Creative Sharing Challenge

I have been planning to create a project of this wall for months, and then meant to get really serious about it when the March Cricut Circle Monthly Challenge was to "Create a piece of wall art (canvas, art board, sign, vinyl directly on wall, framed art, shadow box, etc.). Use at least three colors." Still, I waited until the last day, which, of course, was super busy, to get it done.

I had this frame hiding behind the couch in the living room with old pictures in it (old meaning pre-baby #3) so my first step was to update the pictures. This I did about a week and a half ago, and then it sat again. I love the home decor "Live, Laugh, Love" and wanted to incorporate that into my decor. I used gold, silver and white vinyl to cut Fun, Live, Laugh, Hope, Believe, Dream, Love and Friends and placed the cuts in the tallest sections of the frame. I used the CCR to size them. I also, which is very difficult to see, cut green flourishes for the four corners and two long ones down 3rd and 6th line.Then I used the CCR along with the Letter Envy cartridge to get my Family cut, which was cut at 11x23. 

I apologize for the lighting. It is cloudy and gloomy here, and we have windows/doors on either side of the wall that I hung the frame on, and the front door was directly behind me, so I either had the glare from the front door or on the sides (honestly, this is the best of the 9 pictures I took).

Easter Decor

I finally got this Easter decor done. I cut this over a week ago, and then couldn't find the time to finish it until last night after I finished work for the day. I used Word Collage and the CCR to size the cut at 10x10 in the center of the green paper. Then I used scrap paper from my scrap box (which I am sad to say gets paper added far more than it gets taken out - I am not good at remembering my scraps) to fill in the words. The difficult part of this project (the way I do it anyway) is gluing down all of the little pieces from the insides of the letters: the circles in the middle of the O's, P's D's, A's, E's, G's, etc.

I didn't get near as much done as I had hoped for Easter, but my older two decorated a couple of baskets that I cut using the TBBM2 cartridge and they stuck window clings all over the sliding glass door in the back. Oh, well, maybe next year :)

Spring Wreath

Life has been crazy busy the last two weeks and I wasn't able to get into my craftroom until late last night. I have seen multiple wreaths created lately, and so wanted to make one for my house - now I have to figure if I want it in the kitchen or on the front door :)
I am entering this in two challenges:
 Creative Color Challenge over at I Came, I Saw, I Created and

the Weekly Challenge on the Cricut Circle Blog. This weeks challenge is Decorative Letter: Create a scrapbook page, card, home decor item, or other project where you include a word of your choice. One or more of the letters in your chosen word must be replaced by a Cricut shape. For example, replace the letter “o” in the word LOVE with a heart. 

Here's what I came up with:

I took a white foam circle, and covered it with green ribbon. Then I went to work with my Expression 2 cutting out all of the flowers. I used CTMH Art Philosophy and cut the flowers from the following: Banner 1 (3.75, 4, 4.25), Flurdels (3.75, 4, 4.25), Banner 6 (3.75, 4, 4.25), Heart3 (4, 4.25, 4.5) and Tag5 (4, 4.25, 4.5). I inked some of the edges, mostly the white flowers with pink, but also some of the pink and yellow flowers with a brown ink. Then I went to work with stick pins attaching all of the flowers, starting with the large ones and filling in the rest. I used different pins and some had decorative or colored heads, which I used for the white flowers. My next step was to decide on which word to use - I was debating between welcome and spring. Obviously, I went with Spring. I used my Pooh Font cartridge and clipboard for my first layer and then to incorporate the Early Espresso, recut Spring in brown. I decided to make my decorative letters be the S and I. The S is a hose with blue rhinestone "water" spraying out onto my flower I. The rhinestones are attached to a piece of the clamshell containers that the cartridges come in - can't tell you how many I threw away before I realized I could find uses for them, urgh. Ink used is Ranger and the rhinestones are from Doodlebug. Cardstock is mostly American Crafts.
This was a lot of fun, but my fingers sure hurt when I was done attaching all those flowers!

