Posters! again.

So it's been a minute (again). I've got plenty to talk about, but first another rambling. I ran into a lady looking at a Cricut machine when a Joann's opened in my area, and she asked me if I had one. I told her I did and I said if you've got kids who do school projects, this is a life saver just for the sake of not having to cut your own letters and worry about drawing and spacing them. It really takes a lot out of the chore of doing one!
 
I really like crafts so I don't mind doing a poster anyway, but my thing is now that my kids are getting older I want them to do it, and me help not just do it myself. But what's great about the Cricut is it's easy to operate and kids can do a lot of it by themselves. So, we had a poster contest for 4-H and my oldest wanted to do one, so she came up with this idea. I was shocked to find out today that this won and will be going to county competition. She did this all herself, except the guitars which I had to fiddle with on Design Studio to get to the right height, but she did all the gluing and such. This was done with the Hannah Montana cartridge, which despite the name, really is a good one.

 

Nothing like justifying a new purchase......

So, a Joann's Fabric store opened up last week around me. The first 3 days they were having a free $10 gift card for the first 100 folks. Now honestly, this was on a Thursday morning so I didn't expect that many people, but there was a line of folks waiting at the door. Oh well stand in line and see what happens- but I scored a gift card. Anyway, props to the crowd out there, it wasn't like Black Friday shopping, every one was cordial and nice and I'm not the type who shops in crowds period no matter what, but to be honest I didn't mind it.

 

Anyway, I had planned on purchasing some cardstock but to be honest, Hobby Lobby is better. But anyway, while looking I browsed the Cricut cartridges, and they were ALL on sale for $29.99 which is a bargain in itself, and I had my $10 gift card so what the heck. I picked up the Songbird cartridge and I think it's going to be a blast. Those birds have that cool retro 70s/Partridge Family vibe and I really like that, not to mention the font itself is awesome, and I needed another font cartridge but you can also put the lettering on flowers as well so that really gives me some ideas.

 

While I was also in there I talked to a nice lady and became a complete enabler and talked her into getting a Cricut. Seriously, if you scrapbook it's a must, but if even if you don't (I don't do much myself, heck I still have one page I need to do from last year's basketball season but I just haven't done it) but if you have kids that do projects or posters this really cuts down on the work.  

Ah, a new school year- the smell of new pencils, notebooks, and....posters?

 So, off we go with a new school year and here we are with a poster project already. Not that I'm complaining, gives me an excuse to use my Cricut. This is probably a crappy pic, but it was taken with the ol 2009 phone I'm still using (and still going to use until it drops dead) but anyway, the letters were done with the Hannah Montana Cartridge. I know Hannah is out...but the fonts on this are great and there's not a whole lot of Hannah images on this so if you catch it on sale you can't beat the 6 fonts on this cartridge, which is mainly why I bought it. Anyway, I'll be a complete enabler here and say if you have kiddos that need to do any type of school projects, this makes doing the letters a real breeze and there's no cutting, measuring, drawing by hand, just cut them with the Cricut and go.

In my mind this was better.............

 So, had seen some of these online and boy were they cute, only I couldn't get the label off completely. Oh well, I went the lazy route and covered it with paper. I wish I had a pump style bottle instead of this one, that way it could be a bit more ornate than what I did this one. I'm about out of craft paper and ribbon to be honest, my kids have been in it and I swear I have about half a roll of ribbon left and it's Christmas ribbon. Hopefully I'll do some more of these later and get some better looking ones.

Yeah, think I'll stick with paper...........

 So, for months now I've been looking at bakerella.com and seeing all these cool cake pops that these people make, like Diet Coke cans and dogs, cats, and everything else, so I got the inclination that I could do it. Yeah, well here's my result. Didn't affect the taste of course, they tasted ok, but boy was that tedious and my brain was about fried by the time I did the whole pan of them. Think my problem was that I didn't get my candy melted quite enough so it looks rather blotchy. For me, candy melting is the scariest thing ever. I kept toying with my fondue pot because I kept thinking I was going to scald the bottom of the pot. Oh well, think I'll stick with paper..........

So, it's been a minute.......

 I honestly don't know why I haven't been crafting much lately. I guess you could say life happens while you are making other plans. But anyway, I had a baby shower to go to and had to take some food to, only I came home to realize my tray I was going to use was missing. hmmm. What to do. So for some reason I had some cake boards, so I just used my Cricut and used some vinyl cutouts and stuck them on there. Voila.

 

So I needed a place to put granola bars, seems like we get down to one and it sits in the box forever. Anyway, I saved this Cascade box and covered it and put a donut on it from Slumber Party. Ok, I know a granola bar isn't a donut, but I guess you can think about a donut while you eat one?

I knew I would need that box.....eventually.

 

So I have a tendency to save boxes, plastic containers that stuff comes in, thinking it might come in handy at some point and time. Sometimes I toss them all out, only to think later 'oh I wish I had that'. Anyway, I've gotten some really good coupons for drink mix envelopes lately, and I've stocked up quite a bit, and these little envelopes tend to hide everywhere in my pantry. So rather than buy a fancy box, this is a Cascade box I covered with paper and also put 2 cutouts on, from Hello Kitty. I'm thinking I may paint the lid also. You can take the top off this thing, even though it's a hinged lid, just jerk at it until it comes completely off.

Tie Dye

I learned to tie dye as an Art class assignment when I was a senior in high school. Little did I know that this skill would ever be useful. I've tie dyed quite a bit since then, matter of fact when my oldest was in Kindergarten I did 20 tshirts for her class as their 'class shirts'. The kits they have now makes it much easier to do than Rit brand powder and liquid dyes of the past. I'd recommend using a Tulip tie dye kit, which has gloves, rubber bands, dye, the whole shebang in the box together and it's relatively inexpensive. Also, if you have a white tshirt with wording that's seen better days, as the one with wording on these pics, as long as it's 100% cotton you can tie dye them and give it new life. 

 

Ideas.....

 So, a few weeks ago the Animal Shelter in my town said they needed dog toys. Well, you know how expensive they can be, so I did some looking online and came up with these, they are made from worn out tshirts. I cut them into strips, braided them, and knotted both ends. We were able to make 55 of these for the shelter. I found that cotton or knit material worked best.