Gypsy Spot - Snow Family shirt

I have to tell you, I am not satisfied with this shirt! lol... I did not realize how long fabric paint takes to dry.

I was out of town for the holidays and had taken my scrappy stuff so I could keep up with my DT projects, only to discover that I forgot ALL my cardstock. So here I am, in the boonies of southern Iowa and the only place close by is a tiny walmart that only carried a few pads of Martha Stewart printed papers.... no cardstock in any colors I needed. sigh.

But I had fabric paint, freezer paper and my son's shirt in the suitcase... so I made this shirt. Only I was not prepared to wait for fabric paint to dry. So I did not make it as elaborate as I wanted! Not to mention it's my first shirt with my cricut and is not up to my standards. oh well...

Thanks for looking! hopefully my next project will be more interesting.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Here are my pie boxes for T-day dinner.  I used the box cut file I created (see this post link) and went for a simple decorating theme, which I think turned out okay for being simple.

 

I needed probably 12 boxes. I tried to make 15 just in case my count is wrong (we're going to our family's house) but I lost a box in construction due to being overzealous with the scoring tool. lol... actually a few others got slightly damaged but by the time they were all done up, you can't really tell. and no one is going to care. I just hope I can get the ribbon back before they end up in the trash, as I can reuse some of it!

Oh and by the way, I chose the cornucopia cut that makes the window because that's the challenge over at Bitten By the Bug! Muahaha!

Thanks for looking!

ICS #44 - Word Tree card

Sometimes I think Dawn is psychic, she always has a sketch up for the inspiration that I am currently working on, which makes it so easy to create with her sketches! I hope you'll play along with this sketch at Inspirational Card Sketches!

The design is simple, but the execution was not! LOL... The word tree idea came from a posting somewhere, I think on the cricut message boards, where someone posted a picture of a word tree made from text and printable. I thought "wouldn't it be cool to weld the words together on my gypsy, and cut it out on my cricut".

The welding was fine, but my first choices of fonts on a couple words weren't quite the best, and my test cut didn't work well. I ended up cutting this thing 3 times, ajdusting fonts and welds till it finally came out right. I still had to use my craft knife a couple places and it is such a delicate cut (it's less than 5 inches tall) that I had to be very careful not to damage it.

I used more BG Eskimo Kisses papers, Bazzill cardstock, a Foof a La clear button with paper glued to the back, DMC floss, and some generic ribbon. The cricut cartridges I used are: Ashlyn's Alphabet, Base Camp, Zooballoo, Winter Woodland, Hanna Montana font, Cuttin' Up, Opposites Attract, and a rectangle from George.

I think this cut would look great on a layout, since cutting it bigger would mean it is less delicate and the details of the words would show better. So, since I'm sharing the .gypsy cut file for this, I went ahead and made multiple pages on the cut file, and on each page is a different size of the cut. The cuts are NOT grouped! so if you want to move them, you'll need to group it, move it, then ungroup it before cutting or the welds won't work. But there's the size I cut for this card, a medium size and one that is a full page tall.  You can download the cut file for the Gypsy here.

Thanks for looking!

Pie Box - .gypsy cut file

I finally jumped on the box making bandwagon!  I wonder if someone else has already done this box. LOL!
I'm sorry that the shapes are from George, if you don't have the George cart... I can try to re-make it using the gypsy carts sometime.

Someone at my LSS gave me a template for a pie box and I thought, hey this would be a fairly easy template to use to make my first box on my gypsy. So I did. Not as easy as I thought as I had to tweak it several times. But I'm glad I didn't start with something harder.

I made it in two styles, with a window and without. I just noticed the heart window isn't quite centered, but if that matters to you, you can center it. It would be cute to do with other shapes for the windows too. I also did NOT put in score marks, because I don't care for score marks on my cards and boxes. You can always add them but this is a pretty easy box to fold I think.  For my window, I cut a peice of acetate to put inside to keep the candy in. The undecorated boxes:

 

So the Gypsy cut file includes 2 pages, the first is the no-window one, the 2nd page is the window version. Like I said, you can use other shapes for the windows.  Download the Pie box here.

