Thanksgiving 2010 Card

Hi!
   It's that busy time of year, lots of stuff going on to get ready for the holidays.

This is the Thanksgiving card going out in tomorrow's mail.  I made 6 of them.  I used the Cricut Create-A-Critter cartridge.  I added dimension with 3 Cuttlebug embossing folders, Swiss Dots, Argyle and Herringbone.

I used my Gypsy to weld the shadow feature to make a shaped card.  I used scraps of orange and red paper for the feathers, beak and waddle.  Two shades of brown were used for his body.  I had to add wiggly eyes and a bit of bling to the hat band, which is just thin orange ribbon.


Happy Thanksgiving

Cricut Happy Hauntings Haunted House

Wow, it's done, it's rather cute, it's a bit of work, and yes, I'll do it again.


This is the Haunted House from the Happy Haunting Cricut Cartridge.

I have heard different times some of it days, some many house and some hours.  Well, I started cutting out around 7 pm last night (while the Giants and Braves game was on), and I stopped working on this at 10:30, I did not work straight through, I stopped and made ice cream.  I have one of those ice cream makers from Costco, it's the Cusinart machine, through in the ingredients and it runs for 30 minutes and you end up with 4 cups of fabulous ice cream.

I did exactly what each page did, one page at a time. It's why it takes so long, I went slow and just did what they marked. The dotted white lines are score lines, the tabs slip fairly easily into the slots. I'd dry fit before gluing, but it worked really well. Patience is the key. I did take a white gel pen and labeled the back side of each piece before cutting the next set of pieces, 1 for the house, 2 for the house, 8 for the porch, etc. This helped me keep them all organized. Don't mark the porch or the window balcony because the fold puts the back on the front and you can see the number, oops. The window cuts are weird, but they work. All the pieces on the first cut go on the first house, the cuts from the second part of the house go on the second part of the house and all the roof pieces. You'll figure it out it's easier than it sounds.

During that time I got all the pieces cut out, and picked out all the little black cut aways from the windows and the fences.  I cut all the pieces at 7", I glued the vellum to the windows, let it dry (started the first batch of ice cream).  For the entire project I used the Scotch Scrapbooker's two way glue, it's clear and it's a wet glue.  Then I went and did all the scoring, put in the second batch of ice cream.

Then I went back and did all the small piece assembly.  That was it for the night, I put the pieces on a tray and left them on the dryer overnight, in the garage, I have 3 curious kitty's who would have had to check out the little pieces.

Got up this morning and it took me an hour to assemble.  It's a bit fussy, the designers did a good job with the building, but they got a little sloppy with the roof, and it works, but that was the struggle.  I finally just held the pieces a little at a time until the glue set before moving to the next part of the roof.

I think I'm going to go back and add little witches and goblins around the doors, balconies, porches, etc.  Just a little more would be nice.  It's being lit by one of those Costco 3" battery candles, the candle is 5" tall and runs on double A batteries.

Any questions just ask.  Thanks for looking.

***************************
This is just an estimate.

All pieces were cut at 7"

To cut out, maybe 30 minutes. There are 8 12x12 pages to cut out. I used my Expression, 12x24 mat, 6 - 12x12 black cardstock, 65lb weight, and 2 vellum (I only had 8-1/2 x 11" vellum so I had to do 2 pieces of vellum. Otherwise, it would have all fit on one page). I laid the 7" pieces out on my Gypsy so I could get the least amount of paper. Some pieces take an entire page, others can be put together.

I'd guess 30 minutes to cut out.

30 - 45 minutes to score all the pieces

30-45 minutes to glue, let set long enough to let go of the pieces.

I let the glued pieces dry overnight.

An hour to do the assembly in the morning.

I was doing lots of other Mom and wife stuff while cutting so I didn't time myself. I basically started when the Giants/Brave game started Friday night, and was done at the end of overtime. I was doing stuff between steps.

Just go slow, follow the pages, they make sense if you don't look ahead. Just do each page just like it says.
 

Cupboard, many thanks to the designer

Hi!
  I found two layouts a long way back done by one person on the Cricut Message board.  She made a cupboard out of the desk on the Sentimentals cartridge, pieces from other cartridges, welded and shaped into an adorable cupboard.  One layout featured Baby stuff, the other was Kitchen stuff.  I finally got the Sentimentals cartridge and I've been looking for her to give her credit for days now.  With the move to the new message board I can't find her, Please, if you're reading this say who you are so you can get credit.  When I find out I will post her info.

This is my poor imitation of your cupboard and I just love the idea.  Thank you.

