A different way to give a gift...

 

Several of you guessed correctly about the vinyl photo I posted a couple of days ago.  The letters spelled out "Happy Birthday Cailean" and they were part of a project I did to present a gift in an unusual way.

When we were shopping for the lights for my craft room I saw these plastic tubes.  They are meant to be used as safety guards for four foot florescent lighting tubes.  They cost just a few dollars.  I looked at them and got an idea for my seven year old neighbor's birthday - why not give her four feet of little gifts in the tube and decorate it with her name?

My first thought was to fill the tube with wrapped candy but then I thought four feet of candy might not be something her parents would approve of! I decided to buy her lots of hair clips, bands and ponytail holders, along with some nail polish and a few lollipops.  The main qualification was that they had to be gifts that would fit inside the tube.

I set up the file to cut the words using the Gypsy and the Alphalicious cartridge.  First I spelled out the entire phrase but I found it was tricky to ungroup and move every other letter and keep them lined up evenly to conserve the vinyl.  I discovered that the quickest way for me to set up the cut was to say the letters out loud and make two groups - first the odd numbers and then the even numbers. 

I then had all of the correct letters to spell out the word in alternating colors and they were in a nice line.  I only needed two pieces of 2 inch by 12 inch vinyl for the entire project.  I added a few hearts and flowers to fill up the piece of vinyl.

I put a piece of blue painter's tape on the tube to help keep the letters straight and worked from the center out to the sides.

Then all I had to do was to place the extra hearts and flowers at the ends.

I wrapped up the little gift items in white or colorful tissue paper.  I used the white pieces in the center section so the letters would stand out and be easy to read.  It was a little tricky to move the gifts down the tube but a long broom handle helped to push them into place.

It is not easy to get a photo of the entire tube - these might help you see how it worked (you can click them to make the image larger). I tied some fancy ribbons around both ends - to decorate the tube and for Cailiean to use for other projects.

The gift was a hit - here Cailean is showing the emptied tube which was nearly as tall as she is!

We also made a pretty cake together - from the Once Upon A Princess cartridge.

Here are a few tips that I learned for the next time I try this...

*The items should be things that will slide right through the tube - the soft hair bow elastics were a bit too large for the diameter of the tube and tended to get stuck!
*Instead of wrapping the items in white tissue paper and trying to make them meet in the center it would probably be better to roll up a large piece of white paper and slip it inside behind the words as a liner.
*If the items are "stuck" you can tap the tube on a carpeted floor until they work their way down to the end of the tube.

It is always fun to try to think of ways to use products in a different way.  I don't think that the makers of these tubes thought they would be gift holders at some time!


If you try this, I'd love to see pictures and hear how it worked out for you.  Have a great weekend!


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Happy Fourth of July!

It looks like we will have a hot day to celebrate the Fourth of July - our fingers are crossed that the rain stays away so we can enjoy the Picnic in the Park.  This photo is from last year's bike and stroller parade - it's always fun to see the decorations and watch the kids go by!

Saturday we had a nice time with our nephew Scott.  He spent the day with us (Aunt Diane Camp) while his parents took his older brother and sister to their summer camp.  They all have grown a lot since last year.  We took a photo in the front yard (in the same spot as last year) to help keep track of how the twins are growing up.  They are now at camp in Maine for a couple of weeks.

 We had all sorts of plans for the day - at the top of the list was making a  Harry Potter "Hogwarts" castle.  There is no Harry Potter Cricut cartridge (I bet that would be popular!) but there is a great 3D castle on the "Once Upon a Princess" cartridge.  I set up a file on the Gypsy to cut the castle as large as possible on 12 x 12 cardstock (without separating sections that are already on the same key).   The height of 8 1/2 inches worked perfectly for this castle.  You could make it even larger by hiding lines and moving sections around on the mat.

Scott very quickly caught on to the process of loading, controlling the cut with the Gypsy and taking the pieces off the mat.  It took seven pieces of 12 x 12 cardstock (three light gray, three dark gray and one green) to cut all of the pieces we needed.

