love you!

This is a card I made for my husband but haven't give to him yet.  It's fairly simple, just a cut out card with patterned paper behind it.

another birthday card

This is one of the first cards I ever made.  I really, really love it.  I modified a banner shape and then cut our triangles of glittery sheets to put behind them and the words.  It really sparkles!

M'ee' machine

My latest vinyl project was to fancy up my ee machine (netbook).  As my husband and my mom have both pointed out I should have put the M facing the other way so it would look right when it is open. But I went with looking right closed.  I took the flourish appart and then added an M and grouped it all back together.

birthday card-female

Here is a card I made my for my MIL's birthday next week.  I used one of the 3 D flowers on it as well as a basic frame and a border piece.  The dot on the exclamation point is a brad and there are brads in the center of the flowers.  

I used a photo from the silhouette photostream on flikr as inspiration.  Hers is so much nicer but I like mine too!  

http://www.flickr.com/photos/la-nina/8020482941/in/pool-silhouettemachine

We're headed out of town tomorrow for a last visit to my parents.  A totally impromptu visit (as in we started discussing it at 7:30 tonight and we might leave in the morning if my husband can get out of work and I stay on call tonight)!  So off to craft a couple projects so I'll have something to share the next 2 days!

Marker Board

Oops, I had the pictures uploaded and was going to post this at work but that didn't happen, so here is Wednesday's post!  I used vinyl to make subject headings on a marker board.  I really love it.  And it took just a few minutes to do!

Boy Scout Tote

I made these 2 bags for the other tiger scout leader and I to put our stuff in.  She's been a big help as I've gotten started and I wanted to do something to say thanks.  So I found a fleur de lis emblem and put them and our names on it.  I hope she likes it!  And you would think that by now I would remember to mirror my letters... nope.  I had to do them again.

Sailboat birthday card

October is birthday month-my dad, my MIL and both of my nephews all celebrate their birthdays in Oct.  Dad's is the first and he isn't local so I need to get it and his annual amazon gift card in the mail (he likes strange books-church development etc so I let him buy his own stuff!).  He is actually changing jobs in a few weeks to move to the Coastal Carolina Presbytery (they are in Philly now) and so I created this sailboat card for him... for one, he loves to sail and the house they are hoping to buy is on a lake.  Secondly I felt like it was a way of showing that he is sailing into new possibilities and a new job.  Anyways, here is the card and matching envelope.  There are some issues but it is almost 10 pm, I've had about 3.5 hours sleep (worked last night and then the people came to do insulation at 1:15, then my son got off the bus at 3:45 with a sore throat, earache and a temp of 101.4.  Luckily I was able to get him an appointment at the pedi and he has strep.  Then the dog got into some trash that I left on the back steps and forgot about (some very old meat from the freezer) and is having diarrhea.  So... he gets what he gets!


So first I selected the sailboat and the words happy birthday and had the silhouette draw them with the sketch pen.  I picked black.

Then I unselected those and had it cut out around the card and the sun and the words happy birthday. (I rand out of room on the table and started using chairs!)  DH is taking up part of the table with an antique computer.  Sigh

 

Then, I made sure I could see my mat on the page (go to page view and increase the % on "reveal cutting map" and laid out various scraps of paper.  The blue for the water (the cutter did NOT like this paper.  It's very thin and textured.  The red for the sails and the yellow for the sun.  For the sun, I had drawn a circle around the sun so it would be about the size I needed and then moved it off to the side with the water and the sails to cut out.

 

Then I placed the circle for the sun underneath the card (I love the way the embroidery looks), colored the sailboat in with the kids' skinny markers and glued on the sails and the water.  The water turned out to be kind of a disaster.  I ended up cutting out a set with some white scraps and coloring them with colored pencils because the textured paper tore so badly.  But then as I was gluing the water strips on, I wiped some glue off and it smeared the marker so I had to add MORE water, so I ended up salvaging the textured strips and free handing some. 

For the envelope, I swapped out the bird for the sailboat but forgot that when I copied the sailboat I didn't have the sails turned on to cut.  So I ended up hand drawing them in, and then having to glue paper underneath to make the mast show up... ugh.

