Tag Cricut

finished card laying down side view

Birds on the House

CraftyK Leave a comment

This card has gone through several patterns. The first one was from dailycrossstitch.com. Every time I went to order it, there wasn’t a pattern. The one pattern that is missing from their site. I tried reaching out, but no one responded.

in progress birdhouse

I had found a different pattern that was more complex, but not as bright and fun. Then I got a new cross stitch book and ended up finding this pattern that seemed to fit what I wanted. I don’t know my aunt all that well, so my mom came up with birds and flowers.

pre-backstitching of birdhouse

My aunt used to make beautiful cards for people by stamping and coloring them in. She stopped making them years ago and I am a little sad I wasn’t able to fit any stamping onto the finished card. I do like the paper I found though. I think it really fits with the style of the cross stitch.

I used the Cricut to cut out the frame, used up all the paper since the Cricut messed up as usual and cut off the paper and on the mat instead. Sometimes it likes to do that, other times it works just fine. I never know and can waste a lot of paper and need to pick something else before it cuts right. I’ve been told what it’s doing isn’t normal, so if you end up with a Cricut it will probably work just fine.

Stitching

Started: September 26th
Finished: September 29th

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full front of birdhouse card

Happy Birthday text in focus

Teddy bear

CraftyK Leave a comment

Birthday twins in the family are becoming more common. Not just the actual twins, nope, these are the new people marrying in and having babies. There’s just under 60 people in the family and there are 365 days a year. We have at least 5 overlapping birthdays already of non-twins. That just seems so crazy to me!

Anyway, this card didn’t take too terribly long to stitch. I actually outlined the letters as I went since I wanted the thin parts to be thicker, so two threads across the board on that one.

The bear I wanted to show a before/after of the stitching vs stitching with backstitching .

teddy in progress

Here’s my wonderful cell phone photo of the bear before I got out the black thread for it. It’s always fun to see the before and after on these and the difference it makes.

side angle right

The assembly of the card didn’t go as I’d hoped. It was a bit like the Hippo I made earlier this year. The paper is the thinner I guess regular printer paper weight and doesn’t handle being cut and taped down over the fabric very well.

It seems to go ok until the bottom and I get a bubble that turns into a pronounced crease. Other than that I like how this card turned out.

Stitching

Started: July 16th
Finished: July 20th

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teddy card full front

top front of card standing

Simple Cross

CraftyK Leave a comment

I’m not sure where to begin with this card. I made it for a second-cousin of mine. He’s been through a lot in his life and part of this cross stitch has a little extra meaning because of where the thread came from.

About 15 years ago my cousin and his family were in a terrible car accident. His wife died and one of his children was left with a brain injury. He’s recovered well beyond what was every expected for which we are all grateful.

It’s not easy to lose a parent. If I remember correctly he was about 6 years old. I know his mom loved cooking (which is why we have the family cookbook) and she cross stitched. At some point my mom ended up with her thread. It’s in a brown case, everything sorted out and each color braided onto the cards. To this day I cannot rebraid them if one becomes undone.

thread on cloth on pattern

For this cross stitch I picked two colors from her collection. I went with blue, hoping it’s a color he likes. Blue is a pretty universal color. These two stood out, so going with “there’s a higher power” they must be what it should be.

The pattern is something I found online. I didn’t want anything too crazy and trying to search “cross cross stitch” doesn’t go so well, the internet doesn’t understand that I did mean to write cross twice.

The pattern had a circle element to it that I decided to leave off. I wanted to keep it simple, I liked the clean lines.

angled view front

I used the Cricut to cut my frame.  It took a few different papers to come to the plain grey. Again for the simplicity of it. I didn’t want to add any text, embossing or stamping. Just simple, especially because the thread in this case has more meaning than anything else.

Stitching

Started: May 30th
Finished: May 31st

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front view full card

 

 

cat face

Happy Kitty

CraftyK Leave a comment

Hopefully you like cats. I do. I have 2 of them. My cousins have several cats among them as well. The cousin who is getting this card however had to give up his cats after finding out one of his kids is allergic. Yet the whole family still loves cats. They are all getting a cat card to at least have a non-allergy causing cat around. I cannot guarantee the card is free of cat hair either. I usually have one on my lap while attempting at stitching.

happy cat thread

This pattern is part of a set from a quilt book. I tried to highlight the symbols and colors I would need, yet missed the pink. It’s not in the picture when I started, but I had to go find some pink for the ears by time I was done.

stitching top

This was a pretty fast pattern to work on. It was the designing of the card that took a while.