 

We used the 12 x 24 inch mat so we could cut more pieces at the same time.   All of the pieces fit on 12 x 12 cardstock but the roof key was a tight fit.  It looked like we would run into the "uncuttable" area of the mat so I shifted the paper to the one inch mark on the 12 x 24 mat and had no problems with the cut.  (This is a handy trick for things that almost fit.  I also could have turned the set of images on the diagonal but by simply shifting the paper and keeping the image straight I ended up with a more useful "scrap" piece).

There is a lot of scoring and folding to do but the directions in the handbook are easy to follow.  I thought the construction was very clever and well thought out - you couldn't really make a mistake if you looked carefully at the images in the book and had everything lined up the same way.  This is the interior section of the castle.

The tabs that hold the sections together are made to look like shields and fit into the design nicely.  The last stage is a little tricky and having two pairs of hands was helpful.  We started out using the Martha Stewart Score Board but switched to the Scor-Pal because it was easier to see the lines that we needed to follow.

Here is the bird's eye view of the castle.  We used 1/4 inch and 1/8 inch Scor-Tape for all of the seams and it worked out very well.  The only place that was a little tricky was attaching each green roof to the turrets.  It helped to keep the flaps almost straight so they could connect to the inside of the roof when it was lowered over the top - the space is too small to reach in from below to line up the tabs.

Scott tells me that there is no drawbridge at Hogwarts - you could use "hide contour" and change the doors if you wanted to.

Here is a view of the side and back of the castle.  We were both pleased with the way it turned out.  I thought we might do a second version that Scott could decorate by drawing on it while the pieces were still flat but we ended up going to see Cars 2 in 3D - lots of 3D in our day!  (The movie was great - Scott said it was a "5 star" and it "exceeded my expectations" so I think he really liked it!)

The castle can be decorated after it is assembled but it will be trickier to do any writing or drawing - maybe some stickers will work to personalize the final result.

Once Upon a Princess is an older cartridge and one that I resisted buying for a long time since I have no little girls at home and I really don't like those little people with the upturned arms and pointy feet!  I did get it on sale last Black Friday and now I am very glad to have it.  The castle is great fun to make and can be made (as we did) in different colors to look less girly.  There are lots of the elements for a Princess Party (3D wands, tiaras and crowns, invitations, cute word art, treat bags) in addition to the inevitable cupcakes with smiling faces.  There is also a wonderful teapot shape and the "tag" feature key is full of interesting shapes that layer nicely and are perfect for journaling boxes, as a card front or (cut smaller) for sentiments.

I hope you have a lovely holiday.  If you have a chance to leave comment and a "hi" for Scott that would be great - I think he will be checking the blog to see the photos of our castle.

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Adding Layers to an Image - Angel ATCs

 

When I started to think about the angel Artist Trading Cards (ATCS) I decided that I wanted to use a Cricut cartridge that I hadn't used before.  Quite a few of you answered correctly yesterday that the cartridge I used was "Once Upon a Princess".  I purchased this cartridge during the great sales around Black Friday last year.  I had resisted buying it because I thought the princesses were odd looking with their large heads and legs that ended in stumps instead of feet!

There is so much more to this cartridge than funny princesses - you always have to remember to look through the entire handbook before you judge a cartridge.  (You can find the cartridge handbooks on the Cricut.com site under "Information" and then "Cartridge Library" - here is a LINK).

There is a font (upper case only) and another font with the letters inside crowns.  There is an elaborate 3D castle to build and fabulous shapes for card toppers in the Tag feature.  There is a 3d wand, cute party invitations and envelopes, favor bags and cute layered images (including, of course, cupcakes, but you can leave the faces off!).  There are a lot of outfits for the princesses and many of them can be used on a regular paper doll from one of the paper doll cartridges if you prefer princesses with feet.

There is a gem feature with a nice hexagon and a true 60 degree diamond (something I had been searching for!).  The final "gem" of this cartridge is the phrase feature with cute "girly" sayings and it was in this feature that I found my angel.  I needed to adapt the shape to fit a standard ATC so I placed the base shape on the mat at 2 inches and used the right center handle to change the width to fit the card.

I wanted to use vellum to make the wings on the angel word  so I cut two of the base layers, one in light pink cardstock and one in vellum.  The vellum I was using had a very hard finish and I needed to use multi-cut (3 times) to get a clean cut.  I also wanted the halo on the word angel to be gold so I cut the top layer twice, once in a patterned pink paper and once from metallic gold cardstock (DCWV).

