Pirate and princess party invites

I had great plans for the invitations but hardly any time, so I ended up simplifying a great deal.  Okie from the cricut messageboard gave me a link to a great site where you can search for fonts by theme and I found just what I wanted (thanks Okie!).  The Pirate invite was cut from Life's a Party and the Princess from Once Upon a Princess.  Fonts were Treasure Map Deadhand and Precious.  I tried to make the wording a little fun and got a few comments, so I think I succeeded.  I added things like "pirate hideout" for our address and "ArrrrSVP" and "have your coachmen drive you to..."

Pirate and Princess Seventh Birthday

My daughter turned seven and, even though after last year's exhausting birthday celebration my husband and I swore we'd never have another party at home, we had a Pirates and Princess Party.  I think I was more excited about the theme than my daughter was!  She had attended a luau party over the summer and wanted that as her theme, but I convinced her that a luau theme would be fun at any age but a Pirate and Princess would be perfect for now.  I had a lot of plans involving my cricut, vinyl and gemstones but, between work, school and other commitments, time got away from me.  But I love the way the things I did find the time to do came out!

I had seen other people use shrinky dink film to make all sorts of things, and so I wanted to make these wine charms so the kids could keep their cups straight.  I wasn't serving wine, of course, but I found awesomely appropriate goblets at Oriental Trading Company.  I used my black cricut pen to draw the skull and crossbones from Life's a Party, at 2.5 in, then went back over it and cut it out.  I used the deep cut blade and multi cut 2 and they cut perfectly.  The tag is an old sizzix die and I just wrote the names in sharpie.  I baked them according to package directions and they came out perfect!  The beads and holder came from Oriental Trading and I used frosted instead of clear shrinky dink film from grafix arts, I think.

 The girls charms turned out a bit trickier.  I used colored shrinky dink film and found it a lot harder to work with.  I needed to multi cut 3 times instead of 2 and sometimes I still had to make a cut with scissors here or there.  The crowns came from Storybook and the first one in the picture below kept curling.  Out of six, I had only 2 that weren't folded over on themselves.

 So I tried switching to a less intricate crown, and it, too, curled and wouldn't uncurl.  I ended up using them curled and firguring it gave them a more 3D crown look.

 The purple one is the "before" baking and the green the after.  The tags, too, would not lay flat, event though they were the same cut as the frosted and the frosted ones curled, then uncurled like the package claims they will. 

I don't know why this picture is flipping, but these are the goblets with the charms on them.  They were a big hit!  The only problem was that the princess goblets came in a pack of 12, half with pink gems and the other half blue and of course all the girls wanted pink.

Thanks for looking, I'll post more party picts soon!

2nd Birthday Pages

I am still finishing up 2006, I just have a little bit of November and December to go.  I am working on the pages in my new scrapbook room. Yeah!  I finally convinced my husband we needed a space for my supplies more than a bed for the infrequent company we have.  I love, love, love it.  I didn't paint the walls, I was too impatient to put my stuff in there.  Some days, I just go sit and look around!  I realized I have too much stuff and I am sorting through the things I have never used and making room.  When it's a little cleaner, I'll take some pictures.
So here is the 2 page spread for my daughter's second birthday party.

 Left side: background is from doodlebug designs, party time was cut from Life's A Party

 Right side: background is doodlebug designs, all cardstock is SU and CM

 Simply Charmed is an adorable cartridge, in my opinion, especially for little kid themes.  The cupcake, birthday party hat, balloon and present with the happy smily faces are all from SC.

Beech Hill Farm Layout

I made this one for the Cricut Circle monthly contest and I had so much fun!  I got carried away with the inking and cuttlebug embossing.  The theme of the challenge was to make a background.  Now, I want to make more backgrounds (I am thinking of a Halloween scene....)

Anyway, here it is:

The hills with trees were cut from Pop Up Neighborhood.  I tweaked them a little with my gypsy so they'd stretch across the whole page.  The hill is SU Mellow Moss.  The dry grass along the bottom I hand cut from DCWV Safari stack paper. 

 These trees are SU Old Olive paper. I ran them though the Divine Swirls CB Folder than used the matching ink to highlight them.

These trees are SU Always Artichoke run through the Herringbone folder and adhered with pop dots for dimension.

The sun and moon combo came from Pop Up Neighborhood, as well.  I swirled a little SU Summer Sun ink over the sun and a little SU Bashful Blue over the cloud, after the cloud was put through the CB with the Divine Swirls folder.

I cut the rocks from Old West and used DCWV photo real paper. I used a lot of foam tape and layered the rocks, then added grass cut from Zooballoo in between the rock layers. The colors were Old Olive and Always Artichoke again.

