Crafty Kid All Grown Up

Gothic Glam--Chunky Charm

2011-10-07T19:14:00.000-04:00

I joined a chunky charm swap on the Cricut Message Boards a while back and this is the result... I went from this mess of components:

To this finished charm:

And this is how I did it!

The photo is a layout of all of the individual pieces and below is the text that explains where the components came from and how I assembled them all together!

Individual components of the charm, I used various colored pins (black, silver and gunmetal) to create the components for a mixed metal look:

1. Tim Holtz Swivel Clasp (small size used)

2. Gunmetal Jump Rings

3. Black Jump Rings

4. Gold Jump Rings

5. Tim Holtz small gear cut from Gadget Gears die in shrink dink color 1” square in black, , the large pump ring is from Michael’s

6. A. Negative from thread cut from Tim Holtz die Sewing Room of the thread spool cut from 1”x2” shrink dink in black, 3 additional holes added with Crop-a-Dile in smallest hole setting. After shrinking this was wrapped with silver 24g wire

B. Positive cut from Tim Holtz die Sewing Room thread spool in black shrink dink, wrapped with red 20g wire

C. Earing finding from kit at Wal-Mart with attached beads from Michael’s.

7. A. Tim Holtz Hanger Clip

B. Misc. Beads from Wal-Mart

C. Sparkle n Edge gemstone from Wal-Mart

8. Flat bezel from JoAnn (Blue Moon) and attached beat from Wal-Mart

9. Tim Holtz small gear cut from Gadget Gears die in shrink dink color 1” square in black, the large pump ring is from Michael’s

10. A. Beads from Wal-Mart

B. Bead from Wal-Mart

C. Flat back mounted rhinestone from Sparkle n Edge at Wal-Mart

11. Red rhinestone chain from Rebel Shine at Wal-Mart (Came with the clip to set the rhinestone in to attach the chain to something else, you simply cut it to length and then squeeze on the provided clip.)

12. Beads from Wal-Mart

13. A. Negative black shrink dink from gear cut in 5 or 9 with the excess from the 1” square trimmed to a circle and a small hole punched in it with the Crop-a-Dile and shrunk

B. Tim Holtz Film Strip Ribbon, single frame with a rhinestone from Wal-Mart’s Sparkle n Edge collection attached

C. Beads from Wal-Mart

14. Flat back mounted rhinestone from Sparkle n Edge at Wal-Mart

15. A. Positive cut from Tim Holtz die Sewing Room thread spool in black shrink dink, wrapped with silver 24g wire

B. Charm from Rebel Shine at Wal-Mart

16. Tim Holtz Trinket Pin with 3 beads on the clip

17. A. Bead from Michael’s

B. Key charm from Wal-Mart

18. Blue rhinestone chain from Rebel Shine at Wal-Mart (See 11 for more details.)

19. Bead from Michael’s

20. A. Earing finding from Wal-Mart

B. Crystal from Michael’s

21. Rhinestone from Wal-Mart’s Sparkle n Edge collection

22. Beads from Wal-Mart

23. Beads from Michael’s

24. A. Bead from Michael’s

B. Tim Holtz Film Strip Ribbon, single frame

C. Flat back mounted rhinestone from Sparkle n Edge at Wal-Mart

25. A. Beads from Wal-Mart

B. Negative from thread cut from Tim Holtz die Sewing Room of the thread spool cut from 1”x2” shrink dink in black, 3 additional holes added with Crop-a-Dile in smallest hole setting. After shrinking this was wrapped with purple 24g wire

C. Beads from Wal-Mart

D. Bead from Wal-Mart

26. Flat back mounted rhinestone from Sparkle n Edge at Wal-Mart

27. A. Beads from Wal-Mart

B. Maya Road mini Wooden Spool wrapped with 18g purple wire with silver beads added for accents at both ends.

C. Filigree connector from Rebel Shine at Wal-Mart and all attached beads, metal, pear and crystal from Michael’s

28. Tim Holtz dress form cut from Sewing Room die on rough-n-ready Shrinky dink, with raspberry, and silver Bic Mart-it accents and stamped with zigzag pattern and “It’s your style” rubber stamps before shrinking with a hole at the top from the Crop-a-dile