I set up a mat with the top layer repeated 12 times - more than I needed for my cards but I like to have a few "spares" in case something goes wrong with the cut.

 When I cut the top layer in the patterned pink cartridge I hand-trimmed the halo from the word so the gold layer would show when everything was assembled.

 I used a chopstick to help curl up the vellum layer of the wings.  The final image had four layers - twice as many as it was designed to cut (I omitted the shadow layer due to the small space I had in which to work).

To add more interest and help the angel to stand out, I added a strip of white cardstock cut at 1 1/2 x 2 1//2 inches and embossed it with the Japanese Scales Cuttlebug folder from the Asian bundle.  I thought this looked like clouds (as JANLYNN mentioned in her comment yesterday).

I used foam squares to raise the angel up to "fly" on the front of my card.

 When everything was assembled the card still lacked something - I decided it needed just a touch of bling.

So I added a tiny "diamond" to the "a" for a nice finishing touch.

My original intention had been to make a much more traditional and "arty" card - maybe even involving inking and glimmer mist(!).  Since that didn't happen I gave a nod to tradition by using this angel rubber stamp on the back and handwriting in my details.

There were only eight of us in the swap for February which made it easy to cut all of my pieces from single sheets of cardstock.

To save time in cutting the base cards (2 1/2 x 3 1/2 inches), I used this rounded corner square and changed the size in the Shape Properties box.

I hope these cards make my swap partners smile - I think they are cheerful and cute.  Next time I'll go for the "arty" look...

The latest reports say that the snowstorm might miss us - keep your fingers crossed for me please!

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Another Easy Background - Doodlecharms Hearts

I hope you enjoyed all of the Thursday Sweet Treats Team projects on the Cuttlebug Challenge Blogspot- it is an honor to be on a team with such a talented group - and we are just getting started.  I told you that I did a lot of projects with Doodlecharms so I will share those over the next week or so.

Today I have a quick explanation about how I made this heart mesh background using my quick and easy method (I posted a winter snowflake version HERE a few weeks ago).

The Doodlecharms cartridge has a border feature which is very handy for projects like this.  Here you can see the key for the image set I chose highlighted. 

The element is the group of three hearts.  I made a row of four sets and adjusted the size and placement to about eleven inches set in one half inch from the mat edge. 

I copied and pasted  and repositioned rows of hearts to neatly fill up the center of the mat.  When you load the mat to cut the design your machine load may be a bit off (the "human factor") and the calibration tends to be off up to one sixteenth of an inch.  You can do a test cut to determine the small offset needed to perfectly center the group of designs - this will vary from one machine to another and is also affected by the amount of pressure you use when you load your mat).

Here you can see the full mat.  By copying and pasting and simply "sliding " the new images into position using the "vertical move" handle (top center) you can quickly make a perfectly spaced design.

There is an extra page with a 12 x 12 square for previewing the design and trying out various color combinations.

When you lift the mesh from the mat you will have dozens of hearts in three sizes.  It is best to lift the cut slowly and on an angle (peel it back from a corner across the mat).

These cute little hearts will certainly find a home on another project!  Here is the download link for the file.

Heart Pierced Background

One new cartridge was officially announced in the "Hello Thursday" email from Cricut.  It is called "Once Upon a Princess" and it is full of cute images and more 3D items - including a castle fit for a princess!  If you are not signed up to receive emails from Cricut you should definitely get on the list so you will receive these announcements and the weekly newsletter, "The Chirp."

Here is a LINK to the product information page with more information and images and HERE is a link to the PDF of the full booklet.  This is yet another "cute" cartridge - some people will be crazy about it but I suspect that a lot of others will be able to resist.

My blogging friends Joy, Tammy and Melanie are holding a blog hop showcasing this new cartridge.  Click HERE to go to Holidays with the Cricut and then visit each of their blogs for some fun and inspiration (and a chance to win some great prizes).

The Craft and Hobby Association show starts tomorrow - I can't wait to hear all about the new products!


(Our son arrived home from San Francisco safe and sound and the flight was actually early!  We have a lot to do tomorrow to get ready to drive back to college on Saturday - keep your fingers crossed for good weather!)