So there you have it.  A perfectly ordinary card and a few more lessons learned!

pink vinyl t shirts

Here are some shirts I made using the silhouette pink vinyl.  I love how I can turn a plain t shirt into something a little special using vinyl. If you notice, the blue and the black shirt are made from the same peice of vinyl-one the postive and one the negative.  To me that was an added bonus!  2 shirts for the vinyl of one!  All 3 of these shirts have been washed several times and still look good and are sticking well.

Paper Dolls with the 4 year old! (now with pic!)

I love paper dolls.  Always have.  I had a friend growing up that I would see occasionally (we were missionaries and she was in another town so we would see each other 2-3 times a year) who did paper dolls.  You know, with the book and tracing paper and cuting out scraps of colored paper and colored pencils.  So when I got the silhouette I had to try out the paper dolls.  So my 4 year old and I spent a happy afternoon playing with scrapbooking paper scraps and the paper dolls.  She really hasn't played with them a ton since-but she is kind of on the young side!

Just a quick tip.  If you resize the doll, then have the clothes in the same window and resize them all at the same time so they match! 

So I was sure I had a picture of this somewhere.  Evidently I do... at home on my camera!  So... stay tuned, I'll put the pic up when I get home in the morning!  In the mean time, try it for yourself!



I went ahead and glued the swimsuit and shoes to the doll and my daughter drew in her face and decorated the swimsuit and the dress.  

First complainer is next week's cook!

Do you ever have times when something you say to your kids totally backfires?  This project is one of those.

When I was growing up my grandmother had a cross stitch hanging up in her house (and I'm trying to remember if it is still up in her new house).  It has a picture of an old fashioned stove and the following motto:

"Sit at the table, take a look.  First complainer is next week's cook!"

I'm probably the only one whose kids grumble about supper right?  My 6 year old especially.  Supper time just for whatever reason ticks him off and for the longest time he would be grouchy every.single.day about having to eat supper (I work nights and leave right after supper so that is probably why).  So I decided to replicate grandma's motto in vinyl over our huge doorway into the living room.  I've been putting it off because it is such a huge project (the doorway is 8 feet!) and I needed to keep this wooden church thing there.  So I finally had some time the other day and after I pimped my mixer I started to work on this project.  Before I get into the nitty gritty of it I should explain how it backfired.  The kids started to sound it out and so we read it together and then they decided to start complaining bitterly about supper.  Why?  Because the only thing they can "cook" is TV dinners.  And for whatever reason TV dinners are a hot commodity in this house.  I don't know if it is because there is usually a desert with it or that you can pick your own or that there is sometimes no vegetable...  So they thought if they complained every night we could eat TV dinners instead....  SIGH.

So to create this project, first I measured my doorframe.  8 feet.  I figured I would leave 2 feet on each side empty so that left me with 4 feet wide and I think it was 9 or 10 inches tall.  So I created that space and wrote my words until I got the font right and the right size.  Then I set my mat for 12 x12 since my vinyl that I was using was 12x12  I had 3 sheets but I only used 2.  So then I worked until I got the words all on 2 sheets of vinyl.  I cut them apart by lines.  Then I cut my transfer tape to 4 feet and laid it out on the floor and lined my words up for the first part-I actually started with the longer one  (first complainer is next week's cook).  I marked my spot, leaving room for the church (DH's grandmother's church-also the church where we got married!) and applied my letters.  Notice I picked a thicker font so they applied well.  Then I repeated it for the top line and centered it and added them.  Done!
 

baby shower cards

So I survived my first night as a tiger cub den leader!  We had a lot of fun.  We didn't end up doing the masks so I'll save them for next week or some time.  But they did do their scrapbooks and we played a lot of games etc.

So to finish off the presents that I made for the 2 people having babies I made 2 of these super easy but cute bib cards (seen at the bottom under the flower cards-why did I not take a pic of them by themselves???).

The bib card has all the pieces you need and does girl or boy cards (the inset options are a flower a butterfly or a car (bib card #12170).  I cut it out of plain paper with the cut out and had the sketch pen write congratulations where the hole would be (I layered the top over the right side like it would be to check my area.  Then I cut the card front out of scrapbook paper and the flower etc out of white and colored them with markets and used a brad to fasten them.  It took literally 5 minutes to make 2 cards.  So much cheaper!

baby shower gifts continued-super cute onesie!

