Vinyl Tiles Make Great Gifts

Well I'm finally getting around to posting all the Vinyl tiles I made for Christmas gifts this year. Was the Christmas Holiday a wild whirlwind for anyone else? Sheesh! Anyhow, I'm posting all the designs with quick info and downloadable .gypsy files for those who are interested. (REMEMBER! If you are a CDS user you can convert these .gypsy files to .cut files.) Thank you so much for looking and please leave your comments. I love to read them! :)

Here's a picture of all of the tiles I created on their picture stands:



AWFUL BEAUTIFUL LIFE:

This tile was for a friend of mine. It's main line to the chorus of Darryl Worley's song "Awful Beautiful Life". If you're not familiar, the line goes "I love this crazy, tragic, sometimes almost magic, awful, beautiful life."


On this particular tile I placed the saying a little high but it was too late to fix it. The high placement is luckily not as noticable when it's on its stand.
Cartridges used: Lyrical Letters, Mickey Font, Old West, Opposites Attract, Printing 101 & Simply Sweet.

Click here to download the .gypsy file used

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FAITH


Cartridges used: Cursive 101, Home Accents, Lyrical Letters & Pagoda

Click here to download the .gypsy file used

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FAMILY HEARTSTRINGS


Cartridges used: Jasmine, Simply Sweet & Sweethearts

Click here to download the .gypsy file used

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A HOUSE IS - A HOME IS


Cartridges used: Home Decor, My Community & Simply Sweet

Click here to download the .gypsy file used

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LIVE, LAUGH, LOVE

I ended up placing the saying a little too low on this one. In hindsight I would have started the Live, Laugh, Love set of letters higher so that the "much" didn't end up so low. It cuts in front of that word when on the stand so it's not ideal. When cutting this one, I just opened the first page and deleted the LLL part and cut the small words, then reopened the file, deleted the small words and cut the big ones. That way I could use 2 different colors of vinyl but keep the spacing. Again, this is a tight fit and be sure to hold your letters over the tile and perfect the placement before laying it down (or simply resize the saying if you prefer).



Cartridges used: Opposites Attract & Serenade

Click here to download the .gypsy file used

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STAND TALL

This one I made special for my Sister-in-law and her 3 kids. I knew she would appreciate one that had a message/saying that spoke to her children and I found this fabulous silouette with 2 girls and a boy (her children exactly) so I had to use it!



Cartridges used: A Child's Year, Gypsy Font & Lyrical Letters

Click here to download the .gypsy file used

Gypsy Spot Challenge Week #5 -- Christmas Bags & Boxes

This week's challenge was to create a Christmas bag or box. I chose to create something VERY simple as I intend to use them for friend and neighbor gifts and if they are too detailed they become somewhat impractical since I need to make alot of them.

Click here to download the Gypsy cut file used.

I used the popcorn box from TBBM and dressed it up with a sweet little panda cut from the new Pagoda cartridge. I tried a few different santa hats on the panda but didn't like them so I decided to go with a sweet little holly embellishment instead. The holly is cut from Winter Woodland and dressed up with red stickles.

I wrapped homemade caramel corn in cellophane, turned it upside down and then strung a ribbon through the side cuts and tied on top. I also inked the edges of the box and the holly for a little touch. Again, this is a SUPER simple box, but sometimes simple is good right? Haha. I'll keep telling myself that.

I'm linking the caramel corn recipe for anyone who is interested.
http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Caramel-Popcorn/Detail.aspx
This caramel corn tastes amazing and is SO cheap and easy to make. I use www.allrecipes.com for all of my recipe searches because it's fabulous and there are so many helpful reviews. I chose to try this one because it had over 1000 reviews and was still 5 stars so I thought it was a good bet. I was right, it turned out fab!

Thanks for stopping by!

Gypsy Spot Challenge Week #4 -- Snow Time

This week's challenge was anything that incorporated snowmen or snowflakes. I chose to use both. I had seen this super cute quotation about snowmen on a greeting card made by a member of the cricut messageboards. I LOVED the saying when I saw it and then when I found out this week's challenge I knew I had to use it. I also wanted to try my hand at vinyl tiles because I want to make some for Christmas gifts this year.

I originally designed it on my Gypsy but had to move it to Design Studio for cutting because Gypsy decided she didn't want to work for a little while so I am providing BOTH cut files.

Click here to download the Gypsy cut file.

