Cutting Cafe Awesomeness

I am having so much fun crafting with files from the AWESOME Cutting Cafe. Regina, the owner, has created printable stamps, and cut files for every occasion you can think of! 

Here is a graduation card I made for one of my cousins. I made it in his high schools colors.

Graduate shaped card

I LOVE this little saw! I had to take some fun photos with it. (I'm such a nerd! Lol) 

This is actually a card file but I used it to make the perfect tag for one of my husbands Father's Day gifts.

 Tool time set - templates and cutting files

This cousin booklet is only one of the very cool booklets The Cutting Cafe has. They are perfect for preserving memories...which is exactly what I used it for. We had a cousin here in Alaska visiting from Washington for a week. 

I kept it pretty simple because I was giving it to a 13 year old boy. The paper I used is from DCWV "All About Boys".

Here is some of the pictures I put in the book...

Colton and my son, Victor, are the best of buds! They had not seen each other in about 3 years. We didn't tell Victor that Colton was coming. He was THRILLED when he saw me walk around the corner with Colton at the airport.

Cousin Word Book...Template - Cutting File

If you haven't checked out The Cutting Cafe, you should! 

Thanks for stopping by! Happy crafting!

Camo Dresser Redo

I have been working on this dresser off and on for about a month now. My husband is going to be sooooo happy it is finally out of HIS garage! Lol. 

We are very into Realtree Camo in this house. My kids all decided to have it in their bedrooms. This dresser is for my son's room which is done in camo and Hunters Orange. 

We got this dresser for free. It's pretty old and smelled of smoke. It sat in the garage for about a month to air out before I sanded it.
                                                 

I had a couple of helpers during the sanding process.

My daughter, Kylah 

and my nephew Spencer

Once we were done sanding the dresser, I primed the inside of the drawers and then painted the dresser with some left over paint from another project. 

When the primer was dry I put a couple coats of orange spray paint on the inside of the drawers.

Oh! I almost forgot! I pored a cap full of Vanilla Extract into both the white and the brown paints. I had read on Pinterest that people do this while painting walls in the house to reduce paint smelly fumes. I was hoping that it would help get that smokey smell out. It worked! I am so happy!

After the paint was dry I took a branch off a tree, put it on the dresser and spray painted over it. I had originally planed to do the leaves that way too, but decided I that was not the look I was going for. Instead, I cut leaves and a pine cone out of the center of a 12 x 12 piece of card stock paper (with my Cricut Explore) to use as a stencil.

I set the stencil on the dresser, spray painted the leaf, removed the stencil and then took a toothpick to "draw" the veins in the leaf (while the paint was still wet)

My son is so excited for this to go in his room!

Thanks for stopping by!

Prima Doll Journal

I am in LOVE with Prima Dolls! I'm a little embarrassed to say that I discovered them only about a month ago through a Facebook group I am a part of. (I am a little behind times!) I started looking at them on Pinterest after that and fell in love.  

 

When my sweet friend sent me an Amazon gift card in the mail for my birthday I knew exactly what I was going to get with it!

Waiting for them to arrive drove me insane! Lol!

This journal is my first project. I took a cheap composition notebook that you can get from most stores and covered it with a piece of s.e.i foil scrapbook paper.

I stamped the Prima Doll on a flesh colored card stock and cut her out. Then I dug through my scrap paper and  found the perfect paper for her dress. I stamped the patterned paper and cut out the dress, pockets and headband and glued them to the cut out Prima girl. Once she was all put together I colored her hair and added shadows to her skin and the dress with Copic markers. This was also the first time I have used Copic markers.

 

 I think she turned out pretty good for my first one, but I need LOTS of practice!

 I distressed the paper by rubbing the sharp edge of my scissors along it and then inked the edges. I used Tombow XTREME PERMANENT ADHESIVE to attach the papers to the notebook. I usually use Mod Poge for this, but I have to say I liked the XTREME adhesive much better. It doesn't make the cover wet so it doesn't curl up at all.

The embellishments are attached with hotglue and my handy dandy Cricut Explore did the writing on the tag and cut out the banner. 

I absolutely loved doing this project! It's a good thing too because my girls want one of these now =) 

Thanks for stopping by! Happy crafting!

Fun with Hats and Crowns!

WARNING...THIS IS A LONG POST WITH LOTS OF PICTURES =)

This weeks assignment for The Cutting Cafe was so much fun! I kinda went crazy with this assignment and made three projects...A Crown, A Party Hat and A Top Hat. Out of the three the Top Hat was my favorite!

I left the top of the hat open so it could be used as a pencil holder. (I used the circle that is meant to be the top of the hat to close off the bottom of the hat.)