Order to attach charms to the swivel clasp (1) use any color jump ring from piles 2, 3, 4 (I prefer to start at the bottom)

BR (Bottom ring) attach 16, 17, 18
L9 (Link 9) attach 15, 19
L8 (Link 8) attach 14, 20
L7 (Link 7) attach 13, 21
L6 (Link 6) attach 12, 22
L5 (Link 5) attach 11, 23
L4 (Link 4) attach 10, 24
L3 (Link 3) attach 9, 25
L2 (Link 2) attach 8, 26
L1 (Link 1) attach 7, 27
TR (Top Ring) attach 5, 6, 28

I hope you enjoyed my chunky charm and will come back soon to check out it's matching dressform (Coming soon!).
If you have any questions please let me know!!!!

Red, White and Blue!

2011-06-26T12:19:00.000-04:00

The only cartridge I used was Mother's Day Bouquet. I used a smooth Styrofoam ball and inserted and hot glued in a dowel rod. Depending on the colors that I use for the flowers I sometimes also paint the Styrofoam ball to match, in this case I just left it white. For each assembled flower I used a pin, a button, a 1" cut flower, a 1.5" cut flower and a 2.25" cut flower per assembled flower to get them to look stacked the way they are. (These sizes were also perfect to cut 16 of each size out of a piece of 12" x 12" card stock.) I simply folded and curled the petals to give them a 3D look from flat paper. Before sticking the pin into the Styrofoam ball, I did add a bit of glue to the pin so that it would stay in the Styrofoam better. I just used regular glue, nothing special. After I had the entire Styrofoam ball covered I stuck it in a piece of floral foam stuck in the bottom of the pail and hot glued it in. I then covered the rest of the foam in the pail with little stones just to finish off the look. I tied a ribbon around the dowel rod, just for a little decoration.

Supplies:

*2 Sheets each red white and blue 12" x 12" card stock (this will yield extra flowers for a future project)

*1 1/4" Dowel rod, cut to about 15" long

*~ 50 Total red, white and blue buttons

*~50 White pearl head pins (You can use whatever color you want)

*1 6" smooth Styrofoam ball (I purchased mine at Jo Ann with a 50% off coupon)

*1 pail (I've purchased at Michael's for a larger size or Target's $1 spot for smaller ones.)

*A small block of floral foam

*Decorative stones for pail

*~12" of ribbon for bow (I used red 1/2" ribbon)

*Optional paint and paintbrush to paint Styrofoam ball

*Cricut Mother's Day Bouquet Cartridge

*Cricut Expression with mats and blades

Christmas Ornament

2010-11-18T21:23:00.000-05:00

     • Cricut Cuts:

          o 2” Oh Christmas Tree from Winter Woodland

          o 1” Blue Birds, 1 regular, 1 flipped from Winter Woodland

          o Window from October 31st, cut to size just over 5” in Design Studio

     • Back is embossed with Cuttlebug Snowflakes Folder and inked with white pigment ink

     • Lace Tree ornament design was purchased from EmbroideryLibrary.com and adorned with
        I-Rock gems

     • All paper is DCWV

     • Oh and Tree were Stickled with Lime Green

     • White on Blue Birds and Eyes were drawn on with Gelly Roll Pens

A Cricut Cake has a New Home!

2010-11-03T02:50:00.000-04:00

I got a Cricut Cake on Super Sale at Michaels over the weekend, and this is my first project! I'm super excited about getting to try more things and more mediums. These are just cupcakes frosted with white frosting and with red and brown leaves from Stretch Your Imagination, cut at 2", and layered onto the wet frosting... The ones with red on top are chocolate cupcakes, and the ones with brown on top are funfetti cupcakes.

Glittery Pumpkins!

2010-09-25T00:06:00.000-04:00

So last year on he Cricut message board it was all the rage to make these awesome glittery ornaments for Christmas trees. Well, I decided to make them pumpkins!
I found these awesome smooched circle ornaments at Michael's while shopping today, and Rita thought they would be perfect for pumpkins! So I purchased a few packages.... now for the details....