New toy, all dressed up

Hi!
    I purchased one of those Scotch ATG, Pink in support of Breast Cancer Awareness.  Today I was able to "Bling" it up.  I really do like this tape gun, so nice and it lasts a lot longer than the little tape runners.

Greetings - Continued

Hi!
    So after 3 visits to the court house, I was released from Jury Duty, until January of 2012.  Now it's time to get back to crafting and High School Football Season is here, we're going to our first game tomorrow night.  Granted our son doesn't play High School Football anymore, but we still love going to the local games.   I teach my first SDU class one week for tonight so I need to get some studying done too.

Greetings

Nothing fun or interesting to post.  With school starting I went back to work on the 11th, lots to do to get ready for a new school year.  Then the kids started today, Aug. 16th.  I had to report for Jury Duty today and I will have to return one day next week for the actual process to see if I get excused or picked for the trial.  Jury Duty is always an interesting process.  So once school becomes more routine and the Jury Duty stuff is done, I'll get back to posting pictures.

More Vinyl Work

John's Designs

This is the walls about our oldest sons' bed.  He's into learning Japanese, so using the Pagoda Cricut Cartridge, and black vinyl, this is what we have.  We used one of Fancy Font from Storybook to say the meaning to the words.  A bit of red vinyl was used as an accent for the dragon.

Bathroom Wall

This is the small wall space between the window and the shower, the goal as a view out a window at the beach.  We used mostly the Life's A Beach Cricut Cartridge for the images.  A lot of layering of different colored vinyls and accent colors with Permanent Markers (Sharpie and Bic).  The Sand Castle sort of blends in, maybe too much, not sure yet.  The sand bucket does blend in too much, I'm either going to recut it or color with a marker, not sure yet.  The kids said we needed a sun with style so I picked up the cool red shades.

Vinyl Wall Art - Part 2

Wall above the sink.  Light House - white and red vinyl.  Pelican and grass white vinyl, hand colored.  Post Brown Vinyl

Wall above the shower and door.  Dolphin is blue vinyl layered on white vinyl.  Nothing added to the submarine or whale.

 Sorry it's dark, it's the little space above the window over the shower and the ceiling, The ducks were hand colored.

Cartridges used were Splish Splash and Life's A Beach

First Attempt at Vinyl Wall Art

Hi!

This is the adorable octopus from the Splish Splash Cricut Cartridge.  I colored the white vinyl with a purple sharpie, let dry, then layered the light purple on the dark purple.  It's a large piece 11" square, the legs kept wriggling on me, so I need to go back and smooth some of the wrinkles.  For now the Octopus will stay and I'll practice on other cuts for the other bathroom walls.  Thanks for looking.

Cricut Cake Birthday Cupcakes

Hi!

     Our Youth Pastor Dan's Birthday was actually today, so I volunteered to make the "cake".  These are simple yellow cupcakes, from a box, and chocolate buttercream made from scratch.  I went with cupcakes so they'd be easy to serve and I used the Cricut Cake to cut the fondant.  I tinted the fondant orange to get close to the Giant's colors, I was happy the Giants don't have a fancy design included with their name.  The cupcake in "A's" color is for Gabe, another youth leader, who is a die hard A's fan, and well, we wouldn't want him to not be able to eat a cupcake.  I used cake coloring straight from the bottle to color in the stitches on the baseballs using a food safe paint brush.  One planning error was not making any orange buttercream or royal icing to stick the S & F together, I ended up using the orange in a tube frosting, not the best choice.  I'll plan better next time.  Cartridges used were:  Sports Mania for the base ball, San Seriff for the S & F and the A's, Mickey Font for everything else.  This Thursday the youth group is going to watch a Giant's game, that should be fun.

Cross Stitch WIP Update

I haven't posted about my Cross Stitch work in awhile.  So here's what's waiting to be done.  I can't look at or consider starting any more projects until these are done.  Okay, more done than they are now.  LOL!!!!

We like cats.  These pieces remind me of our 3 cats, once out of the package they are small enough to be take along projects.  Which means I will carry them in my purse and work on them when waiting at places.  I always have a project with me.  I'm working on Leonardo right now, Frederick the Literate and Maggie the Mess Maker are waiting to be worked on.

This piece is for me.  I really like Noah's Ark stuff, the different the better.  It's called Noah's Sub. 

This is the piece I'm doing for my son, it's a Fractal.  I don't have a photo anymore more of what it's supposed to look like.  It was a large free pattern, many pages, but not too big when finished.  He's into math, he thinks it looks neat.  Thankfully there isn't any back stitching involved, just lots and lots of grays and yellows.

