Family Cookbook

     This looks like such a great idea. You create an online cookbook that you can share with family and friends. I know how invaluable this can be with the way families are spread all over the world today. For example I have a son in Florida, daughter in Hawaii, sister in Illinois, nephews in Texas and one in Scotland.

     Over the holidays I saw numerous posts of family members looking for particular recipes from their childhood. The nice part is that they can add in their recipes as well. I think I am going to give this a try since this special only lasts a few more weeks a it would make a great Mothers' Day or, if you are like me, get a jump start on Birthday or (dare I say it) Christmas present. This is one idea I had wanted to do for presents this past year but I ran out of time. Maybe if I start now with this I could possibly get a jump start. We'll see, lol. If you are interested in this book all you have to do is click the picture above for the details. Hope you find this a fun project to do. 

Ben's Spoon

     Today I had a visit from 6 of my grandchildren. They range in age from almost 8years to 21 months. We had a lot of projects to do. Mainly Ben had a project to do for his pre school (he's 5).He was given a wooden spoon which he had to decorate with a picture of him either as he is today or what he wants to be when he grows up. Ben wants to be a policeman. I had a great idea right away.
     Since all the kids are fascinated with my Cricut, we pulled out Paper Dolls Everyday and got to work. This is what we came up with:

     Isn't he cute! We started by cutting the paper doll blackout @ 9". All the layers were cut @ relative size. The policeman outfit is located on page 59. I did use the CCR to weld the hat to the body shape and cut that out twice in black to have a sturdy background. After taking a picture of Ben I must admit that the hardest part of this project was getting the right size face to match the body,lol. I eventually wound up printing it at 25% view after cropping the face. I had to cut of the excess of the Paper Doll outline to match Ben's portrait. 

It also took about 10 photos to get one where his tongue stayed in his mouth! 

     I just added some real buttons to the shirt front and cuffs.

         They had to clearly mark their name to the back of the spoon so I used a sharpie. The whole "policeman" was adhered to the spoon using glue dots and ribbon.

     Now he has a serious policeman face! He was so happy with the outcome. The children will have these displayed as art projects for their schools spaghetti supper. The hardest part is that he cannot show this to the other students until then.

     Now just in case you want to know what my daughters did with the youngest ones while I was working on the project:

     They were giving them a bath! Cecilia and Charlie, what a pair!!! Hope you enjoyed Ben and my project

don't be afraid to leave a comment. 'Til next time, Mary

Shrinky Dink Heart Checkers

http://mycricutcraftroom.blogspot.com/

       Welcome all my new followers! For Imagination Monday the design team must use either an Imagine, CCR or the Expression 2. I love to use my Imagine to choose my background papers as well as the Imagine More cart. Last week I showed you how to make a card for a guy using the Vintage Papers cart and to make chess pieces. This week I went a step further and used the same cart but chose the checker board paper and shrinky dink material!

     First I started with a basic shape from Imagine More cart and then edited to add the checker board background cut @ 3.75". I also cut a solid piece of charcoal card stock @ 4". I inked all the edges with Black soot distress ink and adhered to a 4.25" base for my easel card.

     Now for the hearts. You can use any heart shape that you have on your carts. I measured the square to see what size I needed to end up with. When using shrinky Dink material you need to cut it 3x bigger than you need since it shrinks down 2/3 of what you need. I cut my hearts @ .75" so I ended up about .25". They fit perfect! This is the settings I used however depending on which machine you use, you may have to make some adjustments: Deep cut blade @ 6, speed 3, pressure 5 and multicut x 2. I did use my E2 and was very pleased with how smooth it cut.

     The black hearts are cut from black material and the "white" were cut from cream color and then inked with Festive Berries distress ink. All I had left to do was add a sentiment with a Hero Arts stamp.

     I hope you all have a wonderful Valentines Day. Now by sure to pop back over to Erica's @

http://mycricutcraftroom.blogspot.com/ to see what the rest of the team has to show you.