More elongated penny bracelets

I started these bracelet's last week, you can see it in this post. And as is my typical fashion I kept going and making more and more. So now I have one with pennies from our 20th wedding anniversary trip to Maui. Yep, that makes me smile every time I look at it now.

And I reworked the original Disneyland bracelet and added a second strand of Walt Disney World pennies. I really love this one too. I have worn the single strand of Disneyland pennies to work a few time this week and always get compliments and curious inquiries. So I get to talk about my favorite things, a lot. ;)

Find inspiration everywhere! Go... Create something fun & fabulous. Enjoy!

Elongated penny charm bracelet

This is by far one of my favorite crafts I have learned about on Pinterest. I love elongated/squished/pressed pennies. Whatever you call them, they are such a fun souvenir and quite addictive. There are whole websites dedicated to them. These are a few of my favorites here, here and here. I have hundreds possibly a thousand. I have been collecting for certain since 2000 but I have a couple that predate that. But other than storing them in the penny books by date and event that I collected them, I have never done anything with them. Until now. Yahoo!!! Now I can wear my beauties and every time I look at them they will remind me of a wonderful trip.

My first bracelet is all Disneyland pennies. They are all duplicates from my collection. When my sons were young they wanted to collect their own, now that they are older they don't care about them anymore. So I have taken eight of the duplicates or even triplicates and made my first charm bracelet. I love it!

I found all the jewelry making components I needed at Michael's. They had everything in copper, so that was nice. I love the bracelet closure that I found, it is a ring and the other end is a bar that goes through the ring and then when flattened out it won't fall through. Best thing is that it makes it very simple for me to put it on all by myself. Which is important because I won't wear this continuously, so getting it on and off easily is a bonus.

I used my crop-o-dile to punch the holes in the pennies. I don't know where I got the idea to do that, because now as I review the tutorial on the Pinterest link, it doesn't say anything about a crop-o-dile.  But it worked like a boss and I did not have any sharp edges on my pennies.

I have plans to make another one with pennies from my trips to Maui and Walt Disney World. And from now on I will intentionally collect some duplicates so that I have some to collect and some to create with.

Find inspiration everywhere! Go... Create something fun & fabulous. Enjoy!

Gift box made with scallop envelopes

I found this cute little gift box on Pinterest of course, and although the website it links to is in french the designer was wonderful enough to include a .pdf and picture tutorial so it was easy to figure out. I designed this on my Cricut using Design studio and George basic shapes and Mini monograms cartridges.

I am using just one of the beautiful new CTMH papers called Dotty for you and the cardstock is CTMH Hollyhock. These are gorgeous cardstock weight double sided papers. So the butterfly is on one side and the pretty yellow polka dot is on the other. Lovin' them.

This is the side view. There you can see a bit of the scallop top of the envelope folded in on the sides. The finished size of the little gift box is 3.25 x 3.25 x 6 inches.

If you would like to have this .cut file leave a comment below, including your email address and I will email it out to you.

Find inspiration everywhere! Go... Create something fun & fabulous. Enjoy!

Paper strawberry basket

This sweet little gift basket was inspired by this pin on Pinterest. I designed it on my Cricut Design Studio software using George basic shapes cartridge. It came together first try, that rarely happens. Usually I test cut, tweak a few things, test cut, tweak....lots of wasted paper. But not this time, thankfully.

Here's a close up to show the sides and the brads that hold the whole thing together. There is a top that folds over to give additional strength and stability to the top edge of the basket, so it is nice to use a double sided paper for pretty contrast. I used CTMH brads and paper from a very old paper stack, but I believe I still see it in Joann's it's called Chocolate Neopolitan by K & Co..

The finished basked it 3 x 3 inches. Perfect for a little tub of bath salts or buttons and twine. I wrapped mine up in tulle and tied it with a pretty satin bow from my latest Really Reasonable Ribbons monthly club selection. So pretty.
As always, if you want to create using my .cut file, I am happy to share. Leave a comment below with your email address and I will send it right to you.

Find inspiration everywhere! Go... Create something fun & fabulous. Enjoy!

Party favor bag

Here's a little gift bag I designed and made on my Cricut. I was inspired by this pin on Pinterest. I designed mine to be 3 x 3.25 x 2 inches. It will be perfect for a gift card and a little chocolate or maybe a little selection of twine and buttons.

The scallop circle is scored and then taped to the back part of the bag. The flap is held closed with a velcro circle and a brad.

If you want my simple party favor gift bag .cut file, I can send it to you. Leave a comment with your email address and I shall send it out.

Find inspiration everywhere! Go... Create something fun & fabulous. Enjoy!

Shadow layered card toppers

I have been busy playing with my Cricut and the CTMH Art Philosophy cartridge again. All of these card toppers where inspired by this pin on Pinterest and all the beautiful ideas I found on the blog post it linked to. I loved the idea, I loved her colors and I was immediately inspired to create.

The really great thing is that all 3 of these card toppers where created with scraps. I have 4 large Art Bin plastic boxes that are somewhat organized by colors and hold most all of my scraps. So I pulled those out and found pieces big enough to cut the layers and off I went.