I haven't done much on this piece.  It's the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, this portion is called "Creation of Eve" and it's the center panel.  Much more needs to be done.  I'll get to this piece during football season, which starts next month.  It's rather wrinkled, so it must not have gotten put away right, so I'll get it ironed and stored properly.

My Crafting Space

Hi!
This is where I do most of my crafting, except my cross stitch, that's done on the couch in the front room. My space is in the family room, it's a small room that passes through to the patio.


Yes, DH says I don't need to go to the craft store anymore, it's all in this room.



I share this space with our 2 Amazon Parrots (Fred & Barney) and our Conure (Little Guy). They do come out of their cages a lot, just not when I'm working with paper, they love to munch on my paper. Fred is starting to imitate the Cricut noises, I'm waiting for him to get the "Chirp" down. LOL!!!

We saw Eclipse

The movie was just like the last one. I find them boring sometimes, the characters do too much whining about the same things, but that's how the story was written, I keep waiting for the more interesting parts which do come. There were some funny lines in the tent scene between Edward and Jacob, the violent ending to the newborns was less graphic than I expected. The Bella's father's character is getting more interesting and more on the background to Rosalie and Jasper was interesting. In the earlier movies Bella's mother comes across like she doesn't care, she's moved on to her new fella sort of thing. In this show you see that she is sentimental and they miss each other, the movie also makes it seem like Bella's father is still pining for her. Odd. I do find myself more and more interested in all the other characters and less and less interested in the 3 main characters.

DD liked the movie, a whole lot. I am sure she'll see it again in the theater before we are able to purchase the DVD.

However, the whole experience at the theater was a rip off, and I don't see paying to do that ever again. We bought our tickets on June 7th for theater 2, 12:02 air time. We were in line for an hour +, the people around us were pleasant and at least the wait wasn't full of line cutters and foul language. We didn't walk through the theater doors until 12:00 and then we find out they are not paying attention to the theater assigned to the ticket. Basically you got in the door and it was up to you to find a seat, people were saving seats, etc... We ended up with not very good seats either, 3 rows back from the screen. It was not fun, the movie didn't even start until 12:35, because they had trouble getting it to start, the previews kept stopping and restarting.

Once the movie starts you do get absorbed in the movie, so it was worth the wait.

We got home at 3 am. Standing in line for 3 hours to see a movie to get better seats isn't going to happen again anytime soon, at least not for me, I wouldn't do it to meet a movie star, President or the Queen of England, so why would I do it for a movie. DD will undoubtedly want to do this again, I'll just wait until she's a bit older and can go with her girlfriends.

Eclipse is here!!!!

DD and I are less than 7 hours from Eclipse.
I made this to mark the occasion.

Tools - New to me at least.

While going through the process of getting certified to be a SDU instructor I got to see some a lot of tools. (I haven’t heard if I’m actually certified or not, but I learned a lot and passed the test). Some of the tools are duplicates of my SU stuff, like chalks and such, but others were new to me. Wow, I need to get out more. I also did a little shopping, JoAnn's was having that big 40% off sale and I picked up some stuff and a few things I ordered on-line.

Here's the new stuff that I bought that are new to me:

Zig Writers - I have a full set of SU markers and love them. I am noticing color issues since mine are older SU colors and I'm not fully matching some of the non SU papers I have. I bought their bullet/fine tip pens, Carnival Lights colors.

Zig Calligraphy - Last time I looked for calligraphy pens there were only black, blue and brown. I bought a set of 8 primary colors.

Pigma Micron Pens - Like the markers and the calligraphy pen, these new to me. These fine point pens will be a great tool addition. I just bought black pens, 3 different sizes to add a little punch and zip to my lettering and work.

Gelly Roll Pens - My only white pen is starting to fade out on me. These were nice to find in a 3 pack, and a 50% off coupon made them very inexpensive.

EK Powder Tool - It's basically a stencil brush attached to a refillable bottle that holds baby powder. Seems silly, but adding powder to make things not sticky is sure easier with this. It does the usual, makes stickers not sticky, etc. But the ease of use is sure nice. It was only a few dollars so it was a fun purchase.

EK Centering Ruler - This is a neat flexible ruler that has a 0 in the middle and goes out to 8" each direction (and has metric). Flexible to wrap around a can or pot to find that center point. Lightweight and clear with easy to read numbers. I also learned through SDU training, and it says so on the package, that you can stick stickers on the matte side of the ruler, so they hang off the edge, and use them to line up your letters before putting on the page. I’m seeing lots of use for this ruler with Cricut letters and such.