So this is the onesie that matches the burp cloth I showed you a couple days ago.  I love, love, love this onesie.  It was for a friend of mine who is having a baby girl.  I just love, love, love elephants...

The "E is for" is heat transfer vinyl.  You might want to learn a lesson from me and make the letters thicker.  One of these days I'll learn!  The elephant is fabric that I ironed onto heat n bond.  It is then hand stitched on.  I used black paint (paint pen) around the ear and eye and for the toenails.  I did remove the toenails from the original image (ungrouped the image until I could remove them).  The water drops I enlarged and then cut out of clear contact paper and used a purple paint pen on.

The mom to be LOVED this onesie! I do to.  Almost enough to have baby #3.  NOT!  

pimp my mixer

I had an unexpected delightful night off last night (was put on call!) so I spent a good chunk of today messing around the house.  I transformed several partially used bags of fruit into buckles and cobblers for this winter and then worked on a couple vinyl projects. 

The first project I did was to pimp up my mixer.  I had been looking at it 2 ways.  One was to put hibiscus all over it and the other to do a subway art type thing.  I ended up doing a mix and honestly it is a little... busy.  But it makes me smile.  I put on it several of my favorite things to bake, an M (for Margaret) and some hibiscus...  My FIL who is partial to Hawaiian shirts says that my mixer has it's Hawaiian shirt on... :)

tiger craft

I've spent this evening working on stuff for the first tiger meeting on Thursday.  The first thing I worked on was these tiger masks. I used the tiger mask from silhouette and ungrouped the image enough to turn the background color to white.  I then added registration marks and printed them on the computer and had the silhouette cut them out.  Yeah!  It even cuts out the holes for the string.  I'm planing on having the kids color them in as a starting activity.  I also printed out some stuff for their scrapbooks... more on them later!

baby shower burp cloths

The next part of my baby shower gifts were burp cloths made of a mixture of medium.  For the first ones used a 3d layered flower and tried to do layers of paint.  I cut them out of clear contact paper and painted using paint pens I have.  I edged them in black paint.  I only did one side of the burp cloths so that the side next to the baby doesn't have paint on it.

For the sailboats I made the sails out of cloth that I bonded to heat n bond.  I cut the sailboat (#26814) out of contact paper and my 4 year old and I painted them.  I cut out the wave pattern (4 piece wave #9589)
out of contact paper and painted that as well

The last one is my favorite.  The E and the elephant are cut out of fabric and the water drops are cut out of contact paper that I painted.  I cut the words "is for" is cut from vinyl and ironed on.  I hand sewed around the elephant and the E (and the sails for the sailboat).  This project didn't take very long and ended up in some very cute projects.  The mommies to be seem thrilled!  Come back tomorrow to see the matching onesie to the elephant burp cloth.

baby shower gifts

My brother and his wife are expecting baby #1 and a friend of mine is having her 4th baby so I've been making baby gifts recently.  The first type are made from the printable Avery iron on stuff that I used yesterday on the happy camper shirts.  My brother and his wife are book lovers so I made some book-ish onesies for them.

camping shirts

These shirts were made using printable heat transfer paper (Avery brand from walmart) and the silhouette program to design them.  I actually ended up hand cutting them.  You set it up your design and then mirror it.  What I really love about it was that we have matching t-shirts but they are a little different. I re-colored the camper and car for each of us based on our favorite colors.  I've made the iron on part for my husband but haven't found a t-shirt... I got one that was way too big and I ended up using it for a project for my dad.

wall vinyl part one

So the real reason I really, really wanted a silhouette cameo was to do wall vinyl.  I've been obsessively looking at it on etsy for a long time.  So it wasn't very long before I used some birthday money to buy the vinyl kit!  I had spent a long time previously collecting quotes on laundry and I had finally hit on the quote to use. So my first project was this.  I love, love. love it!

 

I do have some tips though.  Cut (just through the vinyl) between the lines of words (so between the line of "the most memorable days" and the line of "usually end in the".  It makes weeding so, so, so much easier!  And I had a hard time telling that the part of the transfer paper that I was supposed to use was the part with lines on it!  But it is.  Otherwise it went up great and I love to see it.

a shaped 3D card!!

