10 done so far and recently completed these two, "hello friend" cards to add to the pile.
I made the first one using my new Cricut Circle cartridge, Sophie. I used one of the label cuts to create the ring of flowers on the front. The "hello friend" cut is from Beyond Birthdays.
For the second card I used the leftovers of the same papers I used one the first one and instead of the ring of flowers I just used a simple layering effect and the reverse cut of "hello friend" for the card title.
I hope I  can complete the 30 by the end of my spending freeze and get them sent off. On a side note the polka dot paper is from My Mind's Eye Antique Dots stack, which I am trying hard to use in one years time (Chloe basically challenged me).

Monday, August 29, 2011

First Sophie Card

I had a feeling I would like the new Cricut Circle Cartridge. It has some very simple images that can be used in many many ways. I am trying hard to use the carts I have not used so i wasted not time getting it out and using it. Once I got it out of the box I looked through the box and picked out one of the flower designs to create a simple card.
I cut the card1 shape, but used the hide/contour button to remove the details of the design. Than once again using the hide/contour button I cut only the details and not the card shape. I repeated this with just the butterfly image in a different pattern.

Once I had glued my cuts together I went around the edge with a white pen to make it stand out a little better. On the inside I used the leftover details and trimmed them down before adding them on. I also used a stamp on white paper to add a sentiment. I have to say I am not super happy with the way the stamp inked and stamped, but I will keep working with it and trying to get it better.


Saturday, August 27, 2011

First day of Kindergarten Gift Bag

I know I did not have to get my daughter a present for her first day of Kindergarten. I know that and I do not care. I had to have something special for her. I got her a small toy and a book about going to school (totally appropriate right?). Of course this means I had to have a fun gift bag to wrap them in...
I am super happy with this bag. I started with the fun background paper and used my ATG gun to stick it onto my bag. Next I found the fun pencil shape on Smiley Cards and decided I would take the confused looking face off (love that hide/contour button on the Gypsy) for my bag.

Once I had the pencil the rest of my design came together. I wanted to have notebook paper and her name: as if being written by the pencil. I had a small problem...no small notebook paper? SO...I made my own. I cut the scrap of paper in the shape I wanted than using a ruler, hole punch and my Zig Memory System pens in Candy Pink and Splash I created a mini sheet of notebook paper. I really did not measure the lines, just tried to keep them straight. The holes didn't matter that much either so I eye-balled it for what I wanted. I was very tickled with the results.
I decided on Simply Sweet for the lettering mostly because I had not used this cart yet, but it really did look sweet on the bag.
As you can see she was happy with her present and had a great first day of school.
This is my Thursday Link-up for Patches of Pink as well. The link is right here..

Friday, August 26, 2011

Lunch Box Cards 1

A friend of mine told me she puts a note in her daughter's lunch box everyday (and her daughter is 10). I thought about it and decided that while I did not think it would be as special if I did it everyday, I would  try and have some fun notes for my daughter's lunch box. I wanted these to be simple (my daughter can not fully read yet) and fun for her. 

So far I have made just 4 and used only 1 (for the first day of school). I have been able to mix and match some of my scraps for these which makes it even more fun.
This is the card from the first day of school. No Cricut here, but she loved this monkey paper the DCWV Animal Crackers 8x8 stack

These next two used simple cuts on my Cricut. The hugs and kisses cut is from Wild Card and the love is from All Mixed up.

The final one I did using these fun jeweled stickers I bought for out special trip to Disney World coming up (so excited about this...only a month away). It is for Halloween time if you couldn't tell.

I plan on making many more over the year...especially seeings as she has asked for one everyday...so sweet!. Hope everyone has a wonderful weekend. Tomorrow I will be sharing the fun gift bag I made for her first day of school.

Tuesday, August 23, 2011

My Baby is in Kindergarten

This morning I put my daughter on the bus for her first day of Kindergarten. It was wonderful to be able to be there (Thanks to my own principal for totally getting how important it was for me and letting me be late on the second day of school). As the bus drew closer to our stop I got tears in my eyes and just told her I was super excited for her. She was all smiles.

I got lucky because it took the new bus company an hour to get the kids home today so I was able to meet her with her grandparents when she got off the bus as well. She was full of things to tell me and excitement from the day.

I made her a fun little gift bag and notes for her lunch box that I will  share soon, but I had to share about the day!

Monday, August 22, 2011

Welcome Back Mustangs!

Today is the first day of school for my students. After two days of meetings last week I am happy to welcome my 8th graders back. I know people say I am crazy, but I look forward to the start of the school years every year. I see so much potential in a new class and I have no doubt they will bring me all the challenges and successes I enjoy.


