Day Two 100 Cart Blog Hop

June's 100 Cricut cartridge blog hop Day ONE

You should have started at

http://mycricutcraftroom.blogspot.com/

if not please start at the beginning

Also make sure to follow Erica's blog so you will know when

she has contests, prizes, challenges, swaps & special online coupons.

 

CONTEST TIME!

This month Erica is doing CUTTLEBUG giveaways!

Everyday this month she will be giving away

Cuttlebug folders.  She will even be

giving away a Cuttlebug!!

So make sure you visit

http://mycricutcraftroom.blogspot.com/

everyday during the month of June and leave a comment!

 

Don't forget to comment along the way on

all of the blogs today to

be entered to win the BoBunny Prize package that

Erica is giving away this weekend.

Winners will be announced on her blog on Tuesday!

You should have come from:

Christina

Make sure that you commented on ALL of today's blog to win the Big Bo Bunny prize pack!

I have three projects to share with you today. I signed up for three carts for the hop: Cursive 101, Independence Day, and Superman. I ended up using those and three more: Mother's Day Bouquet, Street Sign, and Stand and Salute. I really enjoyed all three of my projects for this hop.

We will start with the project for Stand and Salute and Independence Day. I applied vinyl to a galvanized tub for holiday entertaining. It can be used to hold bags of chips like I show in the pic or filled with ice to hold drinks or condiments you want to keep chilled during the cookout.

 This was not easy to photograph. The surface is so reflective that outside it was blinding me and inside my reflection is in it. I picked the tub up for $3.50 and all of the vinyl was scraps from other projects, so this was a great frugal project.

 The stars were cut from Stand and Salute. The larger stars were cut at two inches. I layered many of them with the shadow feature. The solid stars are simply the negative space from inside the stars.

 The smaller stars were cut at 3/4 inch. I did not use transfer tape on these since I was just placing them randomly.

I cut the 4th of July at 4 inches in both red and blue. I hand cut the "th" and of from the blue and layered it on the red. I love the way it came out and am thinking about going back and getting a few more tubs to decorate for other holidays.

My second project was a set of baseball jerseys and coach's shirts. I used the Superman cartridge and Street Sign. Because these were done on dry-fit shirts, I used Gorilla Grip II. This means I had to use a heat press, but if I had been doing regular t-shirts I could have used vinyl that can be applied with a regular iron.

 I used the font and font shadow feature to cut out the word Havoc. The shirt was designed in Cricut Craft Room. The key to success with vinyl is kiss cutting and reversing the image.

The back has their name and number.I also cut layered vinyl for their batting helmets.The boys wore the jerseys for a tournament last weekend and they love these jerseys. The number are so different. They aren't the same block letters most of the teams are wearing. We looked great out there.

The third project was a layout and I used lots of fun goodies while working on this. The papers are from BoBunny's Timepiece collection..

 Overall I like the feel of this layout. It was fun playing with some of my favorite new products.

 The flowers were cut from Mother's Day Bouquet. It was flower #15 amd I cut them at 2", 1 1/2", and 1". I then layered them. I didn't have a brad that matched well. These little flower brads were pastels colored. I help them with tweezers and heated it until it was good and hot. Once it was hot, I dipped it in the GlobeCraft Memories Copper Kettle embossing enamel. I heat set it for a nice smooth finish. The flower needed just a bit more, so I spritzed it with copper glimmer mist.

  I cut the title from Cursive 101 using craft cardstock and the fit to page button which made it cut at 3". I then worked a couple of letters at a time and covered it with enamel adhesive and temple stone embossing enamel.

 I took this photo to show the different stages of melting this embossing enamel. You can leave it as rough or make it as smooth as you would like.

I melted it until it was shiny and smooth like my granite countertop. I LOVE LOVE LOVE this stuff.

The little stem/vine is a Picollo lasercut piece of chipboard. I used the CopperKettle enamel powder on that too.

I little handwritten journaling. A few flourishes for that added touch. They are also Picollo pieces.

I hope you enjoyed my projects as much as I enjoyed making them. Now head on over to

 Candice

I am sure she has something fabulous to share with you. Here is the whole lineup in case you get lost along the way.

