TGIF #252

Happy Friday and happy Thankful Friday! This week flew by and there’s much to be thankful for. But I’m especially thankful for friends. I went to lunch with a longtime friend and it was great! 

We laughed, we cried (a lot), we ate, we drank and boy oh boy it was what I needed! Thank you Serena for reaching out and for being a friend!

What are you thankful for this week? Leave a comment!

A Cricut Christmas

I made a lot of shirts for Christmas this year using my Cricut and lots of HTV! It's so fun to purchase an inexpensive shirt and make it something special!

Here they are:

And finally:

I love using my Cricut and my imagination to make gifts for my family. I know they enjoy them and I enjoy making them!  Win-Win

Faux Leather Earrings

I messed around with some inexpensive faux leather earrings to create these customized gifts.

I definitely learned a few things and am looking forward to creating some more soon.

Check out the YouTube process video:

I searched for earring holders in Design Space and found these cards. I did adjust the size to make it work for these earrings.

Of course I made a pair for myself. I can’t wait to wear them for the next game!

Hmmm…what else can I put on these?

TGIF; Thankful Friday #251

Happy Friday and Happy Thankful Friday! This week I'm thankful for living in a small town. And the reason why specifically is because our fire department still escorts Santa around in all our neighborhoods.

I thought I missed him this year but luckily, when we were driving around looking at Christmas lights, he happened to come around!

You don't even know how excited I was to see him. It's our annual tradition!

What about you? What are you thankful for this week? Please share in the comments.

Poinsettia Gift Tags; CutCardStock Project

Happy Holidays! I usually do a 12 Days of Christmas Tags Series but this December was pretty nuts so I decided not to do it this year. But don't worry...I'll continue next year!

Honestly, it's probably a good thing since my tag container is getting pretty full! I was able to create these beautiful poinsettia gift tags though and I'm so happy how they turned out!

I used Basis Red and Yellow Jacket cardstock from CutCardStock as well as prepared 2x4 tags. I also used my Cricut to cut out the flower petals and leaves. I decided to use patterned paper instead of solid green for the leaves.

After cutting the petals and leaves, I used a rounding tool to create some dimension to each petal of the flowers. There are two layers and they were glued and stacked on top of each other.

For the center of the poinsettias, I used a flower punch that I have in my stash.  I wasn't sure which would work best so I punched them all out and guess what? All three flowers worked perfectly for these centers!

The leaves were glued directly on the tags, then the petals and then the punched gold centers. To accent the centers, I used some yellow glitter glue. You can't go wrong with glitter during the holidays! Stamped "To/From", put some twine (that was included with the tags) and voila...done!

I always make tags in sets of six so that's what I did here too!

Do you make your own gift tags? These are by far my favorite things to make this time of year! Check out the post on the CutCardStock blog.

Check out CutCardStock for all your paper needs. The variety is fabulous!

 

Triangle Pocket Fold Card/Gift Card Holder; November MCK

I was unable to go LIVE for November's Monthly Card Kit but I filmed the process to create the cards. These are cute cards just ready to assemble and hand out to someone. Each kit includes everything you need to create these cards, written instructions with cutting guide & measurements and the FaceBook LIVE event where we create the featured card together. If we finish early, we'll make the second card as well.

I designed the cards using products in my stash and the Cricut for the dies. The cute holiday creatures were from The Bearded Housewife as a free file. Be sure to click over to that site for many cute products!

For step by step instructions on how to put the card together, check out the YouTube process video below. The flat image elf is made into a layered piece but using three same images and cutting and stacking specific items from them. Check out the video for more details:

Here are so photos of all three cards. 

To learn more about the Monthly Card Kit, check out the tab on the Home Page.

TGIF; Thankful Friday #250

I have just experienced the most emotional and inspiring three weeks of my life. Friends, I truly believe in miracles and the power of prayer!

Be thankful for all things.

Grand Canyon Layout

I have been scrapbooking so many photos of our CA-UT-AZ 2020 road trip but I'm still not done with all the sections of that trip.  One of the nice things about being a scrapbooker is you get to relive the moments when you're ready to put them on a layout.  That's what I am doing with this trip!

This layout is actually pretty simple since I was following a sketch from Scrapbooking With Ann Marie. She posts lots of sketches, challenges, tutorials, and inspiration on her site.  There's both a free and membership section on the site. I encourage you to check it out!

The sketch included a large circle in the middle, but I decided not to use it for this layout. It just seemed too busy.

I purchased that wooden sticker from one of the gift shops at the Grand Canyon and I really wish I didn't place it down so soon. The adhesive was extra strong! Luckily, I didn't change my mind on the placement!

I continued to use pieces from the hiking/outdoors kit that I made before starting these layouts. It's nice to have items gathered together to make it easier when selecting embellishments and papers. The two dot papers were one big scrap that I cut in half - they are approximately 3.25 x 9". The green solid cardstock is a 8.5x10 piece. The orange scrap is approximately 6x8.

Next stop after the Grand Canyon is Tucson and there are plenty more pictures and memories!

Be sure to check out the YouTube process video to see how it comes together and how I used scraps to create the layout.

Dollar Tree Sign & The Cricut

Oh I love a good updo and I believe this is one of them. Every year for Christmas, we have a decorating contest at work. In my previous position, I was the only one in my department (besides my boss) so I would create something on my own.

But this year, I am now part of a team so I’m working with a few people. We’re doing a Christmas Tree Farm. I’ll post more photos of the decorations later but for now I’m sharing a cute sign I made. 