The barn and gate were cut from Old West.  For the gate I used the fiskars wood grain embossing plate.  I inked it with SU Basic Brown and the paper is CM brown.  The barn was "weathered" with ink and even my husband noticed.  The sheep came from My World and he was covered with flock so he is good and woolly!
I cut open the barn doors and added a picture.  After I taped it all down, my daughter said I should have cut the window in the barn and put a chicken.  She's got some good ideas!

Thanks for looking!

Contemporary Resort

This week's Circle challenge is to scrap some vacations photos and I am sitting on over a thousand photos from Disney.  I had such high hopes of getting lots of scrapping done this summer but I've been so busy (and so distracted by the cricut messageboard!) that I haven't gotten much accomplished at all.  The challenges really help me buckle down and get some crafting done.

So here are the photos I took around our hotel.  We were lucky enough to get a free upgrade to a deluxe level.  It was really a beautiful hotel.

I had a bunch of pictures, none really good enough to carry the page, and I didn't want more than one double-page spread of hotel photos.  But I still needed room for journaling, so I hid it behind my photos!

The background paper is from Stampin Up's retired Candy Lane paper pack.  It's Riding Hood Red with a tone-on-tone print that doesn't compete with the photos for attention.  I opted not to mount them in order to conserve space.  I made the title from Recollections silver metallic paper because of all the silver and chrome of the Contemporary itself.  The letters are from Plantin Schoolbook and I partially welded them with the gypsy.  Not every letter connects but I didn't want them to seem squished, I just wanted them to be easy to glue!  I added Mickey hats off the Mickey and Friends Cart, cut at 1.5 inches.  I cut four more for my journaling tabs and glued them on either side of the journaling box.  Had I thought of it earlier, I could have welded them with my gypsy. I added Mickey hat borders, also cut at 1.5 inches from M&F.  Mickey's head actually came from the Mickey Font cart, cut at 3 inches.  I cut two of the black base layer because I always pop dot the nose, so I just cut it off the base layer.  I printed "welcome home," the Contemporary catch phrase, in waltograph from my computer then cut a conversation bubble from the Batman cart around it.  With the E2, you can see exactly where your cut will be on the mat and so it is super easy to place the words where you want them!  I also could have used center point but I am not sure how to do that on the E2 and I was too lazy to look it up.

Also, for anyone who has seen some of my previous posts, I have finally convinced my husband we don't need a guest rom and I will be converting it to my scrap space this weekend! 

Backyard Picnic

I'm scrapping pictures from 2007, only four years behind!  I can't believe how little the girls are in these shots. I wanted to fit a lot of pictures, so I kept the embellishments simple.

The font is from Birthday Bash, at 1.5.  I accidently left real dial size on, so they aren't proportional to each other, but I wanted this layout to be fun and focus on the kids, so I didn't worry about it.

 The sun and popsicle are from Simply Charmed.  I love that cart!  It's so cheery and that perfectly captured the feel of our backyard picnics.  I chalked the cheeks on the sun and the popsicle was too dark for chalk so I used a copic marker to accent.

The background paper is from an old DCWV summer stack.

A Simple Thank You card

I made this simple thank you card in a rush Wed morning.  I knew the end of the school year was coming, why did I wait until the last minute?  It was my daughter's first year of school and she loved her kindergarten teacher.
I used all SU products.

Father's Day Card

Just a simple Father's Day card, made with my usual mix of SU and CM papers.  The foam finger was cut from the Father's Day seasonal cart, the circle from George and the Dad from Beyond Birthdays (an oldie but a goodie).

Finished the Planetarium Shirts

I had so much fun with these!  Heat transfer vinyl is so easy and addicting to work with and I enjoyed playing with color combos and fonts.  I hope the kids like them as much as I do.

 The shooting star came from Hannah Montana.  I used gold and silver siser easy weed but I forget what font this was.

 When I told the teacher I was making the shirts, she said she wanted one, too.  I don't know if she just said that to make me happy or if she really wanted one, but I made hers the sun-since she is the center of the class, like the sun is the center of the solar system.  There are lots of suns to choose from but I used the one from the Sesame Street Seasons cart.  That's also where the word came from.

 Neptune is my husband's favorite.  The colors are striking-sky blue and light blue siser easy weed.

 The asteroid came from Every Day Paper Dolls and was cut at  6 inches Real Dial Size.  I hand cut the black layer underneath so it would show through the holes and I used the nifty fifties font again.

 Mars had to be red and this vinyl wasn't the siser, it came from craftvinyl.com.  The font is from Nursery Rhymes.