This is a shaped card that I made following this tutorial
http://blog.silhouetteamerica.com/2012/05/shaped-card-bases.html

this shape is the marigold #19699.  I cut all of it out of plain yellow paper.  And it looked, well, plain.  So after looking at it a few days (and trying to get to my drawer of brads upstairs).  I finally worked on it some more.  I simply used my kids' skinny markers to add flecks of orange and brown to the petals and it really made them pop.  They are finished with a simple gold brad.  It's been a busy week here.  Between working, kids, volunteering and trying to get stuff organized to become a tiger den leader it's been crazy. Expect some tiger crafts soon!

fall pumpkin and leaf hanging

I love fall and the kids love to decorate for holidays!  I was looking at fall ideas (mainly for leaves but that isn't the direction I ended up going!) while babysitting the hash browns I was cooking for supper.  I hate cooking hashbrowns because of the babysitting factor but I'm working on clearing out the random bits and bags of stuff in the freezers and cupboards.  Meals this week have been...interesting.

Anyways.  I fell in love with these pumpkins.  I found a piece of cardstock in my stash that was pumpkin colored on the top and greenish orange on the bottom.  I ungrouped the images and cut the shapes in the pumpkin color.  I then cut out the stripes etc out of black.  The backs were solid orange cardstock with the cut outs of the shapes (except the stripes which I just drew in with a sharpie).  The stems I cut out in black.  After I glued them together I laminated them.

For the leaves I cut them out of yellow/gold cardstock.  I took the same image (outline only) and made it a little smaller and cut it out of black and used it to make the cut outs pop.  I laminated them as well.  Then I punched holes in the leaves and pumpkins and hung them with black yarn.  I love the way they look and how they sway in the breeze when the windows are open.

This project probably took me a good 3-3.5 hours.  I started after kidlet bedtime (8-8:30 and worked until midnight.  At that point I had all the pumpkins done and laminated and the leaves cut out but not weeded yet.  But at that point my eyes were too tired to weed so I finished up the next day. 

scrub jacket make over

It's been a nice weekend off but I'm back to work tonight.  I work 3 (12 hour) shifts a week from 7p-7a.  At about 3 am I'm freezing and go look for my scrub jacket.  But sometimes it's hard to figure out which one is mine.  You see our hospital has set a required color of scrubs by position (RN's are one color, respiratory therapy another, PCT (another term for CNA's another).  The RN's "won" the color carribean blue.  And since we have to wear scrub jackets in that color as well it can be hard to figure out which one is mine!  Since my scrub jacket went MIA a couple weeks ago and I just found it again I decided to personalize it so I would know it is mine.  So while I was cutting out the pumpkins for yesterdays shirt I also designed and cut out this one.  I used the nurses tools set (#6731).  Of course the first time I cut it I forgot to mirror it so I had to do it again.  But here is the final product

I used the stethoscope and the syringe (minus the marking lines).  I then wrote RN into the syringe.  I also added my initials to it.  The vinyl is black, the light reflecting off of it makes it look strange.  

pumpkin shirt part 2

Today I worked on a pumpkin shirt for my son.  He's 6 and I felt that the ornamental pumpkins were just a little too girly for him.  He agreed and picked a set of jack o lantern (assorted jack o lantern pumpkins #31936).  I cut them out with a few other designs I've been working on, messed one up (forgot to mirror something with letters-duh!), re-cut that one and ended up messing up one of the pumpkins.  So he too has 3 pumpkins on his shirt.  I let him place them how he wanted them and this is what he ended up with!  In case you missed yesterdays post these shirts are hand dyed from white t shirts with an attempt at an ombre effect.  He really likes the shirt and says he wants to wear it tomorrow so I'll take that as high praise from a 6 year old!

pumpkin shirts!

So today's project actually went as planned which is unusual!  I also worked on a couple other things which I'll share later and am working on designing a couple other projects.  This is in between running errands with the kids and folding 5 loads of laundry!  Anyways, back to the pumpkin shirts.  I was able to get a bottle of orange dye today and sink dyed instead of washing machine dyed (which is how we re-dye our fading curtains!)  I filled the kitchen sink with hot water and added about 1/2 bottle of dye and 1 cup of salt (1 adult long sleeve shirt and 2 kid short sleeve shirts). 

