My Other House

In my other life, I'm a teacher, there I said it, so far I'm still alive, so I guess it's okay that everyone knows what I do.  Privacy is such an iffy thing on the internet that I've tried not to come right out and say exactly what I do because of the nature of my job.  But, that's obviously in the past now, so, here are a couple of snaps, poorly taken by my phone, but I thought you might like to glimpse my other "house."

The hallway where I teach is having a theme of movies this year.  We used plastic tablecloths taped together in the middle and run through book rings to make our "red curtains."  The STAAR isn't misspelled, it's the name for our state test.  Each teacher picked a different movie theme for the "board" outside of their room.  Our bulletin boards are actually 4x8 sheets of insulation board from Lowe's.  It's light weight and ease to staple into made it a breeze for hanging and better yet, taking down to change it!  In case you are confused, my movie theme is Disney's Cars.  Yup, I copped out and picked a movie where I could get a Cricut cartridge to make it much, much easier on me.

As students advance in AR, their movie "star" will travel down the boards, hence the numbers at the bottom.

Next to the board, I have a small Christmas tree that I decorate differently each month.  (Yeah, I know, I need to get a life, but I did this before I owned my own house.)  Since they're all made now, I put them up anyway...

Inside my room, I have three main walls to "decorate."  (The 4th wall is filled with a marker board.)  I have another insulation board with an inspiration quote, custom vinyl quotes with equivalent measures and thought provoking math pictures.  In case you can't find the math, don't worry, just google Fibonacci series and Fibonacci Spiral.  I'm just warning you though, you're going to start to see math everywhere!!

 

Flakey Cards ;)

I love using my Cricut to make cards and now that I have a Gypsy, the possibilities seem absolutely endless. In one of my previous posts, I showed how I used my new super Gypsy, (insert super hero theme music here) to cut several trees and flakes. Wondering what I did with them??? Wait no more! I pulled papers from my arsenal, and yes, I could quite possibly fight a battle with the amount of paper I have and glued the down my trees and thank yous (also cut with the Cricut.) While I liked the look, once on top of the white card, it got lost. So, out come my chalk inks. I edged the paper in dark purple and found a shimmery dark brown cardstock and cut a shadow piece for the back. The fabulous damask embossing look was on the original paper I used. This made the overall look stand out, but it was still missing something. Hmm, what's a girl to reach for? Do I hear Rhinestones? Anyone? Anyone?? Of course! Instead of just stopping with the pretty cut-outs, I took it several steps farther and added paper layers, inking and rhinestones. One of the reasons I love cards has to be the fact that I can craft and craft and if I go overboard and don't like the look, I haven't destroyed any pictures or wasted an entire 12x12 page of materials. See, less guilt with cards! I do have to say though, if I don't like my "finished" project, I usually find that I haven't added enough details, ink, bling, texture, to the piece. For the snowflakes I cut, I used similar techniques: edging with silver chalk ink, iRock rhinestones and layering the papers. I did go one step farther and break out my Cuttlebug. (A cuttlebug is a pressure embossing system that sandwiches a piece of paper between two textured pieces. You roll the sandwich through and out comes an embossed piece.)
The piece on the left is the plain paper put through the Cuttlebug. The piece on the right has been hit with a 220 grit sandpaper to show off the inner white core of the cardstock. Love it!! Once the cardstock was prettified (love that southern drawl) I added my other layers and called it perfect! Had to mix it up just a little! So what do you think??

A Wandering

Hola!! I'm back from Christmas break. Break was awesome and so wonderful to spend time sleeping and recovering from the stress of life in general. One of my favorite presents for Christmas was a little gem called a Gypsy. (Santa was super good to me this year, but I'll post more on that later...)

My brothers and sisters-in-law went together, along with my parents to get me a hand held Cricut. A Gypsy is a small computer sized just larger than a Nintendo DS or PSP. It allows me to put my entire collection of Cricut cartridges on one unit and access them all at one time. (A hiccup with a traditional Cricut is that you can only use one cartridge at a time. In order to cut images from multiple carts, you have to power off the machine and switch the carts out and then reload paper and cut again.) With the Gypsy, I can load multiple images from different cartridges, rotate them to fit the paper best and cut several different items on different colors of paper.

My first project was to load two colors of paper on my mat to get a combination of cuts both of snowflakes and Christmas trees. After programming my Gypsy with the cuts I wanted, I used the USB2 cord and connected it to my Cricut. I loaded the paper and pressed cut. It went to town cutting the entire paper. It is quite interesting to see work. Instead of cutting the tree/top of the paper first, it did the bottom snowflake first, opposite of the cartridge loaded into the Cricut.



As you can see here, it cut the two different images on the correct color of paper for my project. This would be almost impossible (for me) to do without the Gypsy.

After removing the excess paper, check out what was left!

