Sunday, January 30, 2011

In Hiding...

I always have these big plans about things, and then fizzle once I get started.  I wanted to keep this blog going, at least once a week, but I have failed...I do however have some things finished waiting to be written up.  I guess I can give you a little hint about a few things I will be writing about in the coming weeks.  Maybe that will wet your appetite and keep you checking back to see if I've posted anything new.

So here we go...

These first two are of the same project.  I had so much fun doing this!
Can you tell what I'm cutting?  If you're from Alabama you should recognize it for sure!

Here's a peek of the finished project.  Just wait until you see it!
Do you know what it is??? If not, just wait.  You'll find out soon enough!

Now for this one, have you ever had left over cake--mostly from leveling them off--and not known what to do with it???  Well, here's a sneak peek of one option...

Looks yummy, yes???

Maybe this has been a fun little blog to check out today.  Hopefully I will post the first project later this week, or maybe you can vote to see what you want to see first???  That sounds like fun!  I have ?6? followers?  If you see this, you can comment and let me know which project you want to see first!  Heh, fun!

Thursday, January 6, 2011

Tissue Paper Flowers

Tissue Paper Flower have been around for a while, and I always thought they would be fun to use in a project but couldn't ever come up with anything to do with them...til now.  I asked my 3 1/2 year old daughter, Belle, how she wanted her room decorated, if she could have it any way she wanted it.  She replied, like a garden. We talked a little more and she decided on more of a "her sized" garden.  No living like a tiny fairy in huge garden--no Tinkerbell land.  
From this I immediately thought tissue flowers, and asked her if she wanted flowers in her garden.  She told me she wanted them all over the walls and ceiling in a variety of colors.  That's perfect!  Tissue flowers are lite and I should be able to find something to hang them on the ceiling with. 
So off I went!  I found some left over Yellow paper and went to eHow to refresh  myself on how to make these flowers.  (I think I read a few different instructions and came up with my own.)  I made two decent yellow flowers, and Belle loved them.  I decided to take a few pictures of her with them and thought I'd share before showing you the red flower tutorial I made for you!

Isn't she darling???
 
Belle's main color she wanted in flowers was red, so off to Wal-mart I went.  I found this 3.00 tissue paper pack for a wonderful .75 cents!  I know, two shades of red, and some green.  Perfect.  I grabbed two packs and some "pipe cleaners" for this project.








Once I got home, I took a piece of green, dark red, and two piece of light red; placed them on top of one another; and folded and cut them in half.  I took the four halves and made an accordion fold  across the length of the pieces and secured them in the middle with a pipe cleaner.  (I did make sure the put the green paper on the same side of the pipe cleaner tail, so the green will be on the bottom.)


Four sheets
You can see the two halves after being cut.
After folding and securing.



 I fanned one out to let you see what it looks like just before you start to fluff.
 There's no set way to fluff out the tissue, really.  This flower only has 4 layers so I took the top and bottom layers and fluffed them at the same time.  You just have to be careful not to rip the tissue paper too bad.  It's not terrible if you do rip them...a few of mine got ripped but you can't even tell. :)  Then I fluffed the other two layers together.

 You will want to do a final fluff once you get all your pieces apart just to make your flower a little nicer.  It doesn't by any means look like "real" flower, but good and cheap for your kids room is good enough for me.  This flower literally cost me less than $ 0.10 to make! They also weren't hard or very time consuming to make.
Finished Flower.
 I took a picture of 5 flowers before being fluffed and then after so you can see some of the sizing of these.
Here you can see the Green on bottom.
Fluffed Flowers.










This last picture is of 18 or 19 flowers strung together with the pipe cleaners.  I am thinking of a fixing them to chicken wire and then stapling that to the wall and ceiling...I still have a lot of flowers to make, but I will post when I get this huge project finished.
I know this isn't cricut-e or anything, but it's crafty, easy, cheap, and fun.  I hope you enjoyed!  I loved taking pictures of my kid with yellow "pom" flowers on her head!