Monkey Invitation

The baby will celebrate his 1st birthday in about a month and as his animal is a monkey (the oldest's animal is puppies, and the middle one has kitties) I used one for his birthday invitation! I usually try to get the invites out about 3 weeks prior to the party, so I have roughly another week to finish them all and get them to the post office. This week's Creative Color Challenge from I Came, I saw, I created is as follows, and worked perfectly for the birthday invitation!

Garden Green RGB: 91, 130, 86

More Mustard RGB: 228, 161, 70

Chocolate Chip RGB: 98, 71, 60

I used American Crafts brown cardstock for the card base and designed and colored the rest using the CCR and my Imagine. I used two different colors of green for contrast on the vines and heat embossed them to give the vines a vinier (is this even a word?) look. I used two layers of vines and pop dotted and curved the leaves, with a petal roller, on the top layer for dimension. I cut a paperclip to attach to the monkey's arm so he "swings" back and forth across the card. Cartridges used: Create a Critter and Art Philosophy. "It's a Party!" stamp from CTMH.

St Patty's Day Decor

As I said previously, I have never been a big St Patrick's Day person. The Word Collage cartridge has made some of my decorating much easier! I love this cart!

I got the idea to use the negative cuts from the Cricut Magazine - sorry, I am not sure which issue, maybe November - and then fill in with different colors or patterns. I have done this for each holiday since Christmas, although the Valentine one wasn't completed until the weekend before Valentine's Day. I really like the way this one turned out - probably helps that my favorite color is green :)

Hope you have a great day!

Color Challenge for the Week of 2/27

Two posts in one day - yikes! Usually I spend my weekends getting caught up on work for the previous week, but last night I stayed up late and finished my time (yeah, me!)
My husband brought the older two to Home Depot this morning for the Build-It workshop, so I got the Leprechaun hats started and then they helped me finish them. This afternoon we convinced them to take a nap, not a usual occurrence here, but since #2 decided that it was morning time at 6:15am and woke everyone up (I went back to bed and let my husband deal with the chaos), I got in some extra crafting time!
This weeks color challenge is:

Tangerine Tango RGB = 243, 107, 67 
Tempting Turquoise RGB = 96, 192, 217
Old Olive RGB = 153, 150, 71


I had left over scraps of Old Olive from last weeks challenge, and then used the Cricut Craft Room to design and color the remaining pieces. I do have to admit, orange is not my favorite color and I was hard pressed to come up with something to make. It hit me on Thursday, while I was working, that I could make Dinosaur decor for my boys' bathroom - dinosaurs are orange, right! We just built our house last spring/summer - we moved in mid-July - so most of the walls are pretty bare, except for some pictures. This is the start of my bathroom decor. I think I will make 2 or 3 more different scenes, put them in frames and hang them above the boys' towel hooks.

I used Create a Critter for the T-Rex and palm trees and Paper Doll Dress Up for the grass. I ran the trees and grass through my cuttlebug, inked the edges a bit, and put it all together. 


Thanks for looking and have a great remainder of your weekend!!

Wearing O’ the Green Challenge!

The current weekly challenge on the Cricut Circle Blog is: Create a pin, necklace, bracelet or something else that you can wear on St. Patrick’s Day that includes the color green.
This is a year of firsts for me - I have never been one to celebrate Valentine's or St Patty's Day. This year I went a little crazy, although there were decorations I wanted to make that I didn't quite get done, so not too crazy.

Anyways, for this week's challenge, I made Leprechaun hats for my boys. I used the Paper Doll Dress Up cartridge to cut the hat, hair and clovers. I made an initial hat with a scrap piece of paper so I could cut out the strap and buckle section to trace and cut out the sections out in black and gold. My older two boys picked out their "hair" and a cuttlebug folder to personalize the hair a bit. I used a piece of 24x12 paper to make bands for the boys' heads and attached all the pieces. I used Tim Holz's tiny attacher to attach the hair, head band and hat together where the band and buckle attach, and then Terrifically Tacky tape to attach the band and buckle (and hide the staples) I have to tell you, I wasn't sure about buying the Tacky tape, but I love it!! I got some as part of a bundle, and have now purchased more in various sizes.

The older two love their Leprechaun hats, although the baby wasn't quite so cooperative about wearing his.