I had no idea where to begin. I went through both paper drawers a couple of times before finding the blue geometric patterned paper from a book I bought last year.

The pattern was small enough to add some stamping with a birthday message. That paper was easy to find, I find myself using it a lot. It’s not white and has some character to it.

bottom view

I used my Cricut to cut out the blue paper and ivory paper for stamping on. I have a corner rounder cutting thing I used to round the corners. I was lazy and didn’t design the box in Illustrator and the Cricut program doesn’t allow for rounded corners.

After stamping I decided since I had my clear embossing powder by me to emboss just the word birthday. A little got on the letters above, but not enough to change the effect I was going for.

front of card standing

For not having a clue how to start designing this card I think it came together really well. Bringing in the additional element of the stamp helps offset the smaller cross stitch design.

Stitching

Started: May 9th
Finished: May 11th

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front of Happy Cat

bottom of card Huskers

Go Big Red!

CraftyK Leave a comment

I could make this exact card for just about anyone in my family. Almost everyone loves their football and the Huskers. It’s a Nebraska thing if you aren’t familiar.

starting out GBR

In my attempt to keep each card unique, only one family member is getting the beloved Huskers stitched onto a card. This card is for my cousin (and my mom’s godson). He’s been living in Texas almost 2 decades now, but that doesn’t take his love of the Huskers away.

To bring a little Huskers to him, this is the ONE Husker card that I am making this year. I found the pattern years ago with a random image search. I’m pretty sure it’s not licensed so hopefully I won’t get in trouble for it.

final card front standingThis card was pretty simple overall. I used the Cricut to cut out the card, background, and red pieces. This card is a little larger at 5×7. The pieces were too crowded looking on the smaller card. I wanted to do frayed edges and mount with foam tape.

top of card close up

While Huskers are known for red, they are also known for the Blackshirts, which is why I chose the marbled black wallpaper as the background on this card. I didn’t have red paper like I would normally use, but did have some red construction paper. I went old school and used that instead of buying scrapbooking paper.

I used double sided tape to mount the wallpaper to the cardstock and the construction paper to the wallpaper. for the cross stitch I used foam tape to make it stand off the card a bit.

Stitching

Started: April 6th
Finished: April 7th

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full front of Husker card

just the pattern

Cells are Blue

CraftyK Leave a comment

I’ll spoil it for you, this stitching was finished in 1 afternoon/evening! So below is not a typo. While the card was not created on the same day (finished stitching pretty late), the stitching was.

getting started

The card was a whole other story. I wasn’t sure what to do for it. The cell was something I created for a MadLibs type letter for my cousin while he was finishing up his doctorate in chemical engineering. I was taking an advanced Illustrator class at the time and thought it would be fun to create my own graphics for the letters. Below is the cards original inspiration.

blue "cell"

Coming up with his card cross stitch was the easy part. Now it was the hard part of assembly. Since this is a cell I wanted to put it in a circle (Petri dish) that’s about as far as the planning went.

I spent a couple of days after the stitching was done thinking over how to tackle the next part. I decided to start with the paper, what color I wanted to use. I found a blue that looked kind of watery I guess, it felt like it could work.

 

 

Next I went to my embossing folders to see what would work for this project. I was originally going to do dots, then found overlapping circles and felt that worked better.

 

top side view of card

Once I had the paper out I got out my handy Cricut for cutting the circle. My husband found a compass for me to try and get the size correct. The last circle I did was way too small. I had the opposite problem with this one and cut two frames with the second being slightly smaller. After the one I was going to use was cut out I ran it through the embossing machine.

As another inside joke of sorts I turned the scrap pieces including the inner circle that was cut out (twice) into confetti. I have a round punch thing that makes sort of big circles, so it’s not annoying confetti, but still something in the card. This is something my cousins’ now wife loved to do to him while dating. I even heard she sent an envelope with just glitter or confetti. I also included a little print out of the original cell as an additional keepsake.

Stitching

Started: February 21st
Finished: February 21st

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the full card

Color the Rainbow

CraftyK Leave a comment

I may have gotten a little over confident on this one. I thought it would be extremely simple to finish in just a couple of days. Instead it took me around 2 weeks.

Most of the delay was my fault. I was studying for an exam and had to put cross stitching to the side for a couple weeks. The exam was out of town so while I was away I also wasn’t working on this.