Side 1

Required supplies:
Clear glass ornaments
Pledge future floor wax
Fine glitter (I used Martha Stewart Fire Opal)
Oracle 631 vinyl in black (What you can buy from Provo Craft)
Saran wrap or paper towel
Cricut Expression (Or baby bug or create)
Pumpkin Carvings Cricut cartridge

Step 1: Remove the top from the ornament, set aside. Squirt some of the pledge floor wax in the ornament and take the paper towel or saran wrap over the opening, and shake so the wax covers the inside of the ornament. Drain excess wax back into the original bottle.
Step 2: Pour glitter into ornament, be sure you have enough, you can tap out the extra later. Place the paper towel or saran wrap over the opening in the ornament and shake vigorously so the glitter covers the inside of the ornament. Remove paper towel and tap out excess. Replace ornament top.
Step 3: Load black vinyl into your Cricut and cut faces from Pumpkin Carvings. (I laid mine out in Design Studio to minimize waste of vinyl, they were done at 3" with the outside contour hidden to save more vinyl.) Use transfer tape to place the cut faces on the ornaments, I put a different face on each side, just to mix things up.
Step 4: ENJOY!

Side 2!

Fall Spider Card

2010-09-12T11:36:00.003-04:00

This is for this weekend's Cricut Circle contest, the theme was to make a fall card or layout.
*The background card paper is Core'dinations from the black Magic Collection, black on the front, and orange underneath.
*The paper the tree is mounted on is from the DCWV Rustic Stack.
*The paper the tree is cut from is from the scrapbook kit in a stack by DCWV (2007?) cut with Happy Hauntings.
*The leaves are from the fall adhesive cardstock matstack by DCWV (2008/9?) cut with Stretch Your Imagination inked with the ColorBox Classic Pigment Cat's eyes.
*The Beware was written in gel pen on paper from the Midnight Spell paper by DCWV, with the beware and sign from October 31st.
*I used another pieces of the same Rustic stack paper to print the setiment and used the Martha Stewart PATP spider web set for the top and bottom edges.
*The spider on the front is only tied on so that it can be taken off and used as a Halloween decoration for the recipient. I made it using instructions similar to those in the Halloween Tricks and Treats (2010) published by Better Homes and Gardens.

Totally Crazy

2010-07-11T23:57:00.000-04:00

Well I haven't psted a new project in almost a year.. not that I haven't done a bunch, but between taking a full time position at work and finishing my MBA, I just take photos and go "Oh, I'll have to upload that!" and well, it just hasn't happened : (
Anyhow, I thought I'd let everyone know about an awesome give away over on Kricut Krazy for one of the new fall mini cartridges, Pumpkin Carving. Check it out here >> http://www.kricutkrazy.com/search/label/Pumpkin%20Carving

Happy Cricuting!

Awesome Provo Craft opportunity for Cricut Crafters!

2009-09-09T19:49:00.001-04:00

Provo Craft in honor of releasing their 100th cartridge is giving away 100 cartridges over the next 5 weeks.
Their 100th release was Winter Wonderland and you can see the cartridge here: http://www.cricut.com/shopping/ProductDetails.aspx?id=361&s=1&sc=2
It's a great themed cartridge and even has 3D houses! You can read about the promotion on the message board (including how to enter) here: http://www.cricut.com/messageboard/tm.aspx?m=5248058&mpage=1

Cards Update.... Since I've been lazy

2009-07-08T23:07:00.007-04:00

Wedding Cards... This first one I made for a girl's wedding that I went to high school with, my mother was the organist for her wedding. The inside sentiment I found online and was a recipe for a good wedding cake, including love and commitment. I really like "recipe" style cards, as you can see this is the second I've done (the first was for the diaper cake).

I've started stamping my email on the back of cards, incase people wonder where they come from/who made them. :) I got the rubber stamp for FREE from VistaPrint.com (they've got tons of great stuff, I've also had business cards, return address labels, and custom ink pens made too, they have great high quality stuff and amazing prices).

This was a wedding card that I made for my mother to give to someone at work.

