New Year's card

Hi folks,

Over at Exploring Cricut today, we are to create a project celebrating the new year.  Thinking back to New Year's Eve's past, there was one thing that always came to mind.  Celebrating with friends at the bar.  Well, when I was old enough to drink.  :)

For this card, I used the Wrap it Up cartridge.  These glasses were perfect because it showed the champagne in the glasses as there should be!  :)  I did cut the images quite small and so the bubbles didn't show up as much as I wanted them to, but you get the idea.  This was a fun little card to make.  I used a Spellbinder's die for the background to give it a little fancy-ness.

Here's the card!

Happy New Year!

Craft on,
Ian

School Scrapbooks!

Hi Folks!

For awhile, I have been working on a very large project.  My mother approached me and asked me to create a scrapbook for my nieces and nephews in regards to their school years.  She had several requests.  She wanted it 8.5" x 11", she wanted it to be a double layout so that one side was a folder, and she wanted certain papers.  The rest was up to me.  Oyy.  I have two nieces and two nephews.  This was a huge undertaking but I enjoyed it and loved making them for them.

The first thing is that I used DCWV Grade School and High School stacks.  I couldn't find them in person - so Amazon.com and Joann.com was a lifesaver.  :)  I also went through my Cricut cartridges and made the titles with Varsity Letters cartridge.  I loved this idea because it really ties the school theme together.  The white for the inside of the letters was way too small, so to save some sanity, I used a white gel pen and embellished them that way.  Yes, it's not the same "feel" but it gives it a little more pop.  Also - I realized AFTER I was done that the N in Oriana is upside down.  Ugh!  :(

Here are the rest of the photos.  I used several Close To My Heart school themed stamp sets to give it some more character.  The folder on the left side was punched with a Martha Stewart punch and adhered with some Scor-Tape.  The photos below are from the two boy's books, the girls have a couple different papers that I chose for them, but I decided not to post them as they are the same thing, just with a different patterned paper on about 3 or 4 grades.  

I hope you enjoyed them as much as I did making them.  My sisters will open them Christmas morning.   I hope they like them!!

Craft on!
Ian

Christmas tradition card

Hi folks!

Today over at Exploring Cricut, we are participating in a challenge.  The challenge is to showcase our favorite Christmas tradition.  After thinking long and hard, I decided to do a cup from Joy's of the Season.

In my eyes, there is nothing better than a fresh fallen snow, white stuff everywhere, and sitting inside by the fire and drinking a nice cup of hot cocoa.  Yum!  Some of my favorite memories are as a child, mom would make me and my sisters some hot cocoa and light the fire.  We would sit around in our pajamas watching Christmas movies or just listening to Christmas songs.  It was awesome.  :)

Here is the card I designed.  I hope you enjoy it!

Happy Holidays to you and yours!
Craft on,
Ian

Quick Birthday Card

Hi folks!

Today I'm being featured on Exploring Cricut.  Although it's Christmas-time, I wanted to shift the focus to a quick birthday card I made.  For this, I used the Doodlecharms cartridge and the Dots, Stripes DCWV stack for the background and second layer of the hat.

I used a 4.25x5.5" card for the base.  The base layer was cut at 4"x5.25".  The hat was cut at 4.5" to leave enough room to show the background paper.  I took pop dots and adhered them to the 2nd layer of the hat to give it some dimension.

To finish the card up, I took a button, and put some twine through it and made a bow.  I thought this looked so cute!  I used a pop dot to give that some dimension too.  I hope you like it!  I'll be back again with some more Christmas-themed cards soon.  :D

Craft on,
Ian

Small Treat Box with the Cameo!

Hi folks!

Today's project comes to you from the Cameo with a little help from www.svgcuts.com.

As most of you know, I supervise a staff of 13 Resident Assistants and try to make them something small for breaks and special holidays.  I recently made them a piece of pumpkin pie filled with Puppy Chow...it was so much fun!  I wanted to go bigger this time around so I found this cute book shaped box and started about 24 hours before it was due.  Let me just tell you, you would think making 13 staff members something would be easy...well, only if there were about 2-3 cuts!  haha.  Anyway, I made them this book.  I really wish it turned out as nice as this one...  it didn't.

I wanted to take pictures of each step along the way, but that got to be too time consuming and I was on a time crunch so you will see the first few steps below and then the finished product.  Again, I was VERY crunched for time and on top of that had to clean my apartment before they came over.  Eek!  Anyway, here are the pictures.

Here are all the pieces cut out.  The 3 dark brown pieces are glued together to form the book.  The tan piece is the book cover.  

Here's the book glued together.  It's starting to take form!

This is a side view of the book.  Here's where I made a mistake.  The ATG tape that I used is probably not permanent and they were literally falling apart as I was making them.  #mad.