Cutter Bee - Honey Bee Scissors - Wow, nonstick blades. I have the little yellow Cutterbee scissors and I love the sharp point and how well I can get into small areas. These Honey Bee scissors are exactly the same size, and work just as well, except the blades are non stick. That means I can actually cut a glue dot in half and it didn’t stick to the scissors. I was able to cut mounting foam and other pop dots with the same non stick. The ability to cut smaller pieces of sticky foam, wonderful.

Cutter Bee Retractable Knife & Blade - Okay, it’s another craft knife, but it’s a craft knife I can use and save money on bandaids. LOL. I purposely bought this for travel purposes and it came in so handy during VBS at my church. The fact that I can retract the blade is wonderful. During VBS I was able to walk around with the knife and a small cutting mat and make the cuts for each kid. We were working with kids from 1st through 6th grade, and we had 70+ kids each day. A few times the kids would pick up the knife thinking it was a marker, but since the blade was in the barrel no one got hurt. It comes with extra blades and the refills aren’t expensive either. That knife got quite a workout this past week, well worth the investment.

Studio G - I hadn’t really seen there stuff until a trip to JoAnn’s. I picked up these cute little alphabet stamps and the Glitter glues for $1.00 each. Not bad, and I love sparkly stuff.

Madeline's 13th Birthday Cake

I can't just make a cake just to test designs, I am sort of end project sort of person. I haven't made a multi layer cake in a good 20 years, as you can see I need a lot of practice. Honestly the cake isn't leaning as much as it looks like in the middle picture. weird how it came out in the photo.

So Madeline and I finished the cake together and we'll use it for her 13th birthday. We like it.

Buttercream cake with Roses & stuff

Hi!
This is the last cake for the interview. I was able to make better looking roses, I made the royal icing stiffer and I think they look better. The basket weave part was fun, I haven't done that in a long time.

Tim's Cake, and Madeline Helped

Tim used all the leftover colored fondant and just made stuff. This is his cake. Madeline helped, she made the multi colored piece and gave artistic/supervisory input. Tim worked, and she said, "Yeah, that's nice." ROFL!!!! Pretty cool cake, it's for dessert tonight.

Flower Fondant Cake

Hi!
Here is the first of two cakes I'm making for the interview. This is a chocolate cake covered in white fondant. The balls were hand rolled. The leaves were hand cut and shaped. The flowers are blossom cookie cutters, notched, hand shaped and dried on the floral molds. Those U shaped ones. I used a texture plate to give a little dimension to the flowers. Let me know what you think. It took most of Saturday to assemble. So worth it, I like the way the cake turned out. Thanks

Roses

Hi!
I'm so rusty at making roses. I probably should have practiced on something easier. Oh well, taking a break and going to go back to practicing after dinner. Let me know what you think. Thanks

It's Done - Yeah!!!!

Hi!
I've been making these flag samplers for few years now. This is the 4th one, they are all exactly the same, just for different people. I carry them around in my purse throughout the school year, it's my take along project that I work on, when on breaks, waiting to pick up someone, and such. I'll do the last one when school starts again in August. I will pick up Noah's Sub this evening, I really need to use some different colors besides red, white and blue, LOL!!!!

Actual Decorated Cake

Hi!
This is our first real cake. We decorated for our niece who graduated from High School. We like the way it turned out and received a lot of compliments. Our niece was happy and that's the best praise.

Ladybugstamper's Crafting Club House

Hi!
I'm not so great about posting photo's of my work. As president of this club, I promise I will do better but for those who aren't sure what PC's new "Circle" is about, here's a free alternative to join a "club house". ROFL!!!!

Cookies cut and decorated with the CC

We made cookies this time. One important trick, the dough has to be really, really cold. Next time I will pre-roll the dough onto parchment paper, chill/freeze the dough and then cut. The warmer the dough the rougher the cut. Working with fondant was far easier than anticipated. We used some Wilton Cake food color and my Kitchen Aid mixer to blend the fondant, worked really well. The cookies were great and my family likes the taste of the fondant. We used butter cream icing to stick the fondant to the cookies. Thanks for looking.

Recent Pages

Hi!
I've made 3 more pages, thanks for looking.

Okay, here's my very first ever Scrapbook Page. I'm just learning how to make actual pages. Took 2 hours, mostly because I went really slow, got it all done and realized I assigned the wrong instrument to the wrong boy. Good Grief. So, what do you think?

Cricut Cake Mother's Day Gift

Hi!
Our kids decided this would be a perfect Mother's Day Gift. I'm thinking they're going to love eating the things that don't come out right. They already ate the first batch of sample cuts. LOL!!! Once the fondant was rolled and placed on the mat it was just like cutting paper. Way cool. DD and I are looking forward to doing a lot more with this machine.