Recycled Crayons

     I thought I'd share a cute project to do with the kids home on winter break, making new crayons! While Mia's older brother was working on the crayon maker machine by Crayola, Mia and I made heart shaped crayons. This is a great project because it takes a while to remove all the wrappers from the old crayons.

     First you need a pan with the mini heart shapes. Next add all your smaller pieces. You can do them all the same color or try making different color combinations. Be sure to place the pan on an aluminum foil liner cookie sheet. You want to preheat the oven to 250 degrees and place on lower rack in oven for 10-15 min or until they are all melted. Turn the oven off and let cool long enough for them to start to harden. This makes it easier to remove the pan with melted crayons from the oven. (Don't ask me how I know, lol).
     Be sure to let them cool until they harden. The directions said you can just pop them out with a knife. WRONG. Ours were not easy to get out. So, I put the broken pieces back in the pan, melted them again etc. When they were set I put the pan in the freezer for about 10 minutes and then just flipped the pan over and they fell right out. So don't throw out those broken crayons, recycle!!!

     How cute are they: Mia and her crayons!!!

Elmo Birthday Tags

     Happy Monday! Today is Imagination Monday and for this weeks project I used the CCR to design my project and the Imagine to print and cut. We have 2 grand nephews that turned 1 year old several weeks apart so I needed to make something to go on the presents. I decided to make tags rather than cards (they have a hard enough time opening gifts with out throwing an envelope at them,lol). I had just gotten my Elmo's Party cart in so thought this would be the perfect project to break in it,  plus the paper I used had Elmo in fire trucks. I love to buy my paper at the Dollar Store and then coordinate the card or tag to go with it!

     First I cut a tag @ 6" using the Imagine cart Nursery Tails and the tag on page 23. When selecting the image I separated the layers and only used the single layer. For the other layers, when you choose edit, you select the color box with the white square and the red line through it. This will make that image "invisible".
     Next I turned to the CCR to layout my Elmos.

     I selected all my layers and edited them to add my own colors. I used All Wrapped Up for my color palette but added the RGB codes that are specific for Elmo. I had Googled "RGB Codes For Sesame Street" and these are the codes I used but you may find other codes out there that are slightly different: Fur Color R238,G64, B53-Nose Color: R244, G 152, B41. The black was from the basic color pallette.

     Above you will find the color wheel where you put the codes in. This is what it looks like before you change the codes.

     Next I worked on the names. You will notice that you can select T for text and a box will pop up. This is awesome! You add all you letters at once and this groups them together for you to work with.

   On the left side of your mat there is all the features you need to play with your text. This is where you change the size and the spacing. One thing I love about this is that it shows you right away when they are welded. In the CDS and Gypsy you would have to show preview and then go back and forth until you got it right. With CCR you see it as you are playing with the spacing. So cool!!!

      The only problem I ran into was selecting the wrong cart (one I did not have,lol). I thought wow this is so cute they even have Elmo's hand in the font. When I went to print and cut in the Imagine it kept telling me to insert 3 Birds On Parade. I was so confused thinking why is it asking for this cart I didn't use it? Then I looked at the cart that came up and yes, I was wrong, it wasn't Elmos hand but a bird, so I switched to Base Camp. It really would have been cute with the other font, lol.

     Finally, for the birthday sentiment, I used the image on page 65 for caketop-s. I sized the whole image to get the Happy Birthday the size I wanted and then used the edit button to hide Elmo by clicking on him. Then I was able to pick a color with the Imagine and voila I instantly had 2 tags done. This was so easy to design and complete.

      I did cut 2 tags of each and glue together for stability. Of course, being me, I added some perfect pearls in white to add some sheen and used a metallic pen to do some faux stitching around the outside edge.

     The dot for the eye was so small that I lost it, lol. So Collin got a little bling. Here are the presents ready to go after adding a few stickles to the tag.

     Be sure to check back over to http://mycricutcraftroom.blogspot.com/ to see what the rest of the design Team has to show you. Before you go though I would love if you would leave me a comment and say hi to Elmo, lol.~Mary

Happy Valentines' Day!

     Happy Monday! You know what that means, it's time to use either your Imagine, E2 or the Cricut Craft Room. Well, since my husband gave me a HUGE Valentines' Day project to do, I used both my Imagine and the CCR.
     My husband is a tool salesman and is in and out of garages all day long. He wanted to offer a package his customers could give their wives, mothers or girl friends for Luv Day. All I had to do was make a simple card and tag to package them up with. No problem I say until he told me he needed 50 of them! Are you serious, 50, in less than a week? I'm a floral designer, my busiest day. How on earth am I going to pull this off you say?
     Easy, with a little help from my Imagine and the CCR.

     He wanted something very simple, nothing cutesy so we decided on Kraft card stock for the base. I used Art Philosophy and the card feature on page 69 @ 5.50". I used a 12x12" sheet of paper so I was able to cut 2 cards on the same page. Then I cut the solid heart out of red @ 2.75 and the layer in cream @ 2.5. They were so easy to put together since I just traced the open heart with a pencil and adhered the heart in place. I used the score marks on the card to lace some ribbon through and tie in a bow.
     I thought it would be too time consuming to use a stamp on all those tags so I turned to the CCR. I first chose the V-Day sentiment from MS Seasonal Cake Art and placed it on the screen. I added a second mat layer to place a tag from Fabulous Finds. This made it easy to size the sentiment in just the right place on the mat. After some copy and pasting, I was able to fit 18 tags on an 8 1/2 x 11" pieces of red card stock.

     I am so glad I used separate layers. You can combine them on the same page however, I discovered that by using them separate I could chose whether to cut, print or both. The first time I chose cut and it was not too successful since it cut everything. The red sentiment was usable but since I did not weld the tag was not.

     Above you see where I used one mat and printed out the sentiment.

     After they were printed I went back and chose the label mat I had made and so I was able to just cut the label. This was helpful so I could also cut more labels to glue my cut sentiments to. (Waste not want not, lol).

     This is the printed label. I just went back and added some faux stitching with a white pen.

     I also cut a 3" heart tag on the same page on Art Philosophy. One cut was with the heart and the red base on solid card stock. Added just a cute heart charm and they were done! I actually wound up doing 60! Bet you would love to see what is inside:

   That's right ladies: pink socks, folding scissors and a chocolate rose pop! Don't laugh, the socks are really comfortable. They got 1 pair each of the low, crew and mid calf socks. I would have loved to make a frilly card but these guys are down to earth and really didn't want to spend a fortune on flowers. They are really practical guys!!!
     I really hope you will try the Cricut Craft Room (CCR). I was intimidated at first but found it a real time saver to finish this project. Now please go back to http://mycricutcraftroom.blogspot.com/ and see what the rest of the design Team has to show you.

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