Click here to download the Design Studio cut file.

I used two different styles of font from the Lyrical Letters cartridge and welded them together on my Gypsy. Lyrical Letters is my FAVORITE font cartridge by FAR! Then I used When It's Cold Outside (seasonal mini cart) for the snowflakes and Snow Friends (seasonal mini cart) for the snowman.

This was SUPER easy to make and turned out just like I'd hoped. On my original cricut expression, I usually use a blade depth, speed and pressure of 2 when cutting vinyl but I recently purchased one of the new colored expressions from walmart and noticed that I had to use 3's all around instead. I believe this is due the the fact that the blade housing on the newer one is plastic as opposed to metal and it seemed to require a bit more pressure. I could be wrong, it's possible that it was just the vinyl I was working with but nevertheless, I ended up using a blade depth of 3, speed 3, pressure 3 for this one in particular. You may have to test your vinyl before hand on a simple shape and a few letters to get familiar with what settings will be best for you. The ultimate goal is to achieve a "kiss cut" meaning that you cut the vinyl cleanly without cutting deep enough to pierce through and cut the backing.

Once your vinyl items are cut you will need to "weed" your vinyl. Weeding is just the process of removing the unwanted portions of the vinyl (for example the holes in the middle of the letters, etc). Some people weed their vinyl before putting it on transfer paper and some do it after. I prefer to weed mine before. Once I've weeded the vinyl, I rub transfer paper over the top and peel away the backing slowly. Be sure to check your vinyl as you peel ESPECIALLY when working with delicate letters. If the vinyl is lifting and not adhering to the transfer paper, rub it down a little more and continue to peel.

Once your vinyl expression and/or shapes are on the transfer paper, simply press them to your tile, rub down thoroughly and peel away transfer paper. Vinyl adheres quite nicely to tile so you won't need much effort to get it to stick.

I purchased this glossy black tile block (12x12) at Lowe's and it is resting on a black wooden picture frame holder from Walmart.

As always, if you have any questions, feel free to email me. Enjoy! And thanks for stopping by!

Gypsy Spot Challenge Week #3 -- Shape Cards

This week we took on shape cards. I have to admit I don't do alot of these. I was tempted to weld 2 copies of a shape together and fold it into a card but decided to go a different route by making a sleigh card using the 'flower pot' technique.

Click here to download the Gypsy cut file used.
*Note that this file has 2 pages.

I quickly discovered that all of the sleigh cuts from the cricut cartridges were much too shallow to hold a decent sized note card inside. I decided to use the Gypsy's ability to stretch and manipulate images to make a much deeper sleigh.

I started with the shadow blackout sleigh from Winter Woodland. I determined the width I wanted and then stretched the height until I was satisfied. I glued 2 copies of this together, leaving the top open to be able to insert the card note card piece. I then used some basic rectangles from Plantin Schoolbook and dressed them up with poinsettia cuts from Winter Woodland as well as present and penguin cuts from Christmas Cheer. I used white glitter embossing powder on the blades of the sleigh and white flock on the trim piece. My good camera has a dead battery and I've yet to find the charger so the pictures didn't turn out real great but anyway, you get the idea.

I used an MS punch to make one corner of the note card fancy but later regretted it. In the future I would have left it unaltered to allow for more writing space. Despite the manipulation of the sleigh, the nature of this shape card is still very limited in writing space and the corner punch only furthered that.

Thank you for looking. Enjoy!

LYRICAL LETTERS WINNER!

CONGRATULATIONS TO MISTY for winning the Christmas in November Cartridge Giveaway!

Misty said...
WOWOOOOOO My eyes BULGED at all that! Congrats to you! I think its awesome that you are sharing the gift! Tis the season... I would LOVE to win this cart as well! I think it is awesome, and its on my list for the hubby and kids to get me!

November 11, 2009 5:11 AM


Please pm me on the cricut messageboards with your mailing address so I can send this cartridge to you first thing in the morning!

Wow 201 entries in the drawing! Thank you so much to everyone who participated and for all the kind words you shared! Thank you for those of you who are now following my blog and I hope to bring you lots of great projects as well as more fantastic giveaways!

Happy Thursday & Happy Scrappin! ~Jenn

Christmas in November

THEY'RE HERE! THEY'RE HERE! THEY'RE HERE!

It was truly Christmas in November last night when I opened up the box of cartridges I received from the Gypsy Challenge. I was as giddy as a kid on any Christmas morning and bouncing off the walls! (My poor husband.)