This is a trio of birthday cards that I made for my aunt and her two daughters, their birthdays are all in June and July.

Indie Art Book Update~

2009-04-20T13:53:00.004-04:00

This is the link to the .cut file, and the 2 PDF versions of the book, 1 as the regular 1 pager per page book, and one that is 6 pages on one 8.5" x 11" page. http://www.mediafire.com/?sharekey=4f6878ef07276a0690a82c7bb0fad7ad75e0a27e5adc17e9c95965eaa7bc68bc
I used George for the rectangle and Celebrations for the holes for the dots. I cut my paper to 7.5 x 5 so that all I had to do was flip it over and reinsert it into the printer to get the back to line up, you might have to do something different with your own printer.
I used 6mm PVC plastic coil to bind this, which I purchased from http://www.bestbuybinding.com/41_spiral__coil_sample_pack.htm (that specific link sends you to the sample pack that the white was from) They have TONS of different options available for binding products.
I hope that you all enjoy this, and I HOPE to one day have some free time to start on some of the other solution's cartridges... but since I don't own them (Other than Stone Script) it is not a number 1 priority for me. But I know that some of you out there would really like them.
Take Care!

Rocky Horror Floorshow Corset

2009-04-14T20:13:00.003-04:00

I needed somewhere to stick a few photos of corsets, so here they are.

The first one is exposed correctly, the second two show an estimate of sequin placement and variety of colors.

Diaper Cake!!!

2009-04-05T00:43:00.004-04:00

So I made a diaper cake for a diaper party, 280 diapers, 5 packages of wipes (hidden inside), a bottle of baby powder (also hidden inside), 1 set of J&J First Touch, and a cute pink poodle toy. It took me about 6 hours, and it was a great show piece at the party. :)

I cut all the parts of the tag with my Cricut, the basecard from george, the skull from indie art, the bow from Hello Kitty greetings, and the name from Stone Script. The flower that you see is from Hello Kitty greetings that I welded an "I" into from George so that I had someting to tie the bow around.

I got the poodle at Wal-Mart, and printed the back of the tag on lazer vellum and put on it what was "in" the cake and who it was from (as 8 of us went in on the supples for it together).

All of the colors were chosen based on the rest of the colors for the Baby's room so that she could use the die cuts for scrapbooking or the ribbon for other crafts.

Dani with her real cake that "Mama Rita" made and it is zebra and says "Diapers for Isabella" since they wanted something a little wild.

Indie Art Book

2009-04-03T16:12:00.003-04:00

So the Cricut solution's cartridges don't come with books, just this little insert where it is REALLY hard to see what the pictures are.... so I made my own book.

I laid everything out in Photoshop and then printed the odd pages and then the even so that I could manually duplex each page. I then figured out using design studio how to cut the page to the right size with the holes so that I could us PVC binding to bind it off. I'm pretty happy with how it turned out, it's only taken me 2 months to find all of the time to lay it all out and and a few hours to print, cut and assemble.

Baby Isabella Word Book

2009-03-28T21:13:00.004-04:00

(The rest of the photos are at the end)

I did this for the same girl whose invites I also made, I have a ton of other stuff to do for her (all the baby bedding, two diaper bags, and were making the cakes for the next 2 showers) but I couldn't just show up empty handed to the first shower.

The poka dot paper is from the Nana's Kids stack, the "BABY" is cut with Mickey Font, "Isabella" is off of the Calligraphy collection, and there are super tiny hearts that make up the holes for the binding from Doodlecharms (the shift border for the mailbox, as well as a ducky and a bear), as well as other things from Stretch your Imagination (Baby, Baby Stroller) and other assorted stickers that I've picked up along the way.

I bound it with clear PVC binding, which I keep on hand for word books, and tied green, pink, and purple ribbon to the binding to dress it up.

I cut all of the base pages out of gift boxes and then covered them in pink bazzil cardstock that I picked up Michaels.

For this being a 5 hour project, I was pretty happy with the end result. :)

V-Day Bags and Cards

2009-03-28T21:05:00.003-04:00

Back at Valentine's Day we did an all ladies show for Rocky Horror (and two boys since I didn't have enough ladies). I gave everyone a card, and a bag of goodies as a thank you for putting extra effort into the show.