Here's a picture of where the score lines are.

 

 

 

I glued the sides together as that makes it a lot sturdier. I think it's plenty sturdy for the hard candies I put in it. I suppose if a piece of pie is cellophane wrapped, you could give pie in this box!

I hope you all like this one!

All I want...

Whoa! here's a contest for you! Go to TodaysMama website to check it out! Prize is worth over $3800!! I just have to answer the questions below. :)

And, by the way, this is my 100th post!  yay me!

Mama’s Holiday Wish List Meme
TodaysMama and Provo Craft are giving away a sleighful of gifts this holiday season and to enter I’m sharing this meme with you.

1. What 5 items are on your holiday wish list this year? 
     A safe and peaceful holiday. 
     Wonderful memories and lots of photos to scrap.
     That my time off work goes slowly! lol
     Cricut cartridges.
     Lots of time for scrapping.
2. What is your favorite handmade gift you have received? 
     A crocheted afghan.
3. What handmade gift have you always wanted to tackle? 
     I'd like to make something for my hubby that he'd really like and use. I have no idea what that would be!  So this year I'm going to start with t-shirts. lol
4. What was the best Christmas gift you received as a child? 
     Crafting kits... it really encouraged me to be creative, and I've never stopped loving to craft and create.
5. What items are on your kid’s wish list this year? 
     Anything he sees and likes... he's only 3 so that's just about everything! :) 
6. What is your favorite holiday food? 
     Homemade pies.
7. What will you be hand-crafting for the holidays? 
     All the cards I'm sending out, t-shirts, altered canvases, a mini-book or two.
8. What is your favorite holiday movie? 
     Prancer
9. Favorite holiday song? 
     The Twelve Pains of Christmas
10. Favorite holiday pastime?
     Time off from work to spend with my family! 

Canvas gift

I made one of these in a class at my local scrapbook store, and loved it. I decided to make another as a gift for my mother-in-law. She was going to buy a new house, and would have had many walls to fill when I started making this. She changed her mind about the house but I'm still giving her the canvas for her wall where she lives now. :)

The photo was taken by Penny Smith while my son and I were at the scrapbook store, and I stalked Penny till she sent me the photo... I love it!

I bought a canvas on sale at JoAnn's, painted the edges with acrylic paints, also bought wooden letters and painted those, distressed the letters with cats eye inks. Glued papers down with fabri-tac. Cut out bird shapes and fence with the cricut, glittered the birds, embossed the fence. Glued down my embellies. I won't say it was really quick, but it was pretty easy!

Thanks for looking. :)

SOUS 11/13 Sketch - Halloween '01

 This wonderful sketch by Aymee Gandy is the challenge this week over at Stuck On You Sketches.  I thought I wouldn't get this done in time! lol... it's hard to scrap during the week. I think I started mine on sunday, and only finished it last night. Talk about eye-popping bright!

 

I have very few pictures of just me. Very very few. One of the few times I allow photos of me is at Halloween if I'm wearing a costume. I guess I feel more comfortable in a costume than in my own skin. Anyway, where I worked back then, for years and years did not allow costumes on Halloween, go figure, it was a public library and mostly kids come there. But finally we got a new director who was cool with the costumes.

I used DCWV papers from the Taj Mahal stack, a Prima flower vine, bling, stickles and some mini alphas from Making Memories. The ball trim was from a grab bag of remnants and the gold trim is actually leftover gold lame' bias tape that I made for my wedding dress and my attendants dresses. I made hundreds of yards of it I think! and have a ton left, lol.

Cricut carts used: Gyspy wanderings (marquee), Indie Art (butterfly), Accent Essentials (flourish), Storybook (welded border)

Before I bought my gypsy and really started using my cricut for everything, I spent tons of money on embellishments, especially flowers, and these fancy Prima stems. Then Sandy goes and posts a tutorial on how to make these stems! Well, I have tons of embies to use up, and I'm determined to use them up since I spent my money on them!  However, it won't stop me from making a custom-colored stem should I need one. ;)

Thanks for looking!