In the spirit of this fun and exciting time, I'm giving away one of the duplicate cartridges I received. I picked this particular cartridge to give away because it is one of my FAVORITES and I think it's a little under-acknowledged as one of the best font cartridges PC has ever released.



So I'm giving away Lyrical Letters, still in the packaging to one lucky winner. All you have to do to enter is leave a comment on this post. I will be drawing the winner on Thursday morning! Good luck!

Oh and feel free to become a follower if you'd like to!!! ~Jenn

Gypsy Spot Challenge Week #2 - Thanksgiving Recipe Card Gift Box

For this week's welding challenge I used a simple notecard box from the Wild Card cartridge and welded the word "Thanks" from Gypsy Wanderings in the center. I also used little pilgrim cuts form PDDU to dress it up. These notecard boxes could be given to your Thanksgiving dinner guests, containing recipe cards for the dishes you made. A simple but cute little favor.

Click here to download the gypsy cut file used.

Cut file also includes a frame from Wild Card that I cut out and used to back the opening of the box.

**Please note that when you weld a cut that normally includes scoring marks with another cut, the scoring marks disappear. For me, I prefer it that way, as I think scoring marks tend to stick out funny and make the project look less finished. If you're a person who needs the scoring marks, you may not want to use this file. I used my new Martha Stewart scoring board to do this box and I referenced my Wild Card manual to see where the scoring lines should occur.

Feel free to comment or email me with any questions you may have. Thanks for looking!

Gypsy Spot Challenge Week #1 - "Owl My Love" Card

Today is the FIRST challenge for the Gypsy Spot blog and I am so excited to be a designer! This week we were asked to use a cut from Gypsy Font or Gypsy Wanderings. I chose to use both as BOTH of these cartridges are just LOADED with great artwork! Gypsy Font and Gypsy Wanderings are the two on board cartridges that come pre-loaded on each and every Gypsy. Each cartridge features beautiful, whimsical artwork and great creative features as well!

I decided to go with the owl as the central cut on this card. I just LOVE owls! I cut the owl from the Gypsy Wanderings cartridge both in regular and in shadow. I then cut the "O" from Gypsy Font using the "Monogram" & "Monogram Shadow" features. I really like the Monogram style on the G Font cart because it reminds me so much of the way that classic fairytales would start with those big huge swirly fancy letters.

The 'my love' is cut from the standard Gypsy font and welded together. I used prima flowers, ribbon, buttons and glitter to finish it all off.

Thanks for stopping by and be sure to become a follower both on this blog AND at The Gypsy Spot! Happy crafting!

Gratitude

I got extremely good news on Friday when I learned that I had won my category for the Gypsy Challenge. I want to thank each and every one of you who voted for me and encouraged me! I will be receiving 50 free cartridges and I cannot WAIT! I am extremely thankful for the opportunity to have participated in this contest.

SO many incredible projects were submitted and if you have not had a chance to look at them, I would encourage you to do so here. So many entries were crafted from a LONG day of labor and love and they certainly deserve loads of attention and praise.

I am honored to be surrounded by so many incredible men and women and their creative skills and passions! Thank you SO much for all that you have taught me and continue to teach me.

~Jenn

Gypsy Contest

So I did it!! I BARELY made it in time but I DID get to submit my entry for the 24 hour Gyspsy contest.

CLICK HERE to vote for my project!!!
Or simply copy and paste this link into your web browser: http://www.cricut.com/gypsy/designchallenge/entries.aspx?did=280

This link will take you straight to my entry and all you do is click the "vote" button. You may only vote one time per computer and voting will close at midnight on Wednesday, October 28th, 2009. PLEASE FEEL FREE TO EMAIL THIS LINK TO ANY FRIENDS OR FAMILY WHO MIGHT BE WILLING TO GIVE ME A "CLICK" AND FEEL FREE TO POST THIS LINK TO YOUR FACEBOOOK, TWITTER OR ANY OTHER SOCIAL NETWORK.

For those of you who may not be familiar, the Gypsy is a handheld device that you pair with a Cricut Personal Diecutting machine in order to design and create paper crafting items, quilting designs, cake stencils and so on and so forth. The Gypsy is a new machine and Provo Craft (makers of Gypsy and Cricut) teamed up with Michaels crafts to host a 24 hour Gypsy challenge. We were given 24 hours to create a crafting item (within given contest guidelines) and post it under one of the given categories. I chose DIY wedding for my category. I love making paper flower arrangements and I wanted to show that you could make beautiful centerpieces that are still budget friendly.

