August 25th, 2011
So I finally got a hold of all my new My Mind’s Eye releases. I actually laid everything out and took a bunch of photos, but that’s a whole other post! Just looking and touching it made me really really want to play with it. So I rearranged some stuff and made some time to just get my hands dirty. First I had to unpack all my craft supplies. As I was doing that I found these three 5×6 pieces of foam core board and it got me thinking of what I could do with them.
I knew I wanted to play with all my pink goodies… if you could see how gorgeous they are, you would want to play with them too!
To make my Home Sweet Home wall hanging, I used pretty much all of the Lost & Found 2 Blush set not including the titles, and definitely including the 6×6 paper pack. I did cut some of the 6×6 papers on my cricut. For the Home Sweet Home lettering I used the Freak Show font (with SCAL) to cut it on my cricut. For the Bracket shape, I made a quick .SVG File that you can download for free.
The first thing I did was cut and mount this glittered dance paper on my foam core:
Then I used this Creamy Brown chalk ink to make the edges look a little edged.
So then I just played around with all the supplies and made these cute rectangles:
To get the striped ribbon to have those pleats, I just cut a strip of card stock a little more narrow than the ribbon, and ran the glue runner over it. Then I adhered the ribbon, and toward the end, I just made 3 loops. Then I ran the whole thing through my sewing machine – looped side first with a contrasting ribbon.
Then to put the brad on, I just took my crop-a-dile and punched a hole through the whole thing and dropped in the brad.
The other fun thing I did with this rectangle was use the coordinating stamps to stamp that cute but still subtle banner.
With this crocheted ribbon, I gathered it with my sewing machine with my very technical method of shoving it through the sewing machine quicker than it can feed itself.
One of the fun things I did with this rectangle was take the pearl swirls and cut them up to fit the bottom of the rectangle instead of using them as a full set. It worked so well and was a super easy way of customizing the pearls.
When all that was done, I glued the rectangles to a wide ribbon and looped it at the top, and hung it in my guest room (which so does not look like a guest room at all!). Yay for baby steps to decorate the house.
October 9th, 2010
I have been wanting to do a quick and cute Halloween craft, and I thought a banner would be fun. I love the subtle Halloween feel of Robyn Meierotto’s Not So Freaky Digital Mini Kit at DHD:
So I started out by printing a few of her papers in the banner shape that I wanted.
You can print and hand-cut these shapes, but I cut mine out with my Cricut using Sure Cuts A lot and my laptop.
Then using black cardstock, I cut out a ghost, and BOO! If you have a program that allows you to cut SVG Files, I have a free download link at the end of this post.
I inked all the pieces with some gold pigment ink to just make it look a little more antiqued and slightly finished.
Next, I made “lollipops” (what do you call them?) out of tracing paper. You could use crepe paper, tissue paper, or just regular paper. I really liked how the tracing paper was a little bit see-through, but still really stiff.
To get a pointy lollipop, once you fold your paper strip, you’ll want to cut one edge diagonal like this:
Then glue them in a circle and add a little ink to dirty them up a bit.
Then I just glued everything together with a hot glue gun, and for the finishing touches, tied all the panels together with some cute orange ribbon.Voila! A quick and cute Halloween banner, that isn’t too scary to hang in your house.
Banner .SVG Download
Boo .SVG Download
May 20th, 2010
Congrats to commenter #11
rose481
May 18th, 2010 at 1:57 PM — Edit These little dresses are darling! I have two DGDs and would love to have these files!
Thanks Rose! and everyone else for commenting.
For those of you who are interested in purchasing the Designer Cuts All Dressed Up Cut Files, it is now for sale at Design House Digital. It’s even ON SALE for 30% off Thursday May 20th only.
May 17th, 2010
A couple of month’s ago I was seriously inspired by Trish Turay’s dress garland featured on Get it Scrapped. I instantly knew that I wanted to create a shadowbox for my new niece’s nursery. So I bookmarked the website and ordered a 9×20 Shadowbox online.
On Saturday I had a whole day to do whatever I wanted with it. So I hopped out of bed and got to work! The first thing I did was create my own cutting files. I have a Cricut Expression and use SCAL to cut all my own custom files.
I created 2 dresses, 1 apron, 2 over-skirts, and a collar. This made really short work of my project because I didn’t have to hand cut anything. I love my Cricut.
All the paper that I used is from my Quite Contrary line – Hello Beautiful color set by My Mind’s Eye.
