Author: Misty Murphy

Cricut Lite Meow

I’m excited about the new Cricut Lite cartridges. I like having a sampling of images rather than a large cartridge full of images that I will probably never use. The only catch is that I usually pay $25-40 on ebay for a full cartridge and the new lites retail for $39.99 at WalMart. In the end I am getting fewer cuts for the same or higher price than I am used to paying. And I have to shop at WalMart, my least favorite store. Regardless, I like several of the new releases and will buy them. I already bought Meow and would like to share my thoughts and projects on this cartridge.

I found some of the small detailed cuts, such as tiny noses, hard to work with. When I used a nice sticky mat and a lower speed and pressure the cuts came out much better. Prior to making those changes I kept shifting and tearing my paper. Even with the troubles I think the cuts are so fun that I am willing to work with any troubles. See what I made…

Recipe:
pattern papers: Scenic Route
cardstock, ribbon, chalk: Stampin’ Up
Cricut cartridges: Meow (Lite), Opposites Attract
markers: Marvey
alpha stickers: from stash

One of the reasons I loved this cartridge is that we adopted two kittens back in April. These kittens were introduced into our lives after a very bad experience of being dog owners. The cats are such a joy compared to the troubles with the dog! I never thought I would be a scrapper of fur babies but these sweeties have converted me to a sappy pet-scrapper. The title was cut with the purr+cat image from the Meow cartridge then I used the Opposites Attract cartridge to finish the letter for the title. The paw prints and the two kittens also came from Meow.

Recipe:
pattern papers: Scenic Route, Bella Blvd., Piggy Tales
cardstock: Stampin’ Up, Bazill
punch: Fiskars
Cricut Cartridge: Meow (lite)

And the images on this cartridges are just so fun that I had to make a card. Don’t know how I’ll use this card yet, but I love, love, love it!

And if those were enough reasons to buy this cartridge, my girls love to play with the cricut with me. It is good time crafting together. My 8 year old made this project. It is a layout with pockets on it to hold her family of cats. Each family comes in each of the 4 colors. Cut the cats & embellish with markers. How fun!

Hair Clips

I got my hair cut (finally) back at the end of May. I love having the new shorter do. The only problem is that I used to keep my long, long hair up in a big clip to keep it out of my face. I hate having hair tickle me in the face. The old clips wouldn’t fit my new short hair. I just had to have something new. So I made some sweet little clips!

The clip there in the foreground I made in about 5 minutes. I used a flower punch (Stampin’ Up) to punch 2 thin chipboard shapes. I then punched 4 of the same flowers out of pattern paper (Basic Grey leftovers). Glue one piece of pattern paper to each side of each chipboard flower. Glue one flower on top of the other. Bend top petals up slightly. Add a puddle of glue to center, place pearls (Stampin’ Up) in center and sprinkle the whole thing with a bit of glitter to fill in the excess glue. I glued the finished flower to a small hair clip I already had on hand. Lovely!

The second clip was a recycled flower. I made the flower for a bookmark a couple of years ago. I never really liked it as a bookmark because it was just too bulky. But as a clip I love it!

I’ve got a few more flower clips in my future. I’ll share them with you when they are done.

Father’s Day

Whew, it has been a very busy May and June here. I haven’t been able to get as many posts in as I wanted. I am lining up some new posts for the coming weeks. I will have some book reviews and some product reviews as well as a few layouts for you.

This past weekend we were camping with 5 other families in the woods. It rained and was cold and muddy, but we had a great time anyway! Since I knew we would be camping on Father’s Day I prepared some goody boxes for all the Dads to enjoy. These boxes were really quick and fun to put together — and my girls helped me out. You can adapt these boxes to any event. Use a different stamp saying, cut an appropriate image, like a cupcake, some balloons, or a graduation cap, fill with treats and make someone smile.

Recipe:

Pattern papers: Scenic Route
Cardstock, stamp, ink: Stampin’ Up
Cricut cartridge: Tags Bags, Boxes & More*; A Child’s Year**

*The box and the black background shape are from TBBM. The orange foreground is the same cut as the black background. I simply stamped my greeting, trimmed away the excess cardstock and adhered it to the project to line up with the edges of the background.

** The father holding the baby is actually an image from A Child’s Year of a mother holding a baby. I simply trimmed off the mother’s long hair and it substituted for a father just fine!

Final LOAD posts

Okay, after a very busy weekend and then the stomach flu, I am finally feeling up to getting the last of my LOAD layouts posted. I’ve got all digital layouts for you this post.  Four of the 5 are duplicate layouts in a series and are easily reproducible in paper form. Hope you get some inspiration. Enjoy.

Day 27, 28, 29, 30. A series from our unschooling conference. It was four days of joy, thoughtfulness, activity, exhaustion, connections, energy, learning and so much more. It really is an emotional ride that extends beyond a learning philosophy and into a living philosophy.

Day 31: And at the end of the weekend this was how I felt.

