Paper Orchid

I found a tutorial by a really crafty lady named Tarah Faulkner on YouTube on how to make a paper orchid.  She cut the petals for each flower by hand and used cardstock to wrap  the stems.  Since I'm "busy" (read: "lazy") I decided to use my beloved Cricut to help me make one of my own!

For this project, I used the following Cricut cartridges and sizes for my flowers:
1.  Accent Essentials: Accent33 (+shift) at 4" for narrow petals
2.  Storybook: "B" (+shift, +Accent/Blackout) at 2" for wide petals
3.  Walk In My Garden: Leaf1 (+Blackout) at 1 1/4" for ruffled petal

Using the Cricut took only a fraction of the time it would have taken to cut these petals by hand.  Additionally, I did not attach each petal to a piece of floral wire, as was shown in the tutorial for this project. I simply curled each petal with my stylus and then hot glued them to the center piece (which is attached to floral wire).  And instead of using dampened cardstock strips to wrap the stems, I used floral tape!  This also cut my assembly time tremendously!

Hope you enjoy this project!  Have a creative day!!!  :)

Fantabulous Cricut Challenge #7: For Mom

The challenge over at Fantabulous Cricut Challenge Blog this week is called "For Mom":  make something for Mother's Day.  I went with a card because my mom loves my handmade cards.  :)

I used a pink and green flourish/floral paper for the card mat and inked the edges in pink and rounded  the corners.  The green strip in the middle is inked and embossed (Cuttlebug--Birds & Swirls).  It's backed by two scallop edge white strips (EK Success punch) and adhered to the card.  I also added two white brads on the sides of the green strip. 

For the "M"s, I used Opposites Attract, with the upright shadow feature on the dark pink and the standard upright on the light pink.  Both are inked, adhered together and then popped with adhesive foam dots.  The flower in the center is made with layered multi-sized flowers cut from Walk In My Garden.  The edges are curled with a stylus, inked and then they're adhered together.  I threaded narrow white ribbon through a pink button, tied a knot and adhered it to the center of the flower.  The flower takes the place of the "O" in the word "MOM".

So that's it!  Hope you enjoyed my project for FCCB's challenge #7!  Head on over and check out the other fabulous projects by the DT and let us know what you think!  And don't forget to link up your own Mother's Day project by next Sunday night!

Have a creative day!  :)

Vegetable Garden Stakes For My New Garden!

We've been out of town for a couple of weeks so I haven't had a chance to post photos of my new vegetable garden!  Compliments to my dad who basically did the whole thing thanks to my lack of muscle strength and inability to effectively shovel dirt.  :)

More on the vegetable stakes I made in a minute...

Now keep in mind that I was just thinking about a basic wood box with dirt thrown in...but, if you know my dad, you know that nothing (I mean NOTHING) can be a simple project.  I suppose it's the engineer in him.  Due to concerns that untreated wood might be a lure for termites and that treated wood might have chemicals that could seep into the vegetables, we went with stone pavers to contain the garden.  I must admit it looks nice, but OMG it was a LOT more work.  :)

The CFO was 100% against having a garden, which he describes as "work".  I, on the other hand, consider a garden to be FUN.  I obviously won the fight.  :) 

As you can see, the Mess Maker was in favor of a garden, too, because she wanted to "grow the vegetables" (aka water them).

We decided to go with tomatoes (two varieties), carrots, onions, bell peppers, radishes and cucumbers along with some herbs: basil, oregano, sage, thyme, parsley and rosemary.  The cucumbers are in a whiskey barrel next to the fence...I didn't want them to completely take over my little 4x8 foot garden. 

Now for the stakes:

Not that I can't identify the vegetables just by how they look, but I thought it'd be fun to "jazz" it up a bit by adding the garden stakes.  I used my Cricut, of course, some inking to make the signs look weathered, and LOTS of piecing together to make the individual vegetables.  For durability, I laminated each sign and then hotglued them to a stake to insert in the ground. 