With all my dresses and items cut out, I grabbed some Lush embellishments also by My Mind’s Eye, and my awesome new Glue Arts Glue Glider Pro and started embellishing!
For the first dress, I used ribbons, paper and brads to create some cute hand-made flowers. I also added some tiny rhinestones for buttons and made a glittered sash.
The second dress also got some glitter on the collar and layered skirt. I ran the top skirt through the sewing machine and topped it off with a ribbon sash and a button. I also added a playful pink pom pom trim using my Glue Arts Glider.
For the third dress, I wanted to gather some wide organza that I had lying around. So I pulled out my sewing machine… I barely know how to sew, so pardon how messy this is… but at least you know beginners can do it too!
I traced where the apron hit the dress so that I would know where I needed to start my skirt and how long of a gathered piece I needed.
Then I grabbed some yarn and sewed it loosely to my organza – about twice as long as the skirt.
Then I gently pulled on the yarn to gather it, and then sewed it to the bottom dress, so that none of my bad sewing would show!
The gathered skirt was a little unruly, so I used my glue glider to help it stick down. You couldn’t see any of the glue in the final product.
I also wanted some ric-rac on the bottom of the apron to finish the transition. The best way I know to create adhesive ribbon is to run it through my Xyron. This really makes it easy to get ribbon down securely especially on curves. I also used it on the green ribbon on the first dress.
Once I was happy with how all the dresses turned out, I decided to make a banner with the new baby’s name.
I just hand-cut a bunch of triangles and then ran them through the sewing machine with some crocheting string. I did it really SLOWLY so I had control over the string and the placement on the triangles.
I chose a contrasting color – brown, to give the banner a more detailed effect. Then I simply added some glitter sticker letters.
Once I decided how everything would be placed. I grabbed some teeny clothes pins and some cream seam binding to hang the dresses on. I also found some eye-screws to hang the ribbon by.
For the banner, I used some small pins and tied the string around them.
You can also see that I added a few pins in the middle of the banner to create a scalloped look. This was the final product and I absolutely love how it turned out. The hardest part was having to give it away! But I can’t wait to see it in my new nieces adorable nursery.
For the wrapping, I wrapped some tissue paper around the frame and had my cricut cut out another dress and apron. I only added one embellishment to this dress — a little rhinestone necklace. Then I clothes-pinned it to the ribbon with a little congratulations tag.
If you’re interested in doing this or a similar project, I actually took the time to build all the files (SVG, GSD, JPG, AI) for the various cutting programs and am selling them at Design House Digital starting Thursday May 2oth (2010). These files should work for any die-cut machine including the Cricut (with SCAL), & Silhouette. I’m giving away this digital kit to one of my readers, all you need to do is comment — tell me what kind of cutting machine you have — and I’ll choose one random winner on Thursday Morning!
December 12th, 2009
I’m not sure if everyone knows about neighbor gifts, but if you haven’t been raised with this tradition, the name describes it all… small, usually hand-crafted gifts, for all your neighbors and friends. This year for some of my neighbors, I made some super yummy thumbprint shortbread cookies with jam centers (raspberry makes it extra festive) and decided to make some adorable boxes with some of my paper stash (and yes, it’s a giant stash).
Ever since I saw this adorable Christmas paper from My Mind’s Eye, I’ve been wanting to do something cute with it. I love the bright colors, especially the pink! So I grabbed 2 sheets and the matching accessory sheet. To make the box I decided to go the easy route and cut it on my shiny new Cricut.
I created a simple box form for the Cricut to cut. I use SCAL with my cricut so I can have it cut anything I want. If you’re a SCAL user I have a free download of this simple SVG file. Also I made a DXF file which should work with Craftrobo (Silhouette, wishblade, etc). If you don’t have a cutter, there is a PDF that you can print and use as a template.
I cut one at about 11″ tall for the bottom boxand then I enlarged the file slightly to make it about 11.25″ to make the top of the box. My box came out quite large, I think It would be better even smaller, so if you can only cut 8-9″ wide, this is still a great project.
After cutting the papers I just folded the edges and glued the tabs on the outside of the box.
After folding and gluing, I found some white parchment paper and lined the box and then placed in the cookies that I had made (make sure they are cool!)
Then I placed the lid on top, tied it with some ribbon, a tag from the accessory sheet and a chipboard christmas tree, and it was ready to deliver!
Super cute, super easy, affordable, and quick enough to mass reproduce! Have a merry Christmas & happy holiday season!
click on the download button to download the cutting file/template for this box. The zip you download will have a PDF, SVG, & DXF file. Happy Crafting!
