A Newbie Crafter: December 2012

Monday, December 31, 2012

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

Monday, December 24, 2012

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

Monday, December 17, 2012

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

Friday, December 14, 2012

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

Wednesday, December 12, 2012

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

Tuesday, December 11, 2012

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

Monday, December 3, 2012

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.