 My school's mascot is the Mustang so this year for the main hallway I cut out two horses from Old West to place on my display. I had to color in the hoofs and glue on the hair before finishing them off by using a black marker for the detail lines. I made the second horse by flipping the design on my Gypsy horizontally.

For the letters I used the wonderful Plantin Schoolbook (I just love how the layers on this font look even if it is so old school Cricut!). I used the basic font in blue plus the layers in red. I am happy my students will see this welcome back when they walk in today! Happy Back to School to all!

Saturday, August 20, 2011

Activity Wall Display

I have taken over the walls in my school. Last year I made this fun display for our Back to School fair that was called Think About Getting Involved and my principal asked me a week ago when I was going to put up the new one for this year. I was very flattered, but had no idea what I was going to do this year. I actually was thinking I would wait and put up something else after the fair. My principal mentioned how many compliments she received at our start of the year Institute days and...she hoped I could do it again. SO.....
I once again made a display for every club or sport we offer at my school. Instead of just talking about the Back to School fair I wanted to encourage getting involved in a simple way. I found these great cuts for words on Graphically Speaking and that inspired my whole display: experience, learn, discover, enjoy, play. I cute them using a 12x24 mat so I could make them extra big for the wall.
I made a little white block for each club or sport (George and Basic Shapes) and choose to use red letters and black symbols to represent the activity. It is funny what you remember from an old project...I actually felt like I was using all the same things so I went back and tried to make sure that I did not reuse the images or lettering I did last year (In some cases no choice, but hey I tried).
There are 21 different offerings for students at my school and we have a great percentage of kids who take part in them so I was happy to put the wall together once again and when my principal saw it she had a huge smile on her face.

Now... many of you know I am trying really hard to use my cartridges and have put myself on a 2 month spending freeze for craft items. This project was very helpful for using those carts and some of my 12x24 paper stacks (I have too many). So helpful that all the carts I used will not fit into the labels sections so I put the only the ones that were repeated, BUT...here is the whole list and a few close ups of the blocks.
Games cut from Slumber Party, Dice Old West
Graphically Speaking (large words), George and Basic Shapes (white blocks), Alphalicious (yearbook), Slumber Party (Games), Billionaire (Chess), Nifty 50's (Band), Quarter Note (Orchestra, trumpet),
Sports Mania (Soccer, track symbol, soccer ball, runners), Birthday Bash (Track & field), Boys Will Be Boys (Art), Birthday Cakes (Drama), Art Philisophy (Spanish), Cursive 101 (Student Council),
Cuttin' Up (Computer), Designer's Calender (Cross Country), Don Juan (Robotics), Hannah Montana Font (Lit. Mag), Jubilee (Basketball), Lyrical Letters (Intramurals), Varsity Letter (Wrestling),
Old West (dice), Everyday Pop-up Cards (violin), Songbird (sing), Micket Font (Cheer), Locker Talk (books, computer, clapboard), Everyday Paper Dolls (megaphone)
26 TOTAL CARTS (hopefully I did nto leave any out!) Look out Monday for the Main hallway welcome back wall (Only used 2 carts, but it looks good!!)  1 More things I am putting this in as part of the No Challenge Challenge at Little Scrap Pieces to help celebrate her birthday and the Cricut 360 Challege Blog Challenge #8 Back to School and Die Cuttin Divas Challenge #28 Back to School.

Thursday, August 18, 2011

No Cricut Thursday #5: Birthday Card

I am working on a stack of cards to send to Operation Write Home. For this week's No Cricut Thursday I created 4 cards to send them. Just a simple birthday card.


I used a stamp from a set I picked up by Stampendous and using a ruler to guide my spacing, I stamped the words repeatedly on a sheet of cream card stock. I used Tim Holtz Distress Ink in Peeled Paint (love the name) to stamp the design over and over until I had enough to use on 4 cards.

Chloe over at  Chloe and Her Clip on Koalas has put up a challenge. I posted I have a new favorite stack: Antique Dots by My Mind's Eye and she mentioned she loved this as well and was trying to use the whole stack in a year. I am not so sure I can do it, but I have used it for 2 projects now..so I guess it is on now!!
I wanted to add some ribbon to the cards and hid the back pieces with an extra sheet of paper. You have to make sure all your pieces are secure on cards for OWH so I double checked each one. I sadly ran out of the top ribbon I was using so for one card I just left the top plain. I am happy to have added 4 more cards to my pile.

Wednesday, August 17, 2011

SMART sign

Tomorrow is my official first day back at work. I love the start of a new school year and am looking forward to the students starting next week Monday.
If you are a teacher you most likely have heard of SMART goals. To put it simply, these are overall goals a school creates to help bring student achievement up. Our school is constantly working with these goals and updating them. At the start of the year we always review and discuss them. One of the things we have been working hard on is getting out middle school students to understand the importance of these school-wide goals and how they can show growth in their learning. This year we wanted to post the goals all over the school and we wanted students and parents in the building to be able to identify them at ease. I created these SMART signs (8 of them) to hang all over the building above our goal charts and write-ups.