I didn't get as much free time in the 24 hour window as I had hoped and it didn't turn out QUITE as I'd imagined but I was pleased to have participated and still have my fingers crossed for the outcome!

Directions are listed in my entry. Feel free to comment or email me if you have any questions or would like any tips on how to create your own paper flower arrangement.

3D Pumpkin Card

A friend of mine recently created a miniature 3D pumpkin and I fell in love with the concept right away. She mentioned finding it on the cricut message boards and after doing a little checking, I believe the original idea post came from this blog: http://happileighscrappin.blogspot.com/2009/09/fall-fun.html.

I was thinking of making these to use as placecard holders for a family dinner coming up in October but I really wanted to play around and see what else I could use them for. I decided to create them only halfway, leaving a flat surface to attach to a beautiful fall card and this was the result.

For Cricut users: I used the scalloped oval cut from the Storybook cart ("W" button using the Accent/Blackout feature). These are cut at 1 1/2 inches. The leafy cuts are from Storybook as well ("3" button using the Fancy Corner feature)and are also cut at 1 1/2". You simply ink the edges, fold the ovals in half (long ways for the tall pumpkin and short for the shorter one) and attach them to each other. I used 7 ovals each on these pumpkins. For the stems I just folded small scraps of brown paper together.

The sentiment was welded in CDS and is cut at 1 1/2 inches using the 'Loop Dee Loo' feature from Lyrical letters.

Bouquet Gift

This is just a little arrangement I made. My mom wanted a gift for a friend who just accomplished a big goal so this is what I came up with for her.



I didn't want to do the flowers on both sides so I just black backed them so you didn't see the big glops of hot glue on the backs.

Black & White Pooh Series

I just wanted to make some cards using the Pooh & Friends cartridge that had a little different look to them than usual. I liked how they turned out.

My First Diaper Cake - Lil Prince

So this summer I ventured into the fun and fabulous world of Diaper Cakes! I've seen people make these so many times and I finally had not one, but TWO excuses to try them out! I looked up lots of pictures and directions from others and then braved the baby section of walmart for supplies. (Having no children of my own I can confidently say that picking out the diapers was BY FAR the hardest part of this creation -- the sheer volume of options made me dizzy.)

My first diaper cake was for my friend and neighbor April who was having a boy. I really didn't want to do the traditional blue colors so I copied a great idea from the cricut messageboards to do a "little prince" theme using frogs. Green is a great color and it ended up working beautifully on the cake. (I even found green baby wash and matching lotion for the center -- I think it was like a cucumber melon flavor or something like that.)

I used white hair bands to hold the rolled diapers. Most directions called for rubber bands but that seemed 'icky' to me so I ditched that idea.

For cricut users: I used NA for the stork, baby and frogs. Letters are from Pooh Font, the crowns on the frogs are from PD and the grass around the base is from Zoobaloo.

Baby Pooh Diaper Cake - Phases

So this is the 2nd diaper cake I made. It was for a friend of mine having her 2nd girl. I didn't want to do the traditional colors (once again) so I decided to do a Baby Winnie The Pooh theme with yellow and brown. It turned out pretty cute.

On this one, I took pictures of each phase of the cake. When I first went to make a diaper cake, I found lots of pictures of finished cakes and lots of explanations but I'm such a visual person and wished I could have seen it in phases so I knew if I was doing it right.

On the base I attached flower cuts that were folded in half to sort of imitate the frosting edge look of a normal cake. These diaper cakes were both SO much fun to make and SO easy.

Mother's Day

Happy Mother's Day!!

This year I decided to keep it simple for Mother's Day. My mom is so hard to shop for so I just made her a little customized present. I bought a simple vase from Hobby Lobby and etched Bee images all over it. She likes bees as a symbol and I thought it was cute for something you tend to put flowers in. :) I used the bread tag cut of a bee from Walk In My Garden and etching cream per the instructions on the bottle. It turned out quite nicely.



I made her card with a cute little fairy cut from Hello Kitty Font and a sentiment from Wild Card.