Wondering what I made with all of these items? You'll have to wait for another post. ;)

Halloween Art

YES!!! My baby/right arm/computer is finally back!! It amazes me how many times a day I go to my computer, documents, pictures and music. One of the things I missed the most was all of my bookmarks and internet history. Having all of that stored for me really speeds up the most basic of chores.

Anywho, I know that means nothing to you and what you really want is for me to end the suspense of my Halloween art. On my window wall in my living room I have 4 fabric frames. While I love them, they don't really lend themselves to Halloween.


What to do??? After spotting a gorgeous metallic blue paper and some cute Cricut cuts on the Paper Doll Dress Up cart, I finagled:

(Can you figure out what I was watching?? Sorry for the crummy pictures. Trying to get one shot with no glares and a clear shot behind the glass is almost impossible!)

So what do you think?

Fall Is In The Air!!

This morning I awoke to a fabulous 58 degree morning! Fall is FINALLY here! Yay! Now instead of just pretending it's fall, it really is! (For anyone who lives in a southern state, I know you're feeling me on this!)

In honor of this cooler weather, I added a little something to my coffee table centerpiece. I love decorating for fall and really love the pumpkins and fall leaves. That being said, I am a cheapskate. (lovingly termed by my mother...) Hmmm, how to get pretty pumpkins and fun leaves without spending much? First thing, pull out a couple of pieces of cardstock. Grab some Glimmer Mist and spray away! (I used tattered leather, black cherry, old lace and some green shade I can't remember.) Trust me, it looks really messy now, but it works in the end! Don't adjust your computer, the paper is in focus. This is just how odd it looks.


Use your Cricut and the Designer's Calendar cartridge to cut out a bunch of leaves in all different sizes. (I cut in sizes 3"-4".) Once you have the pieces cut out, admire how the blotchy paper became fabulously colored leaves, that unfortunately are missing a little something...


I love the shimmer though! After thinking a bit, I decided that the edges of the paper while white, weren't going with my fall theme. Hmmm... Chalk Ink to the rescue.


After adding a bit of dark green ink to the edges, my leaves were starting to look better and better. All that I needed was a little veining courtesy of my stylus. Don't look too carefully, it's pretty sloppy, but perfection isn't needed to add the hint of veins.

After getting a hold of some Dollar Tree pumpkins, some Martha Stewart glitter (get the good stuff folks, it makes a difference) and some Modge Podge, I managed to transform the cheap pumpkins into something a little more impressive looking. Mix those "new" pumpkins with some fall leaves and tuck them into the basket and Voila!


I have to say, I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. What do you think? (Leave me a comment and let me know!)

Mirror, mirror on the wall...

When I sat on my new lovely couch, I discovered that I had a large hole on one wall. Now, not that kind of hole. My drywall was completely intact and painted. What was missing was any sort of decor. Apparently the hole so disturbed me that I didn't even take a single picture of it! Anyway, the hole was on the wall opposite the windows in the room, perfect for a mirror. Now, to find the perfect mirror. Thankfully I was able to spot one the exact right size at Burlington Coat Factory in San Antonio. The great part was the price, $25! Wahoo!


The only issue with the mirror was the finish. The odd coloring wasn't the exact look I was going for. I wanted something more broken in and welcoming.


Thankfully I had a ton of leftover paint from the various walls/furniture in my house. After a coat of Behr's Heavy Cream, I had this result.


While I was happier with this result, it still wasn't where I wanted it to be, so, back to the drawing board I went. After pouring a bit of water, okay a lot of water, into the empty can of Behr's Roasted Nuts. (It's the name of the paint, I promise!!) I did a fabulously sloppy job of rubbing the watered down paint all over the frame. After a quick rubdown I had a warm detailed look that perfectly matched my living room.


While the mirror looked great, it lacked the welcoming look I was craving. Off to the Cricut I headed. Out of white vinyl I cut a stencil for Welcome and the swirly-ma-bob (technical term!) using the Plantain Schoolbook cart. (I used the white vinyl because it was the color I had the most of and I didn't have the stencil stuff.)


After painstakingly applying it to the mirror and making certain it was centered, I protected the rest of the glass with magazine pages and sprayed on 3 light coats of glass frost. After letting the paint set up/cure I carefully, oh so carefully, peeled off the vinyl and tape and carefully cleaned the glass. Now, I didn't clean it as thoroughly as I wanted, but there is time for that later. What I ended up with was a great piece in my living room. Now it sends the right message to all of my guests. Feel free to stop by and check it out for yourself.

What is a Cricut?

I have heard several comments about what is a Cricut? What are Cricut carts? Huh???? Okay, put your fears to rest and enjoy my following: (Keep in mind that I receive NO compensation from the Cricut company or any of the companies I mention. I've just used their products or ordered from them and have been pleased with the results.