These were just store purchased sacs that I used Doodlecharms to cut out hearts and Stone Script to cut the initial... pink bags were for ladies and red for boys.

This was my card, I cut the Thanks from Calligraphy collection at 1.5 and the heart from the same cartridge. I used the lip print with xoxo (cuttlebug) to emboss the corner, and stamped them with a corset stamp that I found on clearance at Hobby Lobby this past fall.

Baby Shower Invites for a Friend

2009-03-18T20:12:00.002-04:00

So between these 3 designs I've made 130 cards in the last month. I did them for a friend who ironically is due on my birthday. I've only charged her the cost of supplies, but wonder what I could actually get for these in today's market. The insides are stamped on white card stock that was glued in with Who, What, Date, Time, Where, Hosted by and Registered at, and she hand wrote in the information.

They were cut using my Cricut, and embossed using a CuddleBug folder.

I've done a bunch of other cards since January too.... but those will have to wait until later. :)

Cricut and Deep Blade Housing, Cutting Chipboard

2009-02-17T11:12:00.003-05:00

I kept reading posts about how people couldn't make their deep cut blades work, but still purchased the housing and blade anyhow.

This is how I make it cut with my baby bug.

Tape chipboard or mat board (I like HL Mat board, the huge 36x48" sheets that I can cut down myself) to the mat around the edges using blue painters tape. I use a mat that is no longer sticky because I can't make it stick to even a new mat, so why waste sticky mats.

Load mat into machine.

Set speed to 2.
Set pressure to max.
Set blade depth to 2.5 (in between the 2 and the 3 on the deep blade housing).
Select design and cut.

Now this is the important part!!!
Hit Load Paper
Hit Repeat Last
Change blade depth to 3.5
Cut

Hit Load Paper
Hit Repeat Last
Change blade depth to 4
Cut

Hit Load Paper
Hit Repeat Last
Change blade depth to 4.5
Cut

Hit Load Paper
Hit Repeat Last
Change blade depth to 5
Cut

Hit Load Paper
Hit Repeat Last
Change blade depth to 5.5
Cut

I know that is a TON of cuts, but it allows you to cut layer by layer through the mat board and it produces a nice cut. You will not necessarily have to cut this many times if the chipboard cuts sooner than a 5.5 depth. I do not have to cut the mat board from HL at a 6, 5.5 is sufficient. If you purchase the grey chipboard from the art section with the .04 depth you only need to cut to a 4 and the chipboard with the .055 depth you will only need to cut to a 5 depth... or at least that is my experience.

This is still not a fool proof method, but, it does work about 75% of the time, which is better than 0% that many people are experiencing.

Hope this helps a lot of people who are having problems with their deep blade and housing. It took my BF and I about 3 hours to figure out that you had to go one click at a time.

I welcome questions, and hope that this helps A LOT of people out there who are frustrated with their deep cut blades.

I hope to get some new projects posted and a few other tutorials, tips and tricks that I have discovered recently.

Rocky Horror Word Book

2009-01-15T00:16:00.000-05:00

So I've noticed the increasing popularity of word books in some of the scrapbooking magazines that I have looked at or the Cricut forums that I have been visiting. For Rocky Horror we're always looking for new things to give away to the audience, and I came up with this. I don't know how well it will go over with the male members of our audience, but I had fun making it and setting it all up in Design Studio.

Cards: Cupcake and Minature Rose

2009-01-15T00:13:00.000-05:00

First of all my rose... I have been trying to think of something to do for Valentine's Day, and this was the first one that I designed that I was super happy with, provided it is small, but that's half the fun of it for me!

And my cupcake, I was thinking about something that could also be used for Valentien's day, but that was standard, typical or expected.

My reason for being... on blogger that is.

2009-01-15T00:10:00.000-05:00

So I've decided I want to do something to share what I've made with others, as inspiration or as a what not to do, take it as you will. My friends are always so excited about my new sewing projects or what I've created with my Cricut that I want to share them with more people.