ICS #43 - Snow Globe

I knew exactly what I wanted to do the instant I saw the sketch for this week's Inspirational Card Sketches!

I had seen a snow globe "shaker box" type card somewhere weeks ago and knew I wanted to try one. Then I saw the snowglobe cut on the Christmas Cheer cricut cartridge and that decided me. The penguin also came from the Christmas Cheer cart... isn't he cute? the snow is MS glitter. I wish now I'd had something coarser... turns out I did, at home (I was at a crop when I made this). I used more Eskimo Kisses papers from BG. I plan to use them up on cards this year! lol   Here's the inside of the card. The "globe" only has the "snow" in it, so that the penguin is also inside. I like that he's pulling double duty.

The stamped sentiment is Inkadinkadoo I think. There's some stickles on the front and inside as well.  Oh, the penguin's scarf is from Everyday Paperdolls cart. I thought he looked a little chilly and needed a scarf.

However, I especially want to note that I was in the mood to test my cricut when I was making this card. I save the acetate packaging from a lot of the stuff I buy, including the packaging that carts come in. So when I decided to make this shaker box, I grabbed a couple peices of transparency from cart packaging that I'd saved, and stuck them to a cricut mat and used the deep cut blade at the highest pressure, depth 5 and low speed. My cricut cut these transparencies like a charm! perfect circles! I just had to rub a little of the mat adhesive off them before using them.

My 3 year old son said this is his favorite card. "Kevin love snow gob mama".  And looked at me expectantly. He believes if he tells me how much he loves something, I will give it to him. LOL!

Thanks for looking!

Gypsy Spot - Ho Ho Ho Gift card

Hello Monday! It's Gypsy Spot day! :)

Edited to add:  Nilda at The Gypsy Spot has been ill, the Spot may be a day or so late for this week's challenge!

Our challenge at the Gypsy Spot is to make a shaped card. I could have used a number of already available shaped cards on my cartridges but I thought I'd weld up my own from the gift shape on Christmas Cheer. Turns out that this is a rather versatile card that I can use all year round.

 I wanted to use this gift cut on Christmas Cheer, but it didn't have a complete blackout, it just blacked out the ribbons. So I needed to create a new blackout that fully blacked out everything, for the base of the card. I expanded the blackout gift cut slightly so it was almost a shadow cut then used ovals from George to fill in the side ribbons. Once I achieved a successful weld, I copied, flipped and welded the two at the top to make a foldable card.

 

There's my mat with all the cuts I used. Of course you don't have to use the tag from Very Merry Tags if you don't have it. I am making this .gypsy cut file available for download here. :)

Once I had the weld done, it was a simple matter of choosing the papers and cutting the various layers. In addtion to the Basic Grey Eskimo Kisses papers, I used some Bazzill cardstock, Crystal and Frosted Lace Stickles, a bit of fiber to tie the tag on.

This is a great card for all year round occasions. Just change up the papers (and something different for the tag lol).

Thanks for looking!

Stickles Storage

I *love* my stickles. But one thing that bugs me is having an air bubble blow out in the middle of following a delicate line... you know what I mean!  :)  
So I determined that the best way to store my stickles would be upside down. I looked for something to store them in... those pricey (discontinued) Tim Holtz metal cases were out... seriously I wanted something inexpensive and well... what if I need another down the road? so I found nothing pre-made that would fit the bill. Then I started looking for something that the bottles would fit standing in.

I found this Iris storage box, it's called an "8x8 Project Storage Box". I bought it at JoAnn's with a coupon... I think I paid less than $4 for it.

The stickles bottles fit perfectly.

So I measured the inside, 10.5 x 9.25 inches, and took out my Gypsy and put a square on the mat that size. Then I filled the square with circles that were just over 3/4 inch, probably 7/8 inch. I had a circle punch that is 3/4 in and it *just* fits over the bottle lid, so I realized the hole needed to be a tiny bit bigger. I took some not too thick chipboard and cut the circles.

I tested it to make sure the bottles fit because for some reason the circles were not true circles even though I used George. Perhaps it's because it's chipboard... Anyway, the bottles fit.