Here is a rundown of what I used:

Sign:  Walk In My Garden (WIMG)

Lettering: All Mixed Up

  Tomato: pumpkin and palm tree top from Doodlecharms (DC)

Radish: bee from WIMG

Pepper: popsicle from DC

Carrot: pine branch from Joys Of The Season (JOTS)

Onion: bulb from JOTS

Basil: leaf from Blackletter

Sage: leaf from Blackletter

Rosemary: branch from Storybook (SB)

Parsley: branch from SB

Thyme: vine from SB

Oregano: branch from SB

And here is the finished result:

Thanks for looking and have a creative day!  (And if you have any tips on keeping my currently green vegetable plants alive, please, do share...I'm not exactly known as a green thumb!)  :)

FCCB: Scrappin' Saturday Feature: Custom Shaped Mini-Albums

I am just so proud to be part of the awesome, super-talented group of designers over at Fantabulous Cricut (FCCB)!!!  And I am so excited to announce that Robin has put me in charge of the "Scrappin' Saturday" Daily Inspiration, which will be featured every Saturday at FCCB!

The topic for my first Scrappin' Saturday at FCCB is "Custom Shaped Mini-Albums"...did you know you can make these yourself???  With a little help from your Cricut, of course!  :)   I used the front and back of two ceral boxes in place of costly chipboard and used the George, Plantin, Accent Essentials and Walk In My Garden cartridges to cut the four different flower shapes (and patterned papers to cover each) at 6".  Here are some photos of my project:

Be sure to head over to FCCB to see my original post and information on how to make your own custom shaped mini-album.  And become a follower to make sure you don't miss any of the other great daily inspirations, including:

1.  Challenge Me Monday:  Weekly Challenge Revealed...play along with us!

2.  Quick Tip Tuesday: A great tip on using your Cricut is revealed

3.  Wednesday's Winners:  The winners from the previous week's challenge will be announced

4.  Thursday's Tutorials:  A fantastic weekly tutorial on a Cricut project

5.  Fantabulous Friday:  A wonderful themed Cricut project spotlight

6. Scrappin' Saturday:  Everything related to using your Cricut for scrapbooking

Don't those sound fun?!?!?  Now head on over to FCCB and check out this week's Daily Inspirations!

Dimensional Paper Flowers

I made some paper flowers a few days ago for a wall hanging using instructions provided by Marta Gladden, but I decided to come up with some new varieties, for a special project that is currently in the works.  I didn't ink these or emboss them, as there are a LOT of them and I think that kind of detail would get lost with the project I'm using these for.  :)  If you want to see my project, check back in a day or two...I'll be posting photos.  :)

As always, I used my Cricut for these little guys:

Pink Rose (New Arrival)

Yellow Spider Mum (Accent Essentials):

White Spider Mum (Accent Essentials):

Red Star Flower (Stretch Your Imagination):

Coral Hibiscus (Storybook, Home Accents):

Yellow Daisy (Walk In My Garden, Stretch Your Imagination):

(didn't notice the hot glue string on this one until I photographed it...oops!)

The leaves are cut with Storybook.  These aren't hard at all, they just take a little patience.  Okay, a HUGE, TON, GOB of patience!  :)  But I think they're worth it.  Can't wait to finish my project...be sure to check back!

Thanks for looking and have a creative day!  :)

Live-Laugh-Love Wall Hanging

The front of my fridge is not magnetic (why?  I have NO idea!)...so I wanted to make something to put on the front that would attach with a suction cup.  And this is what I came up with...a three-framed wall hanging showcasing one of my most favorite sayings:  "Live, Laugh, Love".

I found these square chipboard frames at Michaels in the paper mache and craft aisle.  I inked the edges and covered them with patterned paper that coordinates with my kitchen color scheme.  I hooked them together with some CTMH metal hinges and matted the openings with taupe cardstock.

I used the Cricut Home Accents cartridge to cut the words "live", "love" and "laugh" using the shadow feature for dimension.  I adhered them onto the taupe mats and then stamped a flourish in the open space.

The flowers are an idea by Marta Gladden, who posted her original flower designs on the Cricut messageboard.  She was kind enough to email the instructions to me and I got to work creating some of my own!

I used the following cartridges to create my flowers:  Walk In My Garden, Plantin Schoolbook, Accent Essentials and Storybook.  I cut several layers in various sizes, embossed them with my Cuttlebug, inked the edges and raised embossed designs and then curled the edges of the petals.  Then I attached the layers of each flower together with a brad.  The result is a very dimensional and beautiful paper flower!