I first had to make this cheap Dollar Tree sign look like weathered wood. I did that by using a variety of acrylic paints.

You can see how it was made by checking out the YouTube process video.

It went from this (this is actually the back since I forgot to photo the piece prior to updoing it):

To this:

Don’t you love that font?! It’s so fun!  I used my Cricut and a variety of scrap vinyl to complete this. It does make sense to keep those small pieces of scrap vinyl!

Super cute, right?

Happiness Comes In Waves Layout; CutCardStock

CutCardStock papers and the Cricut is a great team for creating fabulous, quick and easy layouts. I found this great beach cut to use for a photo of my granddaughters clutching onto each other as a wave is coming in. The quote that I used as the title was perfect too!

I used Wedding Cake White, Black, Blastoff Blue, Orange Fizz, Lemon Drop and Robin’s Egg cardstocks for the pieces. All cardstock is from CutCardStock.

Check out the YouTube process video and pay attention to the tip on putting these image “puzzle” pieces together 

Here are some close ups and photos of the finished project. You can see that I also cut & inked some seashells to add a little something to finish it!

I love it and I hope you do too. Check out the CutCardStock blog for more paper project inspiration by clicking here.

TGIF; Thankful Friday #249

Happy Friday and another week to be thankful. In fact, this is probably the one week where everyone is giving thought to what they are thankful for. I'm going to stick to the ordinary this week and let you know that I'm thankful for family and family gatherings. 

Thanksgiving is my second favorite holiday due to all the great food but also the togetherness. I'm fortunate that my family is able to gather often during the year, but Thanksgiving is a gathering that we all sit at the table, share our meal and appreciate each other.

I'm thankful for God, prayers from friends & family, the Oncologist team and every other health professional that has been looking over my son and his cancer recovery. Honestly, this is the number one thing that is constantly on all of my family's minds, but we get relief when we hear good news, when we see him slowly improving and staying so strong.

I hope you were able to enjoy some time with family, friends and everyone in between.

I have never created anything for Thanksgiving before, but this year, I decided to make this cute banner giving homage to our favorite Thanksgiving movie. The cut file is from Auntie Tay's membership site. I stopped my membership earlier this year since I hadn't really been using the cuts but thankfully I decided to download this one before I cancelled.

Thanks to all of you that continue to check out my blog, comment and give me encouragement. I love being crafty and this is my place to show off my stuff!

Thank you!

Print and Cut Stickers

I've only used the Print and Cut feature in Cricut a few times to make stickers and every time I'm really happy with the results. Have you tried making stickers? It's so easy especially when you already have the image(s) uploaded into Design Space.

I created decals for our family's annual virtual marathon - TomKat Strut - last year and I wanted to continue with this tradition. You can see last year's decal peeking out on the right side. This is our second year for this annual marathon and I'm hoping to continue making decals. You can read more about the Strut HERE.

Since the intent is to use them on our water bottles, they needed to be waterproof.  In order to do that, I put a layer of clear vinyl on top of the vinyl sticker paper after they were printed. Be sure to place the clear vinyl between the black square guidelines so that your machine can still scan them.

Check out the YouTube process video to see how easy it is!

Using Older Paper Pads & a Tip For Recycling Papers

I don't know about you, but I have a pile of papers that I plan to donate to the Trash to Treasure pile at crops. It's slowing growing since I haven't attended a crop in a while, but there it is nevertheless.

There's nothing wrong with these papers, I just know I will not use them. Well, here's my tip and it's also on the YouTube process video for this layout...use those papers as bases for your layouts. 

I grabbed a particular paper because it was double sided and a great weight. The papers used in this layout were very thin and I was determined to use them and the embellishments provided in the paper pad.

I used this summer themed paper pad for my Month In Review photos from June, 2021. These are the random one photos that I took and printed (that's the key) that don't necessarily warrant a full 12x12 layout but certainly worth a layout.

I followed an additional sketch from Sketch n Scrap that was posted on their FB site.  I love sketches that account for using multiple papers and photos! As always, I adjusted the sketch to accommodate what I needed and turned out great.

Be sure to check out the video:

Fall Themed Thank You Card; Sketch n Scrap

You can never have enough Thank You cards and this easy card sketch by Sketch n Scrap made this card go together quickly.

I decided to make it a Fall Themed Thank You card by stamping this cute fox to copy the one on the patterned paper I used. Thankfully I used my MISTI since it took a few times to get a good impression from the ink pad. I've had them for over 15 years, I guess they are starting to dry out some.

Be sure to check out the Sketch n Scrap blog as they have two new single layout sketches and two card sketches each month. Sketches are a great way to give you a jump start on your projects and are especially helpful if you're in a creative funk.

I also posted a process video on YouTube.

TGIF; Thankful Friday #248

 

Happy Thankful Friday! This week has flown by and I'm especially thankful for friends and family that are encouraging me to walk...I mean strut a lot this month. Sure, we're right in the middle of our family's virtual marathon contest/fundraising event but it is so nice to get out and stretch my legs and lungs.

We have a lot of fun encouraging each other, participating in side challenges and struttin! There are three generations of our family that are involved and it's pretty awesome.

To read more about it, you can check out our IG page which is @tomkat_strut.  I also post this TGIF series on my personal IG which is @3sons_and_astar.

Be sure to leave a comment and let me know what you're thankful for this week.