Love Blocks

So this is the project that drove me to cut my own blocks...

Here are the materials:

 

Pictured and not pictured:

• 6 2x2" blocks, which as I discussed are actually 1.5"x1.5"
• Various squares of paper cut to 1.5"x1.5"
• Hearts
• The letters "L", "O", "V" and "E" any way you want... I picked 6 different fonts
• Mod Podge
• Foam brush

And from there is is pretty darn easy... Just put the paper squares on each side of the blocks.

And then the letters... one letter per block, so you've got one block with 6 "L's" and one with 6 "O's" and so on and so on... then add the hearts to the last two blocks and you get this:

 

  

They didn't quite turn out like I expected... but they are growing on me. I decided to go with non-traditional Valentine colors and I'm really happy with that aspect.  

Linking up to Saturday Nite Special at Funky Junk Interiors. 

Failed Candle Holders

So not all projects go as planned, we all know that... figured I'd share one of my failures...

I had high hopes to make these little "love" votive holders. I assembled my materials.

• 4 Glass Votive Holders
• Glass Etching Cream
• Contact paper to use as a stencil
• My cricut to cut the contact paper
• Some red vinyl that I was going to try a little something different with.

So I cut the contact paper and applied it to the votive.

I even burnished down the edges

(Photo by my son, had to use it...)

I then applied the etching cream according to instructions. Which I didn't want to photograph for fear of touching the camera and the etching cream at the same time.

Batch one didn't work out... at all really. I left the cream on the full 5 minutes, thought I had applied it liberally enough, but ended up with spotty results.

Yeah... that is not the look I was going for.

So I reviewed the instructions, and decided that it could have been because they weren't quite clean enough and maybe I didn't apply the etching cream liberally enough or leave it on long enough...

I tried again.

I failed again.

Parts turned out better:

But no single votive was even close to being what I wanted.

I might try again... I might not. 

Valentine Gift Bags

So I posted about the little sweet treat boxes the other day.

But those are pretty small... so I've got these bags that I've been decorating that I thought I'd share.

They start as simple brown paper gift bags, I picked up a package of 12 for less than $5 at Micheals. 

Had some shapes left over from a few other projects and I simply glued them onto the bag... couldn't be easier.

 

Sweat Treat Box

Around the holiday's I found this pattern for an adorable little box, I used them for little treats for Bug's teachers but never got a chance to post about them.

I was able to cut this out on my Cricut using Sure Cuts A Lot but I realize if you wanted to, you could print the template out and cut it yourself - it isn't really terribly intricate.

With Valentine's Day coming, I figured it would be fun to make these again.

Here is what I did... First, cut out the box on red card stock.

Then I scored it at the folds and selected some shapes in white to glue onto the box.

Glued the shapes on and assembled the box.

Tucked a few treats inside:

 

And here is our Sweat Little Treat Box...

 

Love Love Love...

I really don't do too much seasonal decorating aside from a WHOLE lot at Christmas, a little for the Fall and maybe a touch of something for Spring.

But there is something about having kids that has made me want to celebrate a little more, give more attention to the other holiday's and changes of the seasons.

I found these great vases as AC Moore a couple of weeks ago, they were just $2 each. And of course I forgot to take a before picture... but I've got 5 of them and this is just one project so hopefully I'll get a before at some point.

So, a little red vinyl...

Cut on the Cricut...

Turns into this:

 

And if I want, at the end of Valentine's I can just peal the Vinyl back off and do whatever else I want with it, or tuck it away to celebrate with next year.

Linking up to Make Your Monday & Saturday Nite Special.

Letter Plates

I gave you a sneak peak of these last week...

We've got a plate rack in our dinning room that was a gift from my husband for our first Christmas in this house. Throughout the year I put different plates in it depending on the season, here is what we do at Christmas:

But I don't have any plates that we just generally use that aren't seasonally specific. I decided I wanted to do something with my cricut... I thought I wanted to do each of our monograms, there were room for 4 plates, we have 4 people. Perfect.

Until I started working with the monograms and just didn't like the way they were turning out.

But then I decided to just do our first initials because the monograms had so many common letters but our first names are all different. I created the artwork in illustrator and saved the file as an SVG to open in Sure Cuts A Lot and then cut with black vinyl on the cricut.