 Uranus is siser, dark green and cream and the font is, I think, Plantain Schoolbook.

 I'm not really happy with Jupiter.  I used a diffferent layer of the planet from Superman and it looked good, but not once I put the eye on.  The font is from Life's a Party.  The colors are brown and cream and red, all siser.

 Venus is from Nursery Rhymes again, the colors are siser sky blue and violet.

The star is so shiny!  It's all silver, there is just a reflection on the bottom of the word in the picture.  I used the star of car decals.  I cut the word from Hannah Montana.  I used silver foil HTV from craftvinyl.com and the rest of my rainbow glitter.  Silver glitter woud have been better, but I didn't want to reorder just one piece.  The foil and glitter are a little thicker and so you need to adjust your bade settings accordingly.

Planetarium T shirts

I am addicted to Heat Transfer Vinyl and just looking for excuses to use it.  My daughter's class is going to the Planetarium and I am making a space themed t shirt for each of the 13 kids.  The Superman cart has great planets.  I used part of the globe off Locker Talk for Earth.  I used a variety of fonts and some of the titles were welded with my gypsy.  Thanks to the plastic transfer sheet, it's easy to line everything up and you don't really need to weld the words to make it easy.

 For Pluto, I used the Mickey and Friends cart and just cut Pluto's name.

 For Mercury, I saved the pieces of vinyl that were left over after I did Pluto and used them to accent Mercury.  The font is from Nifty Fifties and I think it is perfect for space themes.

 Again, Earth came from the globe on Locker Talk-I figured it would use less vinyl than the one on Superman or Graphically Speaking.  I love that the E2 shows where everything will cut before it does, so I was able to place all my vinyl in just the right spot.  Not sure what font I used-I wanted something basic.

Saturn is my favorite.  This is the one my daughter wanted for herself, so it had to be "girly."  As soon as I saw the rainbow glitter vinyl on craftvinyl.com, I knew it would be perfect for the rings.  It's a little thicker than regular vinyl so you might have to play with your settings a little, but still easy to use.  And so sparkly!  The picture doesn't really do it justice.  The font is from Country Life-it welded beautifully.

Just remember to reverse cut HTV so that your words show up the right way.

DAB-Cinderella, Prince Charming, Fairy Godmother and the Wicked Steps

 If any of you read my older posts, I went to Disney in Nov and made autograph books with my Cricut. I cannot stress enough how much all the hard work was worth it. The characters and cast members in Disney took a lot of extra time with my daughter and niece, admiring all the pages in the book. When we met Pluto, he actually got down on the floor and flipped through every page (I'm sure the people in line behind us hated it, my daughter and niece loved it). Other tourists stopped us and asked to look at the books and wanted to know where we got them. I used 8x8 CM albums and they ended up very thick and heavy but even my sister agreed that she would carry them around again.

So here are the pics of Cinderella and Company:



More DCWV paper, this time the shimmer stacks.  I used these a lot.  They cut beautifully and have a little sheen without so much bling like the glitter.  The white frills in the dress are glitter paper.  Everything is double or triple layered for some dimension.  Her background paper is from the EK success princess pack. Below is Cinderella and her prince.  His belt and epaulets are Bazzill Bling.  Their background paper is from a different EK success paper pad, this one a 12x12.  His signature box is another cut from Lacy Labels.  I used DS (didn't have a gypsy yet at the time) and welded two together to open like a backwards card so he could sign on top, then I could flip it open and put a picture inside.

 Not too happy with how I drew on the eyes, but they'll have to do.  I added a little pearl for her earring.

 Here's the Fairy Godmother.  We saw her but the kids didn't want to wait on line and I figured I would be a bad mom if I forced them just so I could have the picture.  The FG is also made with DCWV shimmer paper

 I used SCAL and files found at Mardenz' blog ( a big thank you to her for all the great, amazing files) to cut Druzilla, Anastasia and the Wicked Stepmother, Lady Tremaine.  I like SCAL but I find it hard to control pressure and speed of the blade and so it can be frustrating.  I wish PC would come out with more Disney carts.  I, of course, bought the Pixar and Disney Classics as soon as they came out!  But I need all the Disney villains!

 Background paper for the sisters came from DCWV citrus stack.  They, being wicked stepsisters, did not get the bling treatment.  Anastasia must be a scrapbooker because she asked a lot of good questions about how I made the pages.

 I think Lady Tremaine looks perfect, this was a great file.  The sisters and stepmother's dresses are all cut from SU paper.

Lady Tremaine was not finished before the trip and so she signed on plain white paper but I did put a DCWV paper from the Black Currant stack on the facing page.
As always, thanks for looking.