LOAD Day 24 to 26

I’ve got a very busy weekend ahead of me. Our family is going to our annual unschooling conference. It is an exhilarating and exhausting 5 days! I thought I would post the last few days LOAD project before all the activity gets under way for us tomorrow.

Day 24: Our homeschool science fair. This was the first one and we hope to make it an annual event.

Day 25: A camping trip from last fall. I made my own photo collage template and fit 34 photos on my layout!

Day 26: I’ve had these duck stickers for a long time and finally had a chance to use them. I used the cricut with center point function turned on to cut circles out of my photos and matted with circles 1/4″ larger. I paired some more elegant paper with the cuter duck stickers. I think the balanced worked well.

LOAD Day 19 to 23

I think I’m in the home stretch now. I have a weekend event this last weekend of LOAD, so I am a bit worried about getting the last few days in on time. I’m hoping to plan some of my own digital templates by Thursday so that I can just throw in my photos from the weekend event and get them posted. We’ll see how it goes! And now for the last few days’ layouts…

Day 19: I was hoping with LOAD to get a slew of older project ideas completed. Alas, I’ve found myself immersed in the present. I did manage for day 19 to get an old Christmas story told. I’m hoping these last couple of days will bring more older stories.

Day 20: Digital layout. (Recipe: stitching: Michelle Coleman (Bohemian Summer); bow: Carrie Stephens (Gypsy Dancer); metal circles: Misty Murphy (I’ll post them to the freebies section later)). I used some scans of my baby stuff that my parents sent me for my birthday. I’m so very happy to have these things.

Day 21: I just love the angle of this photo. It pretty much speaks for itself. I didn’t have to do too much extra to this page.

Day 22: Digital (Recipe: fonts: Stampin Up (Girly Girl), Desdemona; ribbon, pattern papers: Atomic Cupcake; flower: Dani Mogstad; photo frames: Misty Murphy (I’ll post these to the freebies section as well)).

Day 23: And today’s layout… This layout was bombing big time when I started it. I had stamped the squares around the edges and meant to evenly space them to fit all 25 on the border. Didn’t work. Then my advent title was small and very blue all by itself. When I was sorting through my stash I dropped some photo corners and a light bulb when on. I could use those corners as arrows to spruce up my title block. That lead to more arrows through the page and I pulled in the blue from the title to carry it through the layout better. Then threw in some other embellishments to support the theme a little more. I was pleased it ended up looking like a game board, say a version of Candy Land. And I saved a layout from what could have been a tragic end.

LOAD layouts Day 10 to 18

I thought I would get these posted sooner, but again no such luck. Just getting in a layout everyday is proving challenging!

LOAD Day 9: Worked on the Week In The Life project put on by Ali Edwards.

LOAD Day 10

LOAD Day 11

LOAD Day 12

LOAD Day 13

LOAD Day 14: I worked on both Day 6 and Day 7 on this day and only uploaded Day 7 for LOAD.

LOAD Day 15

LOAD Day 16: A challenge — to do something you never do. For this page I did the things I never normally do, like…

  • printing photos straight from my printer without being edited and cropped
  • use bold color schemes
  • use tons of embellishments

LOAD Day 18: Reflecting on becoming one year older and what it means to be a “grown up.”

Final NSD & LOAD Day 3

Okay, so I finished up my challenges for NSD today finally! And I worked on my LOAD layout for the day. Check them all out.

This was a NSD challenge to create a shaped object. It is a card I made for my SIL for Mother’s Day. I really had fun with this one. Making a card in the shape of a letter? It was great. Try it using the recipients initial.

The NSD challenge here was to create something with or for a child. Since my 3yo scraps with me all the time, this was a breeze. I mentioned the word Cricut and she came running. She decided she wanted to make a princess and viola.

Final NSD challenge was to create a monochromatic plus flower project. A Mother’s Day card for my MIL in her favorite color.

And my LOAD project for today…

Recipe:

  • pattern paper, rubons, stickers: Piggy Tales
  • cardstock: Stampin’ Up
  • punch: Fiskars
  • monogram letter: Circut (Opposites Attract)
  • brads: from stash
  • font: Times New Roman

NSD recap

So I had a great time celebrating NSD with a couple of friends. We chatted, listened to music, snacked and learned things from each other. It was a good day. I’m looking forward to working on more projects here in a few minutes. Today I am going to focus on challenges put out by blogs and community sites that I follow. I am also going to work on my layout for LOAD. More about that next post. For now here are the things I completed for NSD.

This one you saw as my last challenge post yesterday. While I completed all the other NSD challenges before hand. This one I did day of. It was also my Day 1 entry for LOAD.

A no photo layout using saved items.

And Pages from the class I am taking at Big Picture Scrapbooking called Everyday Adventures. I posted about this class in an earlier post as well. The first layout was to create a page about things you buy, the second page was to explore type and the final was to think about the things you throw away. My daughter played along with that one and her interpretation is on the right of the photo.