Here's the front cover of the book.  There were a lot of steps in between the last photo and this one but I had 13 of these to make and could not waste a single moment, sadly.  I am upset at myself for not inking the edges of the corners, and embossing them to give them a winter look.  I also should have added an image...next time I will have MORE time.  :)

Side view of the book.  Instead of Merry Christmas, I chose Season's Greetings from the Tanenbaum stamp set from Close To My Heart. 

Here's a side view of the book.  I embossed the sides of the pages with a wood grain to give it some texture.  I like it!  

Another view and yes, as you can see the top of the book is coming off of the frame of the book.  Ugh! I was so happy to see them take these out of my apartment just because I was so frustrated with them falling apart.  :(  

Here's a close up of the box part of the book.  Cute idea!  

It's finals week here at the college.  They are studying their butts off and I thought they could all use some Ghiradelli Peppermint Bark to get them through the week.  I also saved some for me as it's my favorite Ghiradelli.  :)  

Craft on,
Ian

HELP! My craft room is a disaster!

Hey everyone,

I hope this email finds you doing well and enjoying your week.  2 weeks until Christmas.  Whoa!  I have a ton of projects to complete before I head home a week from today and am having heart palpitations just looking at my craft room.  The story behind this is that my craft room, started inching its way out into my kitchen, living room, bedroom, and bathroom.  Yes, I said bathroom.  I had craft supplies in EVERY room of my house.  Ok, so it was only a magazine subscription postcard in the bathroom, but it was still craft related!  Haha.

Two weeks ago, my staff and I were talking about our last staff meeting of the semester.  I wanted to do something fun for them as it was on a Sunday night, and finals were that Monday.  Many ideas were tossed around and we decided on a movie.  I offered several locations on campus we could watch the movie until one of my staff members proudly offered my apartment as the viewing center.  WHAT?!  I had so much to clean on Sunday night because of the craft supplies being everywhere, that I just ended up putting it in my craft room.  Below you will see pictures of the destruction.  Since it's so messy I have no motivation to craft.  Someone PLEASE come and clean my craft room.  Please?

From my kitchen looking into the room.  Eek!

From my kitchen peeking inside the door to the right.  Double Eek!

Close up of what was in the first picture.  Triple Eek!

Spare bed in the craft room COVERED in supplies.  Quadruple EEK!!!  

So, if anyone wants to come and help me clean and organize, you are more than welcome.  Hurry!  I can't stand it anymore.  

Craft on,
Ian

Exploring Cricut Blog Hop!

Hi folks,

Today the design team at Exploring Cricut is having a blog hop!  The rules for the hop were simple.  We were to make a Christmas card.  The only stipulation was that we needed to use our Cricut.  Easy peasy, right?  Right.  Here's hoping you are getting some good ideas for what to do for your own Christmas cards.  :)

So, onto the hop.  If you came from Annette's blog, you are in the right spot!  If you didn't, why not start at the beginning with Diana's blog.

For my portion of the blog hop, I used A Quilted Christmas Cricut cartridge.  My card is 5"x7".  I had in my stock A Merry Christmas paper pad from Die Cuts With a View and trimmed that to 4 7/8" x 6 7/8".  I then used one of the Santa's from A Quilted Christmas and cut him at 5.5".  I layered all the pieces together and used some ribbon to give the card some flare.  The one thing I did not do was use the eyes that were cut out from the Cricut.  They were incredibly too small so I went ahead and took a black marker and colored in the eyes.  Much better, and much less stressful.  :)  Check out the pictures below.

Now, onto the rest of the hop, check out the lineup below and happy hopping!

Diana - http://craftypeepdb.blogspot.com

Sharon - http://meemeescreations.blogspot.com

Lori - http://scrappinsaints.blogspot.com

Jessica - http://craftinandstampin.blogspot.com

Georgiana - http://carsonscricutcreations.blogspot.com

Kim - http://littleredshood.blogspot.com

Emily - http://emilyqueenofallthingscrafty.blogspot.com

Annette - http://mymindsdustbunnies.blogspot.com

Ian - http://anewbiecrafter.blogspot.com

Michelle - http://mumoftwoblog.blogspot.com

Diane - http://happyscrapperdiane.blogspot.com

Craft on,

Ian

Quick Christmas Card

Hi folks!

Today I have a cute and simple Christmas card that you can do in 10 minutes.

I used Believe, an old Workshop on the Go from Close To My Heart for everything, except the card base which was white cardstock from Michael's.  The card size was a simple A2 sized card.  I cut the base layer at 4"x5.25".  I then cut the mitten from the Cricut Artiste cartridge at 4.5".

I then took a button from the WOTG and used a dark blue and white twine to tie a bow.  I used a pop dot to give it some dimension.  The next thing I did was put an Action Wobble so that the glove was waving at you.  See the action shot below.

On the inside of the card, I used Holiday Red from Close To My Heart and stamped the Merry Christmas sentiment from Christmas Cheer (D1494) stamp set.  I also used Light Blue to put the snowflakes at the bottom of the card as well.

