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Milk Cartons

I'm always in need of a fun, fast, and {of course} cute way to deliver gifts.
When I heard about these "milk carton" folding boxes from Lettering Delights,
I had to try them out!

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One of the funnest things for me to do during these "project hours" is pick out which paper for which project.
I think I could stare at them {yes, paper} all day.
I love how smooth some are,
I love the texture of others,
and I absolutely love the wide variety of patterns and hues they come in!
But that's beside the point.

I picked out bright colors in honor of summer starting.
And for it being sunny outside today {compared to yesterday when it rained like it was monsoon season}.

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And then I added a little "extra".

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The top three are going to the ladies I visit teach and my companion,
thus the letters.
Don't you love the white box that comes with a little window?
That way you could tape plastic wrap on the inside,
fill it with goodies,
and give it to someone special.
If you'd like to see an even better "milk man" than that one on the right there,
click HERE.

Below are the sets of what I added to the little boxes.
Just click the picture for more detail.







I love these!
I'm already concocting more ideas to make these into presents for the kids in our primary class...

Envelopes Gallore!

Yesterday I sat down to try out this cute envelope set from Lettering Delights.

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So I got all my papers picked out that I wanted to use...

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And started folding!

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{these are my top 4 favorite}


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Who would've thought making an envelope could be so simple and cute?

Silhouette Banner

One of my favorite things that my silhouette can cut out is a banner.
A banner?
Yes.
It sounds kinda lame, huh?
But it's not.
Remember when I cut out that adorable "SPRING" banner,
and then the one that said "IT'S A GIRL" for my sis-in-law's baby shower?

Well Friday I cut out one that said "HAPPY BIRTHDAY" for my neighbor's little girl.
Her party was yesterday and she turned 2.

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{thanks to Kate for taking this pic while i was at work!}

I'm in love with the scalloped edges!

P.S.
I used the Silhouette Studio for this cut out,
and got the templates for the triangle and scalloped triangle HERE,
on Amanda's blog!
{isn't her stuff always so creative and fun? i love it!}

A Vinyl Project

What in the world?
It's Friday already!

So I have been doing TONS of fun projects while the Mr. has been out of town,
and I would like to share one of my favorites with you!

It all starts here with Lettering Delights Twitter Park SVG set.

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Isn't this a darling set or what?

My favorites though,
are the two little love birds.
{or that's what i turned them into...}

To begin this project,
I grabbed an old frame and some spray paint.

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{Sorry there's no picture of the frame before, I just got excited and plowed ahead!}
I spray painted the glass in the frame white.
{spray paint from Walmart, 0.97}
Then I jumped on my computer.

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I used MTC and cut out those two birds on black vinyl I bought from Walmart {$9.99}.
I then did the same with the phrase I wanted.

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FYI:
Make sure to apply letters to the actual glass,
not the side you spray painted.
This way the white shows right through,
but if you get bored with your saying/pic you can easily take it off without wrecking the paint.

Moving on.
I eyeballed where I wanted the birds and stuck 'em on.
Then I put up masking tape as my guide for the words,
because I DEFINITELY didn't want any crooked lettering!
Worked like a charm.

Another tip:
As you can see in the above pic,
I placed my vinyl directly under my project so I could get a better feel for the word spacing.
It helped tons!

And here's the finished product!




Yay!

Fonts are: Century Gothic and Pea Hannah Rocky Road

Friday Freebie!

Look at what cute frames are free today!
Lettering Delights Freebie!

Lettering Delights has the most adorable stuff,
and if you're looking for more....
Click Me!

Look no further!

Also,
look at what my Aunt Jill {she's one of their illustrators} threw together in honor of my cousin, Jaleese, getting engaged:

Stinking cute!
With an artsy mom like this,
Jaleese is bound to have some crafty and creative announcements coming out soon!

Tools

So there are a few essentials that come in handy when using a silhouette machine,
and for crafting in general.
Here are two of those handy dandy little items:

#1. The Blade-thingy
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Not sure what it's "technically" called,
but basically this device is handy when it comes to peeling your paper from that super-sticky sheet.
I've tried going without,
and all you end up with is a bunch of curly paper.
And half the time the paper rips or doesn't come up clean.


#2. The Glue Pen
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I don't know why in the world I haven't bought one before now.
{i know, right?!}
I used to use glue sticks,
but as you can see from my previous post {see the finished card},
the glue just is messy and doesn't go exactly where I want it.
This new baby is pretty fantastic!
Granted,
I still have a hard time with gluing those small letters,
but for the most part this is my new best friend.
p.s. if anyone has any tips on what they use for small things/letters/cards,
I would love to hear what it is!
I know glue dots and double sided tape is pretty popular...
maybes I will pick up some of that next.

