Wood Blocks

I had a bit of fun with my Cricut for the holidays :) I bought this great program called Make The Cut that makes it so you don't have to buy and use cartridges. You can create whatever you want on your computer then cut it with your Cricut.


I mostly just used it to cut out letters using my favorite font but I did find this soccer ball image:


The other great thing about it is you can overlap the letters to cut a word as one piece instead of individual letters:


And I guess I forgot to take a picture of the gift I made for my mom using a block the same size as the "Believe" block; it said "Grandma" and underneath that word it said "Established 2007" since that's when my son, her first grandchild, was born.

Cute. Ness.

Oh and one little thing I found was to wrap the sets that have many blocks using cellophane (that clear wrapping paper) so they stay together the way you want them displayed and the person opening it won't have to unwrap it in order to see what it looks like. If you're mailing it though, do what my friend did for me when she gave me a set and take a picture of them set up then include that in the box.

BTW all of these were made with letters cut from paper, not vinyl. I'm still a little gun shy about cutting my precious vinyl for the first time! lol

EDITED TO ADD: In this original post I never explained how I made the blocks because when I gave these gifts to my cousins, one said to her 7-year-old niece "Did you see what Star made? I don't know how she did it!" and her reply was "It's pretty obvious." lol It was awesome.

But for those of who don't find it obvious ;) all you do is buy the wood (2x4s or whatever you like) at Home Depot, mark them to the size you want, saw them, sand them, paint them, cut paper, distress edges of paper with Distress Ink, Mod Podge paper to the block, let dry then Mod Podge over the paper and stick on the letter you cut with your Cricut, then after it dries Mod Podge once more. The end.

Rag Stockings

Forgive me but this is more of a shared idea than a full blown tutorial because I have too much stuff to do before Christmas to take the time to put a tute together! :)

It's so simple though.

I saw these cute stockings on Etsy last year and just kinda copied them the best I could. Wish I could remember who's shop it was.

Anyway I just traced an old stocking I had onto some newspaper and cut it out. Next I traced that piece adding a 1/2" seam allowance around the entire thing onto a more sturdy paper. Then I took the newspaper stocking, cut the heal, toe and top where I wanted, and took each cut piece and traced it onto the sturdy paper adding a 1/2" seam allowance all the way around each one. I used those as pattern pieces to cut my fabric. From there you just pin and sew the five pieces wrong sides together and cut slits in seam then wash!

I realize this is completely unclear so email me with any questions :D

Crocheted Star Ornaments

You can make these using yarn if you'd like, but I had a bunch of jute twine and liked the look of it for these ornaments. I used an "I" hook and my stars are 2&1/2" with a 3" tie.

First, make a magic ring (aka magic circle, disappearing circle, ajustable ring) and leave a 6" tail. All that is, is the circle you make when starting a slip knot but instead of tightening it like you would with a slip knot, you crochet into it. This way you don't have to make a circle out of chains and there's not a big hole left afterwards because when you're done you tighten it.

Next, make 5 single crochets in the circle, slip stitch to finish that row then chain 3x and single crochet in 2nd chain from hook. Now half-double-crochet in next and slip stitch in next then repeat until you have 5 points on your star. Take your tails from starting and finishing and weave them to one of your points then use them as your tie. I love when I can avoid weaving in the ends :)

Questions are always welcome!

Birthday Party Ideas

Note that parts of this are Spiderman themed and others are not... it wasn't intended to be themed but it came together that way more and more as we prepared it all.

First project made with my new $59 Cricut!! Thank you Black Friday! I even laminated them :)

The hubs gets credit for this awesome web made out of streamers:

How cool is this thing?!

I made him re-create it for the party that weekend - look in the back corner at the big one. Awesome!

Here's the little "practice cake" we gave him on his actual birthday:

Here's the big cake for his party. I ordered a plain white cake from Costco and decorated it myself.


I originally made these cool recycled envelope bags using this tutorial from What About Orange. Then I put a sticky hand in each once and the oil from it made it look like a greasy fast food bag :(

So when I saw these on It Is What It Is, I knew what I had to do. I used my circle cutter to cut out the "D" and I cut out a blue background with my scrapbook scissors. I glued them onto paper bags and tied with a cute ribbon. Ta-da.

Now that my gift bags were 10 times bigger they looked empty so I made these simple party favors. I used this Pinwheel tutorial from City Cradle Design for the paper part but I didn't have any dowels and every other tutorial said to use a push pin and a pencil. I wanted them more toddler-friendly so I used a bendy straw with a pom-pom hot-glued to the front. After playing with it post-party, I found they work better when you flatten the paper. Oh well.

Let me know if you have any questions!

Washer Ornaments

Last year I used Nannygoat's tutorial to make these cute ornaments for each of my cousins. I stamped the different family names on each one and tied it on the handle of their gift bag. I'd love to find some more uses for my steel stamping set if you can give me any more ideas :)