In lieu of a bow, I dressed up her present with paper roses. I got the paper rose idea from the Cricut messageboards (surprise!) and I just LOVE them! These are my interpretation of Susan's design here: http://susanbluerobot.blogspot.com/2008/09/how-to-make-paper-roses.html. I used the cut seen below from Accent Essentials and incorporated the same method's used on Susan's website.



I made three different sizes and hot glued them together on the top of the package. I also used a few dots of hot glue to keep her card in place with the roses. She loved them.

Graduation Bouquet

My Sister-In-Law graduated from University 2 days ago and I wanted to make her a special little congratulations gift. The flowers were done with Accent Essentials, Kitty Grad from Hello Kitty Greetings & sentiment from Teardrop. She seemed to really like it and I was pleased with how it turned out.

Birthday Bouquet

My Grandma celebrated her 81st birthday on the 30th of April and we had a special surprise party for her. I created this bouquet as a centerpiece for the food buffet and for her to take home afterward.

It was SO much fun to create and I was very pleased with how it turned out. Accent Essentials was used for the flowers, Walk In My Garden for the butterfly, Home Accents for the bird and Zoobaloo for the sentiment. The mixed greenery was from both HA and AE as well. I did the flowers 3D on both sides and blackout backed the non dimensional images so they looked pleasing from all sides.

Back to Scrappin'

Ok so I've been on a bit of sabbatical with my scrapping projects. I think I've been in sort of a winter fog/funk and the sunshine and somewhat Spring-like weather has given me energy and made me want to get back to it!

So here are a few projects I've done recently & I hope to be posting many more in the weeks to come!

VERY SIMPLE SPRING BOUQUETS:
(This is a little project I posted on the Cricut message boards & it became a featured post in the Chirp Newsletter! 15k hits! Wow that's never happened to me, it was so much fun!)


Here is the info from my message board post in early March:

My husband's immediate family gets together every month to have dinner together and celebrate any birthdays, anniversaries etc for the month. Buying birthday gifts for all the adults is just too expensive (there's only 4 kids so that's still manageable) so I decided this year that I was just going to start dressing up candy to give away. It's the thought and effort that counts imo anyway. So I wanted to do some quick candy bouquets but didn't have time to get valentine themed items for February before they were all gone. By the time I went to the store they only had Easter stuff so I went with a springy look.

It's a little early but they loved them so oh well haha. I used m&m's in these little .97 vases from walmart and hershey kisses in the centers of the flowers. I had to put these together on the fly so I didn't get to do alot of details.

I used the Accent Essentials cartridge for the flowers. AE is my 'go to' cartridge and my most used, hands down. I used the shadow feature for the bottom layer of the flower (what appears to be the outline) and then made the same cut again, in a different color of paper, using the same size selection, but without the "shadow" feature being selected. I believe that I cut the bigger flowers at 4 inches and the smaller at 3.... but I can't remember for sure. I put the inner layers of all the flowers through my cuttlebug, using the swiss dots folder and it gave them a nice little touch.

I just used wooden skewers from the grocery store for the stems. I have seen other bouquets using straws or paper wrapped wire stems from the floral department, but I personally felt like skewers would stand up the strongest in the m&m's. I used hot glue to adhere the flowers to the skewers (I prefer hot glue as other adhesives don't always stand the test of time + gravity with the weight of the kisses). After the hot glue had cooled, I adhered the kisses to the fronts of the flowers with large, flat, glue dots. I cut the stems down to accomplish the different heights and arranged the flowers in my m&m's.

These are genuinely very simple and easy to make. I made these four in about 30 mins.

ALTERED NOTEBOOKS:

(This was another little project that I posted on the message boards. Here is all the info from that post.)

I was given these altered post-it notes by a friend:

I loved the concept of the velcro dots and decided to take to a slightly bigger level. My mom needed some cute altered notebooks to give to some colleagues at a conference so this is what I came up with. I bought miniature legal pads at Walmart (3 to a pack for a little under $3).

I made a larger pattern for the cover. For the center, I cut out a chipboard shape, then covered with paper and stamping/inking and attached with pop dots on one side a velcro dot on the other.

ALTERED COOKIE SHEET:

I recently learned about altering cooking sheets to use as magnetic boards in the kitchen. This is the first one I did. It was fun and insanely easy. I bought a 3 pack of cookie sheets from Walmart for only $3. I based the colors off of the cute brown and pink ribbon that I found and it took off from there. I bought simple round magnets and decorated those up to match. These are SO fun and make GREAT inexpensive gifts!