Thirty Days of Thankfulness Tree

A bunch of my friends are doing the "Thirty Days of Thankfulness" challenge, and I wanted to participate, too!  This little project lets my whole family take part and my hope is that it will really help us concentrate on being thankful this month.

This project is super-simple and SUPER-cheap!  I found a vase in my cabinet and filled with little pumpkin vase filler (Target $1 spot).  I collected dead branches from the back yard and put them in the vase.  And the rest was done with my Cricut and about 12 pieces of carstock!  The banner was cut from the Wild Card cartridge at 15".  I ran it through my printer to get the text and then inked the edges.  The leaves were all cut from the Doodlecharms cartridge at 3 1/2' and 4".  Each family member has a different color, and one leaf for each day of the month.  I punched holes in the stems and used twine to make loops to hang them.

The tree is a little bare right now (we'll do day 3's leaves tonight at dinner), but just wait until the end of the month!  I'll post a follow-up pic to show how beautiful our Fall Thankful Tree will be!

I'm thinking you could adapt this to work with different seasons or holidays activity...

1. Fall tree with colored leaves for Thanksgiving

2. Christmas tree with ornaments at Christmas

3. Eggs on tree for Easter

4.  Hearts on tree for Valentines

5. Flowers on tree for Spring

Might have to get crackin' on the Christmas one!!!

Thanks for looking and have a creative day!

Fall Pumpkin Topiary

Fall is soooooooo my favorite time of year!  I love the weather, the colors, the festivities AND the decorating!  This year, I don't have a plant in the urn on my front porch.  Poor thing didn't stand a chance in the Texas heat!  So I decided to make a pumpkin topiary to dress up my front porch.

I got all supplies for this topiary at Michaels.  The pumpkins were half off this week.  Because the white ones were so stark (and still look that way in the photo, though they're not) I used an antiquing medium mixed with several drops of brown re-inker and coated each pumpkin with it.  It gives an aged or slightly distressed/worn look.  I hot glued those together (after cutting off the stems) and added leaves between, where the hot glue was exposed. 

I didn't have enough leaves so I used my Cricut (Stretch Your Imagination, Wild Card) to cut some more.  I sprayed the leaf die cuts with water, scrunched them up and then dried them with my heat tool.  I inked the raised portions and the edges and they looked like beautiful fall leaves!  I hot glued those to a grapevine that I wrapped around the pumpkins.  I also added some brown raffia, twisted around the grapevine.

I set it in the urn, added some moss around the edges (sprayed with Ortho Max...no bugs allowed!!!) and I now have a pretty cool-looking decoration on my porch!

Thanks for looking and have a creative day!  :)

House Warming Card

I've been wanting to use this house card from the Cricut "Wild Card" cartridge since I bought it.  And I decided that making a house warming card for my friend Michelle that just moved was the perfect opportunity!

I used light brown cardstock for the house base and ran it through my Cuttlebug using the Mini Mosaic folder to give it the appearance of "stone".  Then I inked the raised area to give it some depth.  I cut out all the layers offered (door, window, roof and topiaries) and inked each of those as well.

On the door, I wanted to make a curtain, so I accordian folded a small piece of striped paper and adhered it to the inside of the door window.  Then I added a "welcome" banner and attached the brads slightly closer than the length of the banner so that it would stand out a bit.  Here's a close-up:

To make the card sturdier and to make the window look like a light was on inside, a cut the house in blackout mode 1/4" smaller than the card base and used those as mats on both sides of the inside of the house.

Thanks for looking and have a creative day!  :)

Fantabulous Cricut Challenge #15: Flip Flop Mini-Album

This week's challenge at FCCB is called Summer Time At The Beach:  Make a project for summer using something you'd find at the beach!  Well, I think flip flops are one of the most common things seen at the beach, so I decided to make a flip flop project.  One problem, though...I had not one single flip flop shape on any of my tons of cartridges!!!

One by one, I scoured my manuals to see if there was a shape I could use that looked like a flip flop.  And I found one!  Of course it was on Wild Card which was at the end of my manuals which I alphabetize.  :)  The only cut I found that resembled a flip flop was the "Porthole" card cut, using "shift" + the "Liner" feature.  After cutting this shape out of chipboard, I rounded the bottom edges and ta-da!!!  Not perfectly flip flop-shaped, but it works.

I used a paper stack by Me & My Big Ideas to cover the flip flop bases.  Then, using my Crop-a-dile, I punched holes on both sides of each flip flop, near the top and one in the middle top of each flip flop as well.  I threaded string through the side holes to hold the flip flops together. 

For the "straps", I threaded red ribbon though the holes and tied knots in the back.  Then I inked paper flowers (Bazzill), added a rhinestone and then attached them on the straps.

To finish, I added wallet-size photo mats to the "sole" of each flip flop.  After I finished, I decided this would be a cute little summer wall hanging, so I didn't bother finishing the back of each flip flop.  :)  Think this will be a cute place to hang pool photos of the kids for the summer.

Head over to Fantabulous Cricut and check out the other fabulous design team projects...you'll be amazed at their creativity!  And don't forget to link up your own project to FCCB by next Sunday to be eligible to win the AWESOME prize that's up for grabs this week!

Thanks for looking and have a creative day!!!