To finish, I adhered a ribbon on the top, hot glued it to a suction cup and covered the top with another paper flower.  That's it!  Now I FINALLY have a fridge decoration!  :)

Thanks for looking and have a creative day!!!

"Family" Mini Album In A Tin

This little tin contains a mini album!  I bought a bunch of these small, round tins at Michael's for a dollar each with the intent of putting some kind of goody in them and decorating the outside, then giving them as gifts.  But they've been sitting on my shelf for a while and so I decided to come up with something else to do with them.  And this is what I came up with!

I decorated the outside with a strip of patterned paper (CTMH Sweet Home) and then put a border sticker around the rim of the lid.  I attached layers of silk and paper flowers (paper flower cut with Cricut WIMG) and an adhesive pearl.  I cut a tag (Cricut George) and printed "Family" on it.

To attach the album string into the tin, I put the end of the ribbon through a hole in the center of a 1 3/4" circle (Cricut George) and used glue dots to stick it down.  Then I added circles on top and bottom of the ribbon for the "pages", leaving a loop of ribbon on the opposite end.

The white cardstock circles are cut at 2" and the patterned paper circles layered on top are cut at 1 3/4" (Cricut-George).  I embellished each page with a variety of elements:  1x1 mini photos of my family, scallop frame (Cricut-Accent Essentials), stamped hearts and sentiments (CTMH), silk flowers, paper flower (Cricut-George), half circles with Martha Stewart's Lace Border punch, brads, adhesive pearls and fibers tied to the ribbon between each page:

Here's a view with the pages all spread out:

This little cutie is going to sit on my living room table and hopefully resist being grabbed by little curious hands!!!  :)  Thanks for looking and have a creative day!

P.S.  I entered this project at:

and:

"Hoppy" Birthday Card (Sweet Treat Cup)

This card was made using SU! Sweet Treat Cups.  I saw a couple versions of a Sweet Treat frog card HERE and HERE, but both used SU! punches (which I don't own).  So, I went ahead and purchased a 1 3/4" punch from Hobby Lobby (it's really the best way to accurately place the circle cut-out for these treat cups in my opinion) and then cut the rest of the card with my Cricut.

I used George for the body parts on the frog, WIMG for the dragonfly and Storybook for the tab (Marquee diecut).  The dimensions for the body parts are as follows:

Tummy:  circle 2 1/2"

Legs:  skinny oval 2 1/2"

Face:  oval 2 1/2"

Feet:  flower 1" (cut in half)
Eyes:  circle 1"

Eyes (white):  circle 1/2"

Eyes (black):  circle 1/4"

The dragonfly was cut at 1/2" and the tab (marquee) was cute at 1 1/2".

Then, I followed Crystal's (from "Crystal&Akiko) directions for making the slip-out tab for the sweet treat cup:

She has a great video tutorial on how to do this!  To summarize, I cut a hole in a piece of white cardstock in the same location on the piece as I placed it on the card front.  I used Terrifically Tacky Tape to make a sideways "U" around the treat cup, leaving one side open, and then adhered the white cardstock.  Then I slipped the green piece of caerdstock (cut smaller than the width between the pieces of tacky tape) between the card front and the white piece of cardstock to cover the hole.  Now when the recipient pulls on the tab (stamped with a "sweet" sentiment from CTMH), he can gain easy access to the candy (and not have to rip up the card!!!).

P.S. The blue dragonflies on the card front are made by stamping two hearts (CTMH) sideways, layering the points in the middle!  And the yellow dragonfly cut with my Cricut is popped with a foam dot for dimension.

Thanks for looking and have a creative day!  :)

Toilet Paper Roll Mini Album (CTMH Caboodle Collection)

This is another mini album made out of toilet paper rolls.  I just love these!  When people ask me what I do to save the environment, I say I recycle and make toilet paper roll albums.  HAHAHAHA!

This one is made with the new CTMH Caboodle collection which is super-fun and "Spring-y".  I'll be teaching a class on this one later this month.

I used my Cricut to cut the tags (inserted inside the flattened rolls) from TBBM which allows for extra photos/journaling/storage.  I also used WIMG to cut the flowers.

I stamped two journaling blocks (CTMH My Acrylix "Frame Of Mind"), matted them with coordinating cardstock and cut them out, then punched holes in them and added them between the pages of the album.

Thanks for looking!  :)