I used the stop sign shape on Going Places to make the basic sign and white layer in back. I used the wonderful hide/contour button on my Gypsy to hide the STOP letters and after a long search I selected Printing 101 for the letters inside the signs. I un-slanted the letters with my Gypsy as well. My principal was very excited with these.  Happy Back to School to all!

Tuesday, August 16, 2011

I've Been Good Layout

This week for the Throwback Thursday Challenge at My Creative Time you need to use one of the retired Cricut Cartridges on your project. After I clicked over the list I realized I had many carts to pick from for this challenge, so I went to my photos and started planning. I selected photos of our visit with Santa Claus this past holiday season.

I have always loved the Santa from the Christmas Cheer cart, but I have never used it for a project. I cut him out and selected my other papers for the project and came up with a title for my photos which I cut using another retired cartridge Makin' the Grade.
When all was put together I had a fun page about our visit to Santa at the Mall of America (I did not mention on the page that there was no line to see Santa as we drove over to the mall at the start of the snow strom that collapsed the Metrodome roof, but I do not think we will have a hard time forgetting that part.) Tha prize for this week's challenge is her entire set of stamps being released this month so maybe I will get lucky!!

Monday, August 15, 2011

Just Like Butterflies

I love this photo of my daughter. We were at a Summer festival in our area and my Mom bought her this fun ribbon crown and she just loved it and when I snapped this photo I heard her say, "I'm never taking this off!" I had to scrap the photo.

Sketch 21 at Frosted Designs
Right now over at Frosted Designs they have a sketch challenge going on. I really felt this sketch would work well with this photo and than I fell in love with the quote & it all fell into place for my layout.

I did not want to stray to far from the layout, but I know I did not use all the elements shown here. I felt that the edges of the sketch looked distressed so I used sandpaper on my core'dinations cardstock to bring the core out and give that distressed appearance.
The rest of the paper is from a new stack I got before my spending freeze called Daydream Doodles by the Paper Studio. I cut the letters using a cart I have never used before (had it a little while so..needed to use it) A Child's Year. I cut the words at various sizes to change it up a little bit. The large circles were cut using George and Basic Shapes. The ribbon is a scrap piece I had and thought looked just right. When all put together...
I used some gold Stickles to add the butterflies body and antennae after cutting the rest out from the paper by hand. I also added the small circle element at the photo's corner using the gold Stickles. Overall, I am happy with my results. I would love to hear what you think. Since this is a cart I have never used I am going to add this to Kimberli's Creations challenge to use a cart you barely use challenge as well. She just reached 100 followers and wanted to have a fun challenge to celebrate and I just made it in this week.

Sunday, August 14, 2011

Too many Carts??? 2 Month FREEZE!

I guess that they make them so we will buy them and this week I have been buying them. I know that I am by no means the top collector of carts. I have 154 Cricut carts in total. Last summer I started this blog and made a list of all my carts. I realized I had some that I had never used and I have been challenging myself to use them all in someway..even a small little cut. I thought I was doing pretty good until I figured out that I have bought soooo many since I started the challenge so my list of carts to use is growing fast. In one week I have added to my collection x13

- 4 with the Menard's rebate offer (4.99 a cart are you kidding me)
- 1 with my first order from Close to My Heart (a new addiction)
- 2 just out of the box at Joann's Event/Project Carts
      (I made them go to the back to get them - the cards were out)
- 2 with the special teacher weekend at Joann's (already on sale)
- 1 Cake cat in the clearance section of Hobby Lobby
- 3 carts ordered with rewards points.

I HAVE TO STOP!!! SO Not a single new cart will be purchased by me for at least 2 months. I will already be getting Sophie with my Circle membership so for at least 2 months nothing else.  AND to add to this I am not going to buy anything craft related except adhesives (as needed only) for this time as well.  I have enough and I need to just use what I have.  SO...wish me luck and stop but to see what I am working on form time to time!!

Saturday, August 13, 2011

Baby on Board Bag

My hairdresser (who I love and have been going to for about 4 years now) is having a baby. I am going to see her today for the last time before she has her baby and I wanted to get her a little something to celebrate! She loves looking at my blog and we talk about it every time I get my hair done so I had to make a cute gift bag to put her gift in.
I have never used my Car Decals cartridge and I felt my hairdresser would love the cuts on this cart. I selected the baby in a carriage and the "baby on board" lettering. This cart will not link to my Gypsy right now (???) so I kicked it old school and cut the images after putting the cartridge into my Expression. I used the extra cut from the face to make a little gift tag to put on the top.