BFF Birthday Presents

Happy Thursday, fantab followers! Sorry that we have not been keeping up with posting lately, Life has just been crazy busy for everyone. Hopefully, it will slow down soon and we can get back to crafting!

Yesterday was Laurie's birthday and, as promised, here are a couple of goodies that I made for her to celebrate.

This easel card is a Lori Whitlock file that I got in the online Silhouette store. The paper is about 100 years old from my stash (I think it was a very old Spring Stack?) and the flowers were actually a present to me from Laurie last year! The sentiment is a Bazzill chip topper, also from my stash. There are two brads (although you can't see one of them here) that hold the card in standing up position when it is opened.

This mini chipboard album is also by Lori Whitlock and is from the Silhouette online store. I was super excited to find out that Silhouette had their own chipboard to cut! It is just a little thicker that cereal box cardboard, so I doubled up on it for the covers. I used papers from my stash and a Tim Holtz clock on the front cover. Each page is actually a pocket page with a tag, so there are lots of surfaces for pics and embellies. I kept the embellies to a minimum, so Laurie can choose the theme of her album.

These were lots of fun to make and give to a great scrappy friend!

Fabric Cutting

Here is a little fabric owl that I cut with my Silhouette and then sewed together. I used the fabric interfacing available at the Silhouette online store, but I have read on other blogs that people have used regular fabric interfacing and cut all sorts of fabric things with their Cricut. I am not a very good sewer, but he wasn't too hard and is oh-so-cute in real life. His eyes are buttons that I got at Joann Fabrics. We would love to hear about and see any fabric creations that you have made!

Wordle

Here is a fun (free!) tool that we found! Wordle allows you to type in any text and the create a word cloud from it. You can play with the cloud and use different colors, fonts and layouts. You can then print your cloud out to use on a layout or card. They even have an online gallery for inspiration! Here is a quick layout that I did using a Wordle cloud that I created. Fun! The great cowboy cuts were from Laurie's dad, "Pa", for a swap that we did a while back here on SS.

More lunch box fun!

The Silhouette cutting machine has a neat feature called Print & Cut. Basically, you choose a shape from their library, print it on your regular home printer and then send it back through the Silhouette, which cuts it out for you! My kids love Bugs Bunny and his friends and Silhouette recently added Looney Tunes shapes to their library! Yay - more lunch box surprises! You can't tell in these scans because I mounted them on white paper, but the images were actually cut out with the Silhouette. I was amazed at the accuracy of the cutting, especially since my past endeavors with Print & Cut hadn't gone very well. Silhouette updated their software recently and the P&C feature must have been one of the fixes, because these cut perfectly! DD got Sylvester, DS got Marvin, DH got Pepe; I am saving Michigan for another round. I wish I could be a fly on the wall to see how the kids and hubby react to them! I'm such a goof.

Sylvester

Michigan J. Frog

Marvin the Martian

Pepe le Pew

Die Cut Fun

I am a fun mom. OK, I think so anyway. I think nothing of jumping out of the car in the driveway if there is a good song on the radio and dancing on the front lawn. The children run onto the porch in horror, but I see them watching and laughing at me from up there. I do random silly things, like tackle my children and blow a big ol'e  bronski on their bellies. I will get down in the sand at the beach and make a sand castle with them or dig for worms in the back yard. I also love to put notes in their lunch boxes for school (much to the chagrin of the 11 year old - "Moooommmmm! My friends saw it!") Both my kids love Angry Birds, so, when I saw Norma's Angry Bird Treat Bag at PinkBlingCrafter, I knew what the next fun mom thing was going to be! I don't have all the punches that she has, but I do have a Silhouette and Google. (Laurie has dubbed me Google Queen. I can find anything on it.) I found some cute Angry Bird SVG files over at The Lady Wolf's Free SVGs, very stealthily asked the children which bird was their favorite and got to creating these cute little guys. I wrote a note to each of them on the back of the birds in white Signo pen. (THE best white pen evah!)

I hope they bring smiles to their little faces today. They sure made me smile!