Print and Cut

I learned the coolest thing yesterday!
{okay so maybe i'm behind at posting, so it was really a couple weeks ago..}

After I set up my silhouette to work with MTC,
I started browsing around for cool projects to do,
and ended up back on Jin's site {Under A Cherry Tree}.
I used to wonder about how some ladies in my ward were able to cut intricate designs for their cute cards,
and now I know!
It's this cool thing you can do with your silhouette called "print and cut".
And it's exactly that:
Print the image through your printer and then feed it to your silhouette to cut.
So cool!
One thing to remember though,
is that you can only do this using Silhouette Studio.
You can NOT {to my knowledge} do this using MTC.
I absolutely LOVE Jin's tutorial on this,
so that's what I'm going to show you.
Maybe someday I will get up enough guts to do my own,
but for now...



I love how her instructions are so straight forward.
Of course I followed along and now want to share a few more tips.

TIP 1:
Remember to hit that little button for the registration marks.

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After watching the video and doing it myself a couple times, I got excited and forgot to do this. You need those registration marks for when you feed it to your silhouette. The machine reads them before cutting the image out, for a more precise cut.

TIP 2:
Make room for your silhouette machine to "breath". In other words, allow space behind your silhouette to feed the paper through as it works.

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When I'm not using my machine I push it towards the back of my desk. Well, I forgot to pull it out further for this project, so when it was reading the registration marks, my paper bumped up against the back wall and threw off the cut. This is what you get when that happens:

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TIP 3:
Maybe I'm just a ding dong, but I'll share this anyways. When your print comes out of the printer, it will have those 3 registration marks.

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 Do NOT cut your paper to fit those registration marks. For some reason, I thought that if I cut them, I would be helping the situation. Bad idea! I only made it so that my silhouette couldn't read the marks, and once again I had an "off" cut.

So after trial and error,
here is my finished product:

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I made it for a lady I visit teach.
It's not the cutest,
but I'm getting there!
The flowers came from the adorable LD graphic set "Twitter Park Too",
and the font is called Gilligan's Island.

Sure Cuts A Lot2 and the Cricut

So I know I don't have a Cricut,
but I used to.
I actually had one for 2 years when Kevin and I were first married,
and then decided to buy the SCAL2 software.
This software is another 3rd party software that works with the Cricut machines {MTC does not}.

Well,
me being a doe-doe brain didn't look at which Cricut version worked with the software.
Turns out I had the oldest of old Cricuts {the Cricut Personal Cutter},
and it was version 1.0.
LAME.
So my mom bought it from me
{she's awesome like that...plus my sisters wanted a Cricut too},
and I bought a Silhouette.

But GUESS WHAT!
Turns out all I needed to do in order to use my Cricut with SCAL2 was:
update my firmware.
As soon as I heard this glorious bit of news I called my mom and told her.
{she was pretty excited}

Would you like to know how we did it?
Because before I learned,
I was scared it would be a long and painful process.
Not true.

First we went to the trusty YouTube and searched:
"how to upgrade cricut firmware".
The first hit was right on the money.


We simply followed the step-by-step instructions and had ourselves cutting away within the hour.

Click HERE for the Free Trial Version of Design Studio

Texture Boutique

I just thought I'd show something about what this little missy can do.
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This is the Texture Boutique my mom got me for Christmas.
I love this thing!
I've been using it mostly for birthday and thank you cards.


I know these embossing folders say "Cuttlebug".
That's what's great about this machine!
I don't just have to use the Sizzix embossing folders.
And there's soooo many cute ones.
That bad thing is that they all range about $4.99,
so I gather the 40% off coupons (usually from Michael's) and only use those when I want to buy.

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The finished card for my dad.
It wouldn't have wrinkled like that if I'd have used cardstock...dangit.
I just pulled out the two colors I thought looked good together.

SVG files

Scalable Vector Graphics.

Ever heard of them?
Me niether.
Until my Aunt Jill {she's kind of a big deal. more on her later} introduced me to them.
From what I understand,
they are the new and best files to cut with.
Why?
Somehow your cutter can read them better than other files, like JPEG and PNG.
I read about them HERE and it made more sense.
This is where MTC helps out,
because it can read SVG files whereas others can't.

Of course I wanted to see this for myself,
so I did some test cuts:

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This is what happens when you don't know what your doing.
I had the wrong cap on,
forgot to change my settings to "light printer paper",
and ended up with too much pressure.

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Here's an SVG I downloaded from Lettering Delights.
I cut it with MTC and look how clean it came out!

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And another example.
But this one is a graphic, not an SVG.
So in order to open it with MTC,
I just have to go to "File", "Import", and then click "pixel trace".
Not too bad.

Swiss Family Robinson?

I don't know why,
but ever since the 8th grade I've loved drawing tree houses.
This is a drawing project I'm working on right now...

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...just for fun.
And actually within the week I've already changed it.
When I'm done sketching I will probs finish it in ink.