Image courtesy of Hallmark Scrapbook

A Cricut is a product built by ProvoCraft to ease the frustrations of die cutting anything! You load a small cartridge (referred to often in blogdom as "carts") and a vinyl keyboard overlay into/onto the machine and type into the machine exactly what you want to cut and what size, from 1/2"-24" and press cut. Badda-Bing, Badda-Boom, you have a perfect image. Layer these images using the different buttons, similar to using the shift key to make capital letters. You can cut anything from perfectly shadowed letters in almost 30+ fonts to scary witches to a precious animal, to a rockin' guitar to a complete set of paper dolls, including accessories. They are great inventions and coming from an avid scrapbooker and classroom decorator, invaluable to own!

Cleaning up the light

My latest efforts/energies have been concentrated on my craft room/office. I love to craft and have a severe addiction to purchasing craft items. (Don't worry, I've curbed my addiction until I use up some of my stash.) The main problem becomes when I try to organize these items. The storage I had was good, don't get me wrong. It just wasn't organized right. The switch of a bookcase, along with some kitchen containers gave me a TON more working surface and easy access to items. The big issue I'm having now is trouble storing my Cricut carts. I've cruised blogdom, but still can't find the exact storage idea that I love. I'm sure it's out there, but...

Anyway, here are some before and after pics of my crafting area. It's not the most interesting/creative work I've done, but I'm thrilled with it!!

Office Before

Office After

If you look closely, you'll notice that I have a lamp to provide extra task lighting. This lamp didn't always look this way. It was pretty boring and didn't really match my tastes. (It was a freebie borrowed/stolen from my brother's room. Hey, he moved out and left it behind!!!) Anyway, here it is in it's before state. Pretty boring eh?

After a spray with my favorite Krylon color Celery and a bit of cricut-ing, my lamp fits in much, much better!


I couldn't find an exact color paper I wanted for my flowers, so I spray painted one of the pages celery and painted the other sheet with the wall color. After hitting them with Glimmer Mist and adding some ribbon accents, I had the perfect flower for my lamp.

Plugging the Circut...

Several people have mentioned that they are interested in getting a Cricut. I strongly suggest it, but there are a few things tips I'd follow.

First of all, go with the Cricut Expression. It's the larger of the two machines and it will cut up to 12"x24'. Much better than the 6"x12" the "Baby Bug" will cut.

Second, don't purchase your machine at a local hobby/craft store. With just a little searching & shipping patience, you can have your machine and be richer too! My FAVORITE place to get all things Cricut is Hallmark Scrapbook. (No, I'm not getting paid or compensated by them in anyway, but I could be bought if anyone knows someone with them!!) Check them out at www.hallmarkscrapbook.com

Third, get a stack of cardstock and play with your machine. Learning your machine is going to be the easiest if you just sit down and try different things out. DO NOT "learn" to use your machine on your expensive paper that you only bought one sheet of because it was perfect for your _______ project. (Trust me here, you say words that make your mom give you dirty looks!!)

Fourth, use the internet to your advantage. There are TONS of examples, tutorials and videos on how to do just about anything with you machine. (Yes, there are even people out there who will show you how to take it apart! Watch out for Dave, Jess!!) You can spend your money on books if you want, but surfing the internet will give you the same result for less money. Now, while I'm a fan of not buying books, I am will say attending a class in your area is a good idea. Sometimes it's just nice see someone else work your machine. There are several of these around. Look into your community centers, local scrapbooking stores, hobby stores and even Archiver's. Again, no money exchanging hands, at least they're not giving me any. (I give them plenty each time I visit!) www.Archiversonline.com will give you locations and class schedules. Classes vary from free (wahoo) to $25 and for the most part provide all the supplies.

I hope these tips help. I LOVE my Cricut and especially love how it makes me look talented. All you do is type, press cut and then glue. This I can handle!!!

Cricut Addiction

Okay, along with my need to spray paint everything, I also have a Cricut addiction. For those of you who don't know, a Cricut is a fabulous little machine that you insert paper into, press a few buttons and Voila a perfect item is cut out for you. Different cartridges are available for different theme items and can be cut any size from 1/2" to 24". It rocks!


Lately I've been using it to make different thank you notes. Never knew how many of those I was going to end up needing with buying a house! (Not complaining in the least, I LOVE crafting and will take ANY excuse!)

Accented with Stickles & Glimmer Mist (any reason to sparkle!)

Used the Cricut to cut the "Thank You" & Flower shapes. Stacked them and gave them a Glimmer Mist spritz.

Again, cut the flowers and sentiment with the Cricut. Added a bit of eyelash yarn for fun and because I had it laying around!

Cricut cut "thank you" with misc. paper accents. Cards are a great way to use up those millions of scraps from just about anything!

Notice the perfect shadow on the letters! Yup, the machine did that too! I'm telling you, I LOVE IT! (no, i'm not paid to say this in any way!)