Here's a close up of the button.  I love how this turned out!  :)

Here's a side-view of the action wobble and you can see the button is pop dotted as well.

Well that is my project for today!  I hope you enjoyed it and it has inspired you to get in the craft room and start making Christmas or other Holiday cards.  The next holidays are right around the corner!

Craft on,
Ian

Pumpkin Pie, Anyone?

Hi folks!!

Long time no see but I wanted to share with you all a project I did for my RAs for Thanksgiving.  Every year I try to do something special and unique for them to thank them for all of their hard work so far for that semester.  This year, I think I outdid myself.  I recently snagged myself a Silhouette Cameo at a great price and knew that I wanted to use it for this years gifts.  Upon perusing www.svgcuts.com I found this fun little pumpkin pie treat box that I just HAD to make!

After I figured out what I was going to do, I went to the larger Michael's and searched through their open stock paper for Thanksgiving themed cardstock.  If there is one thing I learned, you MUST be one season ahead as a crafter.  The paper was pretty stagnant so I had slim pickings.  I did get to pick up a couple cute papers that weren't grabbed so I knew I would use them for this project.

I downloaded the file and started to cut the files.  The mat that came with the Cameo was tearing the paper and I had read that you could use your Cricut mat so I grabbed that and continued.

Once I was able to cut everything out, I lined everything up in piles so I knew exactly what I had to do.  I posted this teaser photo on my Facebook with the caption "I'm making something fun."  :)

I took the orange cardstock and embossed it with a Darice 2 inch folder I found at AC Moore.  I thought that added a nice little dimension to it.  This photo was taken after I had already started piecing the top of the box together.

I took the orange cardstock after it was embossed and used Scor-Tape to glue the top box together.  It was starting to shape up quite nicely.

The next thing I did was add the top layer of the pumpkin pie and adhered the crust to it.  I also folded it up to give it some dimension and for a real-pie effect.

Next thing I did was start piecing together the lower portion of the box.  Svgcuts.com makes it very easy to do these 3D projects as the machine also cut scor-lines on it too.

Here's a picture of the inside of the box.  About 3 slices in, I realized I should have turned the photo upside down so that the words were right side up.  UGH!  Oh well.  No turning back now and there wasn't enough of the cardstock to recut this portion.  :(

I went ahead and made Muddy Buddies (Puppy Chow to some of you) and placed that in baggies to cool.  If you want the recipe - I posted it below!  Funny story (not so funny at the time).  I was making the muddy buddies and put the powdered sugar into the bag and started to shake and the seal broke on the gallon sized bag I was using.  I lost about 2 cups worth of Muddy Buddies on my kitchen floor.  UGH!!  I did have enough for the 13 RAs I have to each get 1/2 cup which was perfect because that barely fit in the box.

Here's a photo of the completed pumpkin pie.  I found this ribbon at Joann's and it was the perfect dollop of whipped cream.   Isn't it cute?  I adhered these with a little Tombow adhesive.

Here's an artistic shot of the individual piece of pie.  Just lovely!

Here's the top shot so you can see the "whipped cream" on top of the piece of pumpkin pie.  Looks good enough to eat, eh?  :)

Well, that's my project for today.  I made 13 individual pieces of pumpkin pie for my 13 RAs.  I ended up cutting 14 pumpkin pie pieces in case I messed up - but I didn't need the extra.  Score!  I hope you all had an enjoyable Thanksgiving day surrounded by friends and family.  I was alone but did get to FaceTime with my mom.  I'm on duty for my job and had to stay back at work.  My coworkers all live within 2-3 hours driving distance here in NY and I'm originally from Wisconsin so I didn't want to be selfish even if I couldn't go home.  It was a quiet couple of days on duty.  Nice!  However, most of campus was gone and they all returned yesterday.  Anyway, I hope you are all doing well and gearing up for the next holiday whichever it is you celebrate.  :)

Craft on,
Ian

Muddy Buddy Recipe9 cups Chex (whatever kind you like best; Corn, Rice, etc.)
1 cup chocolate chips
1/2 cup peanut butter
1/4 cup butter
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 1/2 cups powdered sugar

Place chocolate chips and peanut butter in a microwave-safe bowl.  Heat on high for 1 minute.  Stir.  Heat on high for another 30 seconds.  Stir in vanilla and make sure mixture is smooth.  Pour Chex in a GOOD gallon sized bag or paper bag (some prefer paper so issues like the one I had don't happen) and pour chocolate, peanut butter, and vanilla mixture over chex mix, seal and shake rigorously making sure all gets covered.  Take powdered sugar and pour in bag.  Seal bag and shake again until well coated.  Place on wax paper on a cookie sheet and place in fridge to cool.  Once cool, serve individually or in a large bowl for your guests.

Enjoy!