Bonding time at the Burrow

I need to be surrounded by my people! And I need to sit still and work on my Christmas cards… Bonding time will be this evening at 4:00ish til whenever… Come play whenever you can. If you show up early enough, you’ll see us in our jammies LOL

Bonding time at the Burrow

Bonding time will be changing this week due to a forgotten staff meeting from 0800-1200 on Tuesday. I’d much prefer to be home crafting during these 4 hours, but responsibility calls. Shandi and I will be crafting Tuesday evening, however, from 6-8 pm, so come  on by if you can. My semester will be out soon, and I’ll have more times available for getting together to playing with paper.

 

Stocking Tags made with Art Philosophy Cartridge

 

I’m learning how to use my AP cartridge and having so much fun! For those of you just learning, here’s how I made the stocking tags using Believe paper:

Place paper on the cutting mat. If using a scrap, place it in the left, lower corner.

Press [Load Mat] button

Use the [arrow] keys to move blade into right upper corner of the paper *if using 12 x 12 paper, it will start in the correct position*

Once blade is in the right upper corner of your paper, this smart little machine will calculate the paper size available for cutting… amazing!

In the book, on page 67 for this project, locate the key highlighted in red in the keypad under the picture of the shape you want to cut

Find the corresponding key on the key pad. Notice for this project, the stocking shape is in the right upper corner of the key and lighter gray.

Press the [Shift] key to access this shape, then press the key with the stocking shape

See how the stocking shape appears in the window? This tells you what shape the Cricut will cut. Notice in the right lower corner of the window, it gives the size for the cut at 3 1/2”. Use the dial to change the size, if needed. For this particular project, I used 3” stockings.

After adjust the dial, the window now shows the stocking at 3”. But wait, there’s more… I want to adjust the number of stockings to be cut. Locate the [Quantity] button and press it.

Once it’s highlighted, use the arrows below the window to adjust the number of cuts the Cricut will make.

Once you have the size and/quantity correct in the window, press cut and watch the machine do all the hard work!

Once the cutting is done, press [Unload Mat], peel away the paper, and then remove the cut pieces from the carrier sheet. I used White Daisy cardstock as the base for this project to add strength and body to the tags. You may not need this layer depending on your particular project. 

Thank you, my dear Cricut, for cutting out the shapes for me… wonderful! Now load your patterned paper onto the carrier sheet like you did with the White Daisy piece and align the blade at the top right corner again.

Since this is a repeat of the same cut at before, push the [Repeat Last] button, then [Cut] to make the patterned stocking pieces.

To make the accent pieces for the stocking, locate the picture on page 67 of the book that shows the pieces in the segment with the word “Layer”. This tells you to use the [Layer] button. Since it is on the right side of this segment, you must also use the [Shift] key.

Once you’ve pushed both [Layer] and [Shift], push the stocking button used to make the first shape again and look in the window to see if the shape you want is showing.

Load your coordinating paper, keep the dial at 3”, set your quantity, and cut the accent pieces. With all the cutting done for you, it’s time to assemble the stocking tag.

I used Bonding Memories pen for this project. Glue the patterned paper stocking to the White Daisy stocking.

Glue on the accent pieces and go, “Ahhh!” cause it’s so adorable.

Use Liquid Applique along the bottom edge of the stocking’s cuff to give the look of fur. This product also works great for snow.

Allow to dry overnight, or if you’re impatient like me, don’t wait at all and just go ahead with your heat tool. I don’t have the fancy logo one, but I did buy this from D.O.T.S. 16 years ago. Great durability!

Heat the liquid applique as if you were embossing.

It puffs when you heat it! Like magic to watch! Finally, punch a small hole in the left upper corner of the stocking and use ribbon, waxy flax, yarn, or in this case embroidery floss (mine is well-loved) to make the tie. 

Finally, decorate the back of the stocking with “to” and “from” and your tag is done!

One month til Christmas…

 

 

Well, it’s a little longer than that, but not much. Christmas will be upon us before you know it. Here are my tags for November:

 

I had so much fun making these with CTMHs Art Philosophy cartridge (I'm getting much better at figuring out which buttons to push) and the Believe paper pack. Let’s see what you’re making!

And just so you know, because of making Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow and taking Erinn for her follow up with the eye dr, no bonding tomorrow. If you show up, I’ll put you to work LOL!

 

 

H2H Color Challenge… Autumn Terracotta, Juniper, Bamboo

Ah the joys of working night shift… Sat down for a minute on Monday… woke up very late for Erinn’s doctor appointment (which got rescheduled) having slept through my reminders, several frantic text messages and phone calls. *insert shame face here* I took Dr. Lewis a plate of cookies and a card of apology. He is one of my favorite people on earth right now because of the wonderful care he has given Erinn (and her worried parents) over the past few months and I was mortified that I missed the appointment. He and his staff were very understanding, thank goodness!

H2H Color Challenge... Autumn Terracotta, Juniper, Bamboo