I left them completely under for 15 min and then pulled out the tops of them and dyed the lower 2/3's or so for another 15 min (and added another 1/4 bottle of the dye) and then just the bottom 1/3 and added the rest of the bottle of dye.  It did give it somewhat of an ombre look which is what I was looking for.  Then I washed them in the machine with vinegar to set it some more.  Then I put them in the dryer.  Here they are washed and dried.  You can sort of see how they have a graduated color effect there (these pics are without flash, the next ones are with flash which is why it looks like it faded..)

I then ironed on the decals I had cut out yesterday and here we are!  Matching fall pumpkin shirts for mommy and daughter!  I also dyed a shirt for my son but I have a feeling he will prefer more of a jack o lantern look on his so I'll wait til tomorrow to do anything with it.  I guess that will be tomorrow's project!

I think these turned out super cute!

Fall T shirts part 1

Fall is here, I wore my scrub jacket home from work at 3 am and wished for something heavier.  I've been putting up fall decorations around the house (more on them later!) but today I'm working on a few fall long sleeved t shirts. This week at walmart I picked up 3 long sleeved plain Hanes shirts.  I was looking for orange but I can't find an orange t-shirt.  I may end up dying a white t shirt orange if I don't run into one soon.  So what I ended up with was white, a reddish color called cherry something and a sage green.  I pre-washed them yesterday and actually remembered to put them in the dryer when I woke up!  So here they are; washed and dried.

I had gotten a bunch of sisser easy week heat transfer vinyl online, so I designed a 12x12 space of images for today's project and future ones (I hate trying to re-use vinyl so I decided to just cram a bunch of stuff in).

on my page I have the following images:
3 pumpkins #13486
sailboat (for a later project!) #26814
fall tree #22351
fall leaf set (just the maple one) #22169
a flower (its one of the ones that is the 50 original images that are free-also for a later project) #16698
and the word fall that I just typed in and played with (cluffhmk is the font.   And don't forget to mirror the image (especially if you have words!)

So after a basic weeding and then a detailed weeding (while watching what not to wear) I ironed on the tree,  All was going well until I decided to directly iron on one area to get it to stick on better (see pic) and melted a leaf.

 

 

Since I was going to add a flourish design to the fall leaf one anyways I took my yellow iron on transfer and cut out a flourish and a yellow leaf (to get the leaf I used the cutting tool to cut off the leaf and then copied it into the page with the flourish).  But for some reason the iron on started to slip in the cutter so I had to start over.  Which is why the flourish has a couple lines on it (see under the leaf!).  And I weeded the flourish the wrong way and had to cut around the shape.  But since it is my only sheet of yellow, it is what it is.  I do like the tree shape with the yellow leaf (although not so much the yellow stem!).

I'm so-so about the fall leaf shirt.  But this blog is about the good the bad and the ugly so here it is!  And I will say that the fall shirts are cuter than anything I've seen at the store.  And I've learned some more.  Every day I learn something new...

Tomorrow I'll try to hit walmart for a bottle of orange dye to work on the pumpkin shirts.  My daughter (4) wants one too so I'll be making some kid shirts too!

Introduction!

Hi!  My names is Margaret and I am the proud owner of a silhouette cameo that I got for my birthday (July 29th).  The goal for this blog is to do a simple silhouette craft every day for a year.  I work night shift full time as a nurse and have 2 kids (6+4).  I volunteer in my son's class and have just been recruited to help run a boy scout pack.  So this is really an amateur blog.  I have no art degree.  I have no limitless budget for supplies or limitless time to make a project perfect. This is what YOU can do with a silhouette.  So if you are a sideline crafter like me, I hope you'll enjoy this blog and learn from my successes AND failures!  Because honestly what comes out of my silhouette do not match the Silhouette America blog!  But this has really brought back the crafter in me-after many years of dealing with tiny kids its been nice to have some ME time.  And crafting with the kids has been a blast.

I do most of my crafting on the dining room table and the cameo lives in a box on the floor or in my closet... I'm hoping that at some point the upstairs of our house will be finished (7 years and counting) and I'll be able to get back to my craft stuff again!