Monday, January 3, 2011

A Few Cricut Cake Things

I thought I'd show you some of the first things I did with my Cricut Cake machine.  I think I mostly use it for lettering now, but there's one idea I have that I have to buy the cartridge for to do...maybe one day...

Any who, if you "like" the Cricut Cake facebook page, you may have seen some of these pictures.  I also have a fan page for my cakes on facebook, Any Way Cakes, if you want to check out what I can do with cake.

These are pictures of the first things I cut with the Cake.  I think I had made some MMF (marshmallow fondant) to practice with.  I also laid some plastic wrap on the table to lay my cuts to keep them clean.

I don't remember the sizes of anything anymore, but I know everything but the popcorn and skull  were made with the cake basics cartridge.  I was so happy to finally find popcorn on a cartridge.  They and the skull are from the slumber party lite cartridge.  I added some pearl dust from Wilton to add the color.  
Aren't they cute???

 I think this was my favorite of the first things I cut.  It's from cake basics and I think it was cut at 5" or 6".  I was jumping up and down and giggling like a kid on Christmas.  I was SO happy I got this thing to work!  Remember this was my first night playing with this thing, and for days, all I could think of what getting home to play with my new "toy."





Okay, these you may flip over...you may not.  These were made with my first batch of cupcakes I made after I got the Cake.  

In this instance, I "built" a crib from basic shapes on MTC, cut a paper version on the baby bug my sister let me borrow and cut a gumpaste version on the Cake.  I built the paper version in order to have a base for the gumpaste crib to sit on and dry on the form.  Once dry I dusted each white crib with Wilton pearl dust to give the blue and pink shimmer, added a rectangle of a corresponding color for the mattress, hand molded a baby head and used brown Wilton food coloring paste to paint on hair to put in each crib, and hand cut rectangles for the blanket.  Whew, got all that???  Yeah, it's really not as bad as it sounds. :)  
 
 Aren't the cute as well???  I just baked Duncan Hines Moist Deluxe Classic Cake for the cupcakes in plain white baking cups, and made buttercream to cover the tops in blue or pink and added white for clouds.  I immediately placed each crib on the cupcake so the buttercream would help "glue" the crib to each cupcake. 
 The close up above is just adorable, and it shows how intricate MTC and the Cake can cut gumpaste.  Did you notice the heart on the side?

The pictures on each side are of shopping bags on cupcakes.  I know, adorable, right?  
The black/white swirl bags were cut from MMF and the front two bags, green and blue, respectively, were cut from gumpaste.  I was hoping to get a decent cut from MMF so they could be eaten with the cupcake.  
Gumpase is edible but most people don't eat it.  It's hard and I personally don't like the taste.  I usually tell people to just remove it from the cake or cupcake before eating.  I wish I could remember The sizes I cut these at...if you think the top of a standard cupcake is about 2.5" you will start to see just how small they are.  I was so excited about these bags!  They were from the Slumber Party Lite Cartridge as well. 


I hope you enjoyed getting to see a little of what I've done with my Cricut Cake and if you want to see more of my cakes, please hope over to Facebook and search for my fan page Any Way Cakes, and like it.  I love getting new fans!  Oh and please follow my blog!  Things can only get better!

Sunday, January 2, 2011

Whisk it Good.

In an attempt to throw out a good number of projects this first week, I decided to finally do something about my giant whisk...
A few months back my mother and I were at a store called Hudson's and came across a giant whisk for about $5.  We couldn't resist, so Mama bought me the giant whisk, but it has been sitting in the box ever since.  I wanted to put it on the wall in my kitchen, but couldn't quite decide where it should go.
Yesterday, I decided that I would put it above the refrigerator accompanied by the phrase "Whisk it good."  It was a fairly easy project to do.
I didn't have any vinyl or the money to go out and buy any, so I just stuck with my DCWV cardstock in black and double stick tape.  For this project I thought it would be easier to use MTC and the TTF Script (Bold, I think).  I cut "Whisk it" at 4" and adjusted the "Good" until the G was the same height as the W--not counting the tail.  It ended up being slightly over 4" and "Good" was pretty close to 11.5" long.  I messed up a little trying to decide what to do, but finally ended up with this.
I think it's adorable!  A little dorky, but hey, who isn't some days!  I still think I need to take the comma off...I forgot to do it before taking the picture.
I'm fairly sure you can do this with CDS or a Gypsy in conjunction with your favorite font from a cartridge...I don't have very many cartridges and MTC offers the ease of using TTF from your computer, which is why I chose to go that route.
Hope you enjoy!