In the above card the largest layer is the black paper. The next three papers, the shape is exactly the same size around the outside and just the butterfly gets increasing larger so that the layer below shows through just a little.

This one is a cupcake. Again the background layer is the ivory and it is largest, then 3 different layers are cut with the cupcake gradually getting larger for the shadow effect.

This one, if you clicked on either of my links above, is very similar the the original creation. Right down to the color selection and floral shadow layers. I lucked into some perfect scraps and I really love how this one turned out.

All of the stamps are CTMH. The bling is a bunch of different gems from my stash. Some CTMH, some Queen and Co. and some Want 2 Scrap.

I am happy to share my Cricut .cut file with you if you would like to create some cards from these shadow layers too. Leave your email address in the comments below and I will email it out to you.

Find inspiration everywhere! Go... Create something fun & fabulous. Enjoy!

Paper pieced butterfly

I designed this butterfly after seeing this cutey patootey pinned on Pinterest. My selection of papers is not nearly as cute as the original I was attempting to emulate, they seemed good in theory, but the finished product is a bit busy. A face only a mother could love?

I designed this on my Cricut using the CTMH Art Philosophy cartridge. If you want to try your hand at paper piecing this little guy I would be glad to share my .cut file with you. I may peruse my paper sets some more and see if I can come up with a less loud version of him myself.

Find inspiration everywhere! Go... Create something fun & fabulous. Enjoy!

Pazzles woven card topper

I love using scraps. Especially coordinating scraps left form another project that just happen to still be laying around my work space. So when I saw this card on Pinterest, I just knew I had to make some. I always have these long thin strips left over that I think *there has got to be something cool to do with these* every time. This design is perfect for those strips.

I'm pretty sure that the original designer cut her slits with a xacto knife, and I just knew I could design something on my Cricut or Pazzles Inspiration that would do that for me. Even better, it would be exact and symmetrical and fast. So I did it. I designed a card topper with symmetrical .5 inch wide slits for running paper or even ribbon through. I did it on both the Pazzles and the Cricut.





These are a little more masculine paper styles.

I have a couple of birthdays coming up so I made all of these exactly the same. Above you see the CTMH sentiments on the inside and the new CTMH stamp set for the back of the card. Adorable.

If you want this super simple card topper .cut file for either your Cricut machine or your Pazzles Inspiration machines, I am happy to share. Leave your email address and which machine you have in the comments section for this post and I will email the cutting file out to you.

Find inspiration everywhere! Go... Create something fun & fabulous. Enjoy!

Pazzles Anaheim retreat projects

So did you notice how quiet it was on my blog last week? I took off for some vacation fun. I went to Anaheim with the express interest in going to my favorite vacation spot, Disneyland. The Pazzles retreat was an unexpected thrill.

My mom is a huge devotee of the Pazzles Inspiration. She has tried and tried to get me to play with it and attempt to be as comfortable with it as I am my Cricut. I'm still working on that, but this weekends retreat made huge strides toward my understanding and comfort level. Not to mention it was just plain fun. A great group of gals all learning and crafting and creating together for the majority of 2.5 days. Awesome!

These are pictures of all of the projects that I was able to complete. They provided all the supplies for these and more. There are several more projects that I am still working on.

The first project is a 8.5 x 5.5 x 3 inch accordion sided folder for us to keep all of our tips, techniques and picture instructions in. So we cut out all the pieces for the accordion file and all of the tabbed folders on our Inspiration.

This is a 3 x 4.5 x 1 inch gift box that we designed in the Pazzles Inspiration software and then cut out. I discovered it perfectly held our acrylic block and rubber stamps that we designed and cut out on the Inspiration also.

This is a detail shot of the small box with the flap up.

Here is a card that we did TONS of techniques on. We downloaded and imported the fonts. We welded the title. We outlined the title. We distressed the clock and gears on Core-dinations papers. We did the pen stitched lines. All super cool techniques. All done on the Inspiration.

These are the AWESOME rubber stamps we created with permission from a clip art designer. I can't wait to try them out. I think this was my favorite project of the weekend. My mind is reeling with possibilities.

We cut out iron on flocking on the Inspiration and decorated our bag that all of our class supplies and a ton of gifts and swag were held in. Very cool! Loved this project a ton also.

This is the flash drive they gave us that held all of our class instructions, techniques and project cut files we would be playing and practicing with all weekend. We decorated it with vinyl, that we of course cut out with our Pazzles Inspiration. Absolutely amazing because think about the fact that the flash drive is approximately .5 inch wide and it cut that vinyl so crisply and finely, it blew my mind.

This is the back side of my flash drive decorated with a vinyl Pazzles logo butterfly. Beautiful. Amazing. Yep, I walked away astounded by the Inspiration machine, a little less intimidated by the practically limitless software capabilities and inspired to create with it more often.

And a few shots I took of Disneyland and Disney California Adventure. I just can't get enough of it.

Find inspiration everywhere! Go... Create something fun & fabulous. Enjoy!