I cut the Top Hat out with Cricut Explore, put it together and then wrapped it in duct tape for a pieced together look. After the duct tape was on I used hot glue to make dots and lines on the hat. Once the hot glue was dry I spray painted the hat and a soup can pink and let dry. Then I put on a layer of Mod Podge to seal the paint. After the Mod Podge was dry I put on the ribbon, feathers and flowers.

                                               

The roses and the white feather I used are from The Cutting Cafe. The feather comes with the  Top Hat cutting file I curled and inked the edges and score line of it to make it pop. I also used a few different image sets from Cricut for this project...Art Nouveau for the Peacock feather, Mothers Day Bouquet for the white flower and Flower Shoppe for the black centers of the white flowers. 

I used glitter glue to dress up the flowers a bit.

I cut butterflies out of outdoor vinyl to stick on the pencils. I cut them at 1/4 inch. I am seriously impressed with the cutting abilities of this machine! I am so happy with the way this project turned out! 

NEXT PROJECT FOR THIS WEEKS ASSIGNMENT...

A Crown, for my baby girl who just turned 3.

Echo was so excited to have her own crown!

I used theCrown card cutting file to make this. I cut out 2 of the crowns and glued them together to make it a little more sturdy. I inked the edges of the crown, sewed on the ribbon, hot glued the embellishments on and then glued the crown to a head band.

The pink flower, I made by twisting ribbon and hot gluing it together as I rolled the ribbon. 

Echo wore it for most of the day =) She would tell people "It's Echo's birthday, Mama make me a crown." She is growing up waaayyy too fast...sigh.

AND LAST BUT NOT LEAST...

A Party Hat card for my Sister In Law. This was a super fun card to make!

Thanks for stopping by! I hope you have been inspired! 

A Girl and Her Purses!

My best friend LOVES purses! She is in the process of building a new house and selling the old one. (Which can be very stressful) I wanted to send her a little something to let her know I was thinking about her. When I saw this purse file at the The Cutting Cafe I had to have it! 

This purse was so easy to put together! I cut the pieces with my Cricut Explore, inked the edges a bit, taped it together and TADA! 

I filled it with goodies and put it in the mail.

Now my sister and my girls want one! Time to get busy =)

Thank you for stopping by. Happy crafting!

Keepsake Suitcase

Hello everyone! I am so excited to show you the suitcase I made for my nephew Spencer. He came to Alaska to stay with us for 3 weeks! I wanted him to have something cool to put mementos in.

I got the suitcase cutting file (here) from the awesome Cutting Cafe. Regina has a video to help you put it together. I cut the suitcase out with my Cricut Explore, but if you do not have a cutting machine it also comes in PDF form so you can cut it out by hand.

I was able to find the perfect paper for this project at a cute little shop in Palmer (where we live) called Stamp Cache...they have tons of great paper and much more! I love the Alaska selection they have. The paper I used for the outside of the suitcase is actually a map of Alaska. It even had the little town of Palmer on it. I marked it with a tiny red star.  

I inked the edges of the suitcase and the straps. I sewed edges of the straps before I taped them to the suitcase to dress it up a little.

Spencer thought his suitcase was the coolest thing!

Spencer was amazed that my Cricut Explore could write as well as cut =) (a function I love very much!)

A few things I put in the suitcase...A list of all the places we took Spencer
                                                        A list of guns Spencer shot (we took him shooting, a 1st for him)
                                                        A list of facts about Alaska
                                                        And 4 discs of pictures

I had taken a ton of pictures while Spencer was here! I put them all on discs for my sister...I know she will want to scrapbook them eventually. The file for the CD sleeve also came from The Cutting Cafe you can find it here.

The State of Alaska was also cut out by my Explore. It's from the 50 States Cricut Cartridge.

I absolutely love how this suitcase came out! I will definitely be making more of these.

Thank you for stopping by! I hope you have been inspired =) Happy crafting!

The Cutting Cafe Project Alphabet Cards

The Cutting Cafe project for this week was the A-Z shaped cards. These are the perfect cards for any occasion!  I chose to do the letter B card for my daughters Great Aunt who turned 81 June 29th and the W card for my nephew William who will turn 4 in Aug. (I love being ahead of the game!)

Aunt Dee loved her card! 

For this card I used the candle shaped card for the candle and the 3D Paper Flower (I love these flowers!) 

All these awesome files are from The Cutting Cafe. Make sure you check out the Cafe's Blog on the 7th and the 21st of every month to see the Design Teams inspirational projects. If you leave a comment you will be entered in a drawing to win 3 sets of your choice from their online store. 

Thank you for stopping in to check out my project. Happy Crafting!