Here are the materials I started with:

Pictured are:

• My cricut expression
• Netbook with Sure Cuts A Lot software
• 12"x24" matte for the cricut
• 4 dinner plates
• 12"x24" sheet of black vinyl.
• Contact paper to transfer the vinyl from the backing paper, to the plate
• Cricut tools including a spatula to lift the cut vinyl and a popsicle stick to burnish.

Step 1 was to open the file I created in Illustrator into Sure Cuts A Lot.

 Step 2 - Cut the Vinyl and then remove the portion that you do not want to transfer to the plate.

Step 3 - Cut a piece of contact paper and place on top of the letters and then use the popsicle stick to burnish over the letter to help get them stuck to the contact paper and give up the backing paper.

Step 4 - Gently pull up the contact paper making sure all the vinyl letters come with you. If not, put the contact paper down and burnish again.

Step 5 - Position the contact paper with the cut letters over top of the plate and then burnish over the letters again.

Step 6 - Peel up the contact paper and you've got yourself a decorative* plate!!!

Here is the plate rack with the finished collection of plates:

And close ups of each of our plates:

 

 

 

I'm beyond thrilled with how these have turned out and I really enjoyed the process of making them... I'm toying with the idea of refining my process and selling them. You may notice that I still have a lot to learn. Some of the fonts I picked really didn't work with some of the letters and I had to pull them off... but not one else, well, except you - know that.

*note, these are DECORATIVE plates, they shouldn't be used to eat off of, serve food from, submerged in water or put in the dish washer. 

B Collection

A couple of months ago, in a magazine I've long since misplaced, I saw a wonderful idea - they had filled a large vase with letters of the same color (white) and style...

I loved the idea but had to make it our own just a bit, by going with only the letter "B" - our last initial and going with every style and color we can find. Our collection is still growing, but I'm really happy with the way it has come together.

Excuse the clutter in the background... Yikes, that is rather embarrassing, but not embarrassing enough to actually go clean it up and retake the picture. 

To Cricut or not to Cricut, that is the question.

So - the Cricut.

Do I want one?

Do I need one?

Decisions, decisions. I've heard there are going to be some pretty good black Friday deals on the Cricut
Expression. I've been tempted by this machine and what I've seen people do with it for years. But couldn't justify the money. But at what seems like be almost half price, and knowing what it can do... I'm tempted.


Very tempted.


Stay tuned.

Some Dreams...

Ok - so I'll be the first to admit, this project is a bit on the mushy side. But it is for our master bedroom and if there is any room in the house where you shouldn't be afraid to go mushy, it is the bedroom.

I wanted a sign to go over our bed. Something romantic, but not overly so. Lets face it - we aren't really the romantic type. We went to Disney on our honeymoon...

Being ever budget "aware" and desperate to reduce some of the "junk" we've accumulated over the years, I decided to just grab some of the scrap wood we have in the garage. The only issue, it was already stained, nothing some sandpaper couldn't handle.

Ta-daaaah

Next up: Paint.  I picked 3 colors, a brown for the base, cream for the 2nd coat and a soft green as the top coat.

And here is where I stopped taking pictures. I'm still getting the hang of this...

But I can talk about what came next. I wanted the sign to have age, character... so I roughed it up a bit prior to adding the words. Then, I printed out my quote to use as a reference for my lettering. I'm really happy with the way it turned out.

Here is a close up of the detail:

You may wonder why there are 2 pieces of wood, having not done this before, I wasn't sure how it would turn out. Figured it was easier to make 2 as I went along than to start over if I messed up along the way. As luck would have it, I got it right the first time. So now I've got a roughed up green/cream/brown piece of wood and nothing to do with it.

BOO!

Given the fact that it is November, I bet that really scared you.

Ok, so this is late. About a month late.

I ran out of time to blog about this, but I didn't think that made it un-blog-worthy.

These are just simple wooden letters from Michaels, I painted them black and then decopaged a bunch of different Halloween papers onto them. Some of the scenes I die cut, others I just threw on there. As a final touch, I sanded around the edges.

And even though it is November, I've still got them up on the mantel. Halloween may be over, but I just love this "BOO"