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Once I got back I realized just how close to deadline I was. I’ve been working frantically through my last weekend before it needed to be sent trying to finish. I even worked on it while walking on the treadmill (didn’t go the greatest, but got me just a little closer).

I did finish late Sunday night getting everything assembled, photographed, and in the mail. This card is staying in town and actually not going all that far. I’m sure it will have a journey around town to get to its final destination though.

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This card is for a cousin of mine. When I saw this pattern it made me think of her. She is a teacher, but I think it was more the bright colors that drew me in.

I wanted those colors to really stand out so I chose a grey paper as my frame. I’m still not great at getting the work stretched correctly while mounting (you’ll notice it looks a little bubbled) though I did make many more attempts with this one.

I used my Cricut to cut the frame and write Happy Birthday! along the bottom. Overall I think this card turned out quite nice.

Pattern from dailycrossstitch.com.

Stitching

Started: January 13th
Finished: January 27th

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set of 4 thank you cards

Holiday Thank Yous

CraftyK Leave a comment

Despite knowing all year when Christmas is I managed to put off creating my thank you notes. I also flat out didn’t do cards to send to people. I probably should, but if I make them it’s lots of work and my personal life is pretty boring so nothing to write lengthy prose about. Anyway, I digress.

These cards are to send to the 4 people who give me gifts in my old age (post 30). My mom, my mother-in-law, and my godparents. This year I enlisted help for my godparents gifts from my husband. He’s getting into woodworking and made something for each of them. Since it’s his thing, I don’t have pictures of the projects. So this will continue to be about the cards and my side ramblings.

I have stamped onto wallpaper before and decided to go for it again. Although it’s somewhat hard to see I did actually stamp on the pear card. I also took a Sharpie to it for an outline. For the white card I used black ink and stamped right onto the wallpaper. I had to wait awhile before adhering it to the cardstock because it was starting to bleed a bit. I barely touched it and it started to run up the lines in the wallpaper. After letting it sit for a while I went ahead and finished up making it into a card. The pear I didn’t seem to have those issues, but you can barely see the text. It’s a little more visible in person depending on the angle.

For the other two cards I got out the handy Cricut. I was never good at cutting squares or any shape for that matter. Straight lines are hard and getting them the correct size is even worse. I used the Cricut to cut out my squares from pink and grey paper. I then took a red ink to stamp Thank You onto the pink paper and a dark blue ink I onto the grey. Then I used foam tape to adhere the paper to the wallpaper to give a more 3D appearance.

To attach the wallpaper to the cardstock I used double sided tape on all 4 cards. I didn’t have the time to mess with Yes Paste and get it all to stick properly. I hope to spend some time working on more wallpaper cards next year. Until then I have now created some cards for December and can complete my blog on 2018 Cards. I think I’ll do another blog for next year since I know I’ll have a lot of cards to make for my mom’s side of the family.

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flat lay 4 thank you cards

Thing 1 & Thing 1 & Thing 2,3,4

CraftyK Leave a comment

At my day job the team decided to dress up as Things 1-4 from Dr. Suess’s Cat in the Hat. While I chose not to participate in the donning of red leggings and blue wigs, I did come up with a way to celebrate with the team.

Most of the team partakes in coffee on the regular, so I thought cute coffee mugs could work as a fun add on to the theme (and a quick Google search inspired this). I went out and bought some white mugs and black 651 vinyl and got to work.

I did get lazy with trying to draw these all myself and found that people sell these ready to go in vector format on Etsy. This is where I got my version: JLCraftsCreations. (This takes you right to the item in her store)

mug with care instructions

Due to who is in and out and going to parties there are two Thing 1’s and then Things 2-4 for the rest of the team. The first go round I forgot to measure what size to make the circle, but I did remember 2 Thing 1’s. Second go round I make them the size I needed, but completely spaced the second Thing 1. Luckily I hadn’t closed anything yet and was able to whip out another Thing 1 on the Cricut. (Tip: you can select the little eyeball to hide any item in Cricut Design space you don’t want to “make” at the moment.)

care instruction cut out

While this was a fairly simple project, it still took quite a bit of time getting the pieces off the paper and onto the mug. I used Glad Press n’ Seal to lay the vinyl onto the mugs. Usually I think contact paper is recommended, but Press n’ Seal isn’t as sticky, but it does wrinkle easily.

Overall it was a fun little project to help me avoid doing actual work over the weekend.

I apologize for the lack of during photos. I did Snapchat some video, but unfortunately that can’t be uploaded to this blog due to restrictions on the free service.

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line up of mugs 1-4