 

 Then I trimmed the chipboard down to the measurements of the storage box and cut strips to make a support grid for it, then put the grid together.

I had to trim the circle piece down a little as the inside of this box is not perfectly square, there are some indentations and my measurements weren't precise enough, but the trimming was very slight and then the support grid went in before the circle piece, and the stickles top down in that. I also wrote the name of the stickles color on the bottoms of the bottles for easy identification.

Here's a view with the lid closed. Very happy with how this turned out! There are 90 holes but because of the handle on the box, at least 4 of those are unusable.

 The box is intended for carrying, since there's a handle, so I stood the box up to see what would happen. The chipboard is supporting it perfectly! Nothing moved inside.

If you would like the cut file for the circle piece, I've saved and uploaded it to my box.net site. You can download it here.

Hope this helps anyone out there like me, who likes blow-out free stickles! LOL

The Story Matters...

One of the ladies that works at my LSS, Scrapaganza, has a challenge blog called The Story Matters, for layout challenges that focus on journaling. I love journaling as that's one of the reasons I started scrapbooking. This layout is about a time when I was a teen, and I was making what was to me a huge decision... where to live. With mom or dad. Life was a little rough that year.

Thanks for looking :)

Download Gypsy cut files

Here you will find all the .gypsy cut files that I have available for download!

Please feel free to use them for personal use. Don't offer them for sale or anything, though I don't care if you make craft items to sell with these files, because, quite frankly you could make these yourself anyway. :)  If you make a really cool project, drop me a comment so I can come see!

First up, my favorite creations, my iron fences. The picture below gives you a preview of each fence and there is a matching gate .gypsy file to go with it if you want that too.

 

Download Iron Fence #1    Download Iron Fence #1 Gate  (George, Don Juan, Home Accents)

Download Iron Fence #2    Download Iron Fence #2 Gate  (George, Don Juan, Home Accents)

Download Iron Fence #3    Download Iron Fence #3 Gate  (George, Don Juan, Home Accents, Blackletter)

Download Iron Fence #4    Download Iron Fence #4 Gate  (George, Don Juan, Home Accents, Blackletter)

Download Heart Mat (Storybook)

Download Ho Ho Ho Gift Card
(Christmas Cheer, George, Very Merry Tags)

Download Stickles storage (George)
If you don't have the George cart, still download it and open as a template, then use a circle cut from some other cartridge that you do have and put the circles over the template the same size.





Download Pie Box (George)
 

Download Folding flower card (Accent Essentials, Gypsy Wanderings, Walk in My Garden)

Click here for the .gypsy cut file LGIrnSqr.PS.HA.DJ.MDRamsey.gypsy

Click here for the .gypsy cut file LGIrnBrdr.HA.DJ.MDRamsey.gypsy

Click here for the .gypsy cut file LGIrnRnd.PS.HA.DJ.MDRamsey.gypsy

Click here for the .gypsy cut file LGIrnRndBrdr.HA.DJ.MDRamsey.gypsy

Click here for the .gypsy cut file LGIrnOtrBrdr.PS.HA.DJ.MDRamsey.gypsy

Butterflies on glass
 Designed for a lady who wants them for a wedding. Uses cartridges Bloom and Gypsy Font. After cutting out, fold in half and snip a small slice at an upward angle so the butterfly can "sit" on the edge of the glass.

Download Design Studio .cut files

Here you will find all the Cricut Design Studio .cut files that I have available to download.

Download heart mat (Storybook)

Download large scallop circle with holes
(George)

Download large scalloped square w/holes
(Storybook)

Download Ho Ho Ho Gift card
(Christmas Cheer, George, Very Merry Tags)

Click here for the DS .cut file LGIrnSqr.PS.HA.DJ.MDRamsey.cut

Click here for the DS .cut file LGIrnBrdr.HA.DJ.MDRamsey.cut

Click here for the DS .cut file LGIrnRnd.PS.HA.DJ.MDRamsey.cut

Click here for the DS .cut file LGIrnRndBrdr.HA.DJ.MDRamsey.cut

Click here for the DS .cut file LGIrnOtrBrdr.PS.HA.DJ.MDRamsey.cut