Saturday, January 1, 2011

My Pink Stamper Design Team Challenge!!!

Okay, yes, I decided to do it!  New to the blogging community and all!  Robyn from My Pink Stamper is having a challenge for two spots on her design team.

She stated:
You must have a blog--CHECK
Not be on a conflict of interest design team--CHECK, never been on one!
Project must be new and just for this challenge--CHECK
Cricut--CHECK
Make a project with PINK, GREEN, BROWN and a color of your choice...

I ended up using BLUE and PURPLE for my other color choices...hope that's okay...

Here we go!
 I used my new Green Cricut Expression to cut the turtle, from Four Legged Friends, at 2" with green, purple, and brown DCWV cardstock and Colorbok pink glitter paper.  
I used the Classic Font cartridge to cut Shake Your Shell at 1".  
I did something a little crazy for a beginner, I guess, to cut the phrase.  I put a 3.5" X 5.5" piece of blue paper on my mat and used CDS to weld each letter together within the frame of the paper (I know you can put a rectangle on the screen but I didn't bother finding a rectangle on a cartridge to use...I probably should have...) 
This is what I got on my first cut!  Yay, me!
Then I put the blue paper onto my brown card that's 4" X 6" and had to glue all the little inside cuts into the right spots.  It was really fun to do, but you can't really see the technique from the picture.
I think it would be really fun to be on a Design Team.  I think it would put my creativity to the test!
Go ahead...I know you want to...Shake Your Shell!!!

First Time Blogger!

Yeah, I'm a little pathetic I guess...I have wanted to create a blog for a while, but finally decided to bite the bullet and do it today.  I've not been paper crafting for very long, but it seems to be taking over my mind a lot lately, so maybe having a blog will help drive me to make some of the projects I just think about!  Here's a bit about how I came to paper crafting.

I have made many cakes for people in the past year, and one day I saw the Cricut Cake...yes, Provocraft, you had me at Hello!

This thing was amazing!  I knew of the Cricut machines but never knew it could help me make cakes.  I have very few cookie cutter things and this machine seemed to be heaven sent to cut anything I could ever want it to.  So, yes, I twisted my, then, fiance's hand and got one.  I waited a few months after the release and read many reviews about how awesome and horrible this machine was, but once I got mine I was a kid in a candy store!!!  I was afraid I was going to get frustrated and angry after hours of trial and error, but I made good cuts after about two tries!

After seeing how easy it was to cut with a Cricut, I begged my sister to let me borrow her baby paper bug, so I could practice with paper--much less mess and time.  OMG!  Yes, I said it!  How did I not give this thing a chance when my sister first bought it!  It was wonderful!  You just press what you want and cut...I'm sure you know all of this, but really, I didn't!

So about six months have passed since I got my first Provocraft product, the Cricut Cake, and discovered paper crafting with a borrowed baby bug and I'm hooked.  My mother bought me a Green Cricut Expression from Wal-Mart's Black Friday sale for Christmas and I'm loving every minute of it!

With-in these six months I've also discovered the Make-the-Cut program and have used it just as much, if not more, than Cricut's Design Studio, and have recently found Lettering Delights through Under A Cherry Tree's blog.  Her blog is really great, and I can't wait to buy some of the SVGs on Lettering Delights to try with MTC.

I'm hoping to post a variety of crafts on this page...I've not tried a lot with my Cricut yet, but I have a lot of cake photos I can post to maybe fill out this blog on slow crafting weeks.

I'm also wanting to post a blog for My Pink Stamper's Design Team before Wednesday...more about that if I actually do it...