Start http://mycricutcraftroom.blogspot.com/
Amber - http://pixiperfectcreations.blogspot.com/
Heather F. www.papercrafteranonymous.com
Christina - http://cema1cema.blogspot.com/
Kathy Jo- http://skrappindiva.blogspot.com/
Candice- http://stampinpearls.blogspot.com/
Heather M. http://digipage-blog.everything-digital-scrapbooking.com/
Ashley - http://especiallymade.blogspot.com/
Erica's Project http://ericasprojects.blogspot.com/
Yvette http://gammascreativecorner.blogspot.com/
Shelley http://shelley-scrapbookingforfun.blogspot.com/
Sheila - http://2pawprints.blogspot.com/
Raquel- http://kraftykaboose.blogspot.com/
Blog Candy http://ericasblogcandy.blogspot.com/

Happy Crafting and hope to see you soon!
KathyJo

Would You Ever Guess Wednesday

It is Would You Ever Guess Wednesday over at Erica's Craft Room. On Wednesdays we feature projects using the Feature keys on the cartridges. I will admit these are keys I often forget about when using my carts. It is too much of a hassle to pull out the book and flip through the pages. Yes, I admit to being lazy. Anyway Cricut Craft Room has changed that for me. I didn't think is would make a difference for me since I have a Gypsy, but being able to see the mat and the images to choose from make it so much easier to use. It is also nice to look at it on my big laptop screen. Anyway... I am getting sidetracked. The carts I used the feature keys on were Twinkle Toes and Lyrical Letters, but I hope when people look at this project they aren't thinking Independence Day either.

Here is the completed project, but be sure to read on to see what I did and get a few easy tips to make using your Cricut even more enjoyable.

The wreath came for The Dollar Tree. My Dollar Tree normally has these wicker wreaths and for a buck they make a great base. I knew I wanted some flowers and a little banner, so I started flipping through papers. I came across these gorgeous papers I purchased from Erica's Craft Room Store. They are Kaisercraft papers from the Bonjour Collection.

The papers are double sided and these are the backs. Both sides are just gorgeous.

I already have a saved file in CCR that I use to make my crumpled flowers that I want to lie relatively flat. I used a flowers off the Mother's Day Bouquet cartridge, but you could use any scalloped circle from any of the carts. A friend asked why I would do this in CCR and not just use the cart alone. Well I positioned the scallops so that 2 each of four different sizes would fit in a 6x6 area of the mat. This allows me to use the papers out of the 6x6 stacks. Since I am not much of a card maker, I don't really use my 6x6 stacks and I have been given several and this has me using them. I then cut the paper for the flowers and went ahead and made them. Now it was time to start making the banner. I do not own the banner cart or any of the carts that have the cute little banners, but I was sure I could find a way to make one. I opened CCR and started searching through the images. I found a banner in Independence Day, but it didn't have a top layer. I just resized it in CCR. It was very simple to do. Erica is going to have a CCR tutorial on Ustream very soon, but in the meantime if you can't figure out CCR go through the tutorials in the program. There is a tutorial tab in the upper right corner once you are logged into CCR. I wanted a little scallop across the top of my banner pieces and thought I had seen something in Twinkle Toes that would work. I used the layer of the stage curtain and used the hide and contour option to hide the actual drape panels. I then lined it up to resize it on the mat. I ended up with three layers on my mat, but in CCR you can see all of them at the same time. Here is what my screen looked like.

I then just glued the pieces together using Scotch Quick dry Adhesive. I love how it works on projects like this. I needed letter and needed them small. I used to hate cutting small letters because they would rip or not cut well. I finally found a font that is my go to font for itty bitty letters. Lyrical Letters has a feature called Jumbo and it is perfect for really small letters. These were cut at 1/2 an inch and they cut beautifully.
Now is was time to attach to the wreath. I pulled out some bakers twine and hot glued the pennants to it. I simply made a line of glue on the top part of the pennant and then pressed onto the twine laying on my nonstick mat, so I didn't burn my fingers. Then I hot glued the twine and the flowers to the wreath. I used a sheer ribbon to hang it. Here are a couple of close ups.

I hope you enjoyed my project. Feel free to follow me as I will have a new DT project every week. I love comments, so don't be shy. Have a super Wednesday!

To see more projects like mine head over to Erica's Craft Room and check out all of today's projects.