AN AMUSING MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S CONCERT IN...YELLOWSTONE

My family was big on summer camping vacations and travel when I was a child.  We were also big on singing and dancing...at the same time...to soundtracks...for people.  I recall one summer of my youth in which dad decided we should combine these family hobbies together and enjoy them both at the same time!  He loaded our family, camping gear, some soundtracks, and a boom box into our over-packed family vehicle.  Now this, I’m sure he thought, was a perfect formula for creating family memories of vacations for years to come. 

After a particularly long, hot day of “driving the loop” and visiting many sites in Yellowstone National Park, we stopped for gas.  As dad filled up the tank he noticed a lonely gas station attendant sitting on a chair on the porch of the station looking particularly sad and bored.  Dad turned around with a smile and ordered us all out of the car and into singing formation.  We obeyed and proceeded to perform the first ten minutes of our family show for him.

Even the most adorable, well-groomed children can gain the appearance of little waifs and street urchins if put into the right environment for a sufficient amount of time—let’s say nine hours in the family station wagon with the windows rolled down.  The upside is that children are not as concerned about their looks as their parents.  This means that a three, five, seven, and eight year-old will sing just as well with two crooked pony-tails and a red punch mustache then as with finely combed hair and spit shined faces.  A day’s worth of chunks of moist sticky red licorice and melted chocolate chip cookie crumbs smashed into the fabric of summer shorts and tank tops were a sure crowd pleaser as well. I’m positive you have a great mental picture of the event now.  I’m not making this up. 
 
Following our performance, the stunned gas station attendant looked at father and said, “Mister, I meet a lot of people in this job.  Most proud parents just whip out their wallets and show me pictures of their children.  This is the first time that anyone has whipped out their kids and made them sing for me!” Dad took our pictures with the man and paid him.  Then we continued down the road to enjoy the rest of our ragamuffin summer vacation and two more performances.

My siblings tell their own versions of that summer long ago, but all of us recount one particular performance with much laughter and happy reminiscing.  I like to tell my account with the aid of my Cricut pals and pictures from the vacation.  I’m sure you all have had a wacky or memorable summer vacation or two in your own travels.  With so much to celebrate in the summer, perhaps you will be inspired to tell your own tales as well - with class, the Cricut way.

Be sure to check out Crafty Kimber's cartridge exploration of the Wild Card, Bump in the Night, and Summer Celebrations cartridges and read cool crafting tips and glean great crafting ideas from Cricut message board members in this week’s newsletter.  As always, I wish you success in your crafting adventures!

:-)Lonna Joy Smoot - Editor, Cricut Chirp!

*Header project made by Mandee Gillen using the cartridge: Camping Critters

ANNOUNCEMENTS

MESSAGE BOARD HIGHLIGHTS

This week's highlighted threads are:

• Road Trip Card
• Camping Critters Layout
• Disney Layouts
• Bonjour Card
• Sesame Street Summer

CUSTOMER SPOTLIGHT

Name: Silke Rieger
About: Working as a controller and doing paper crafting of all kinds has become a passionate hobby of mine—to live through my creativity and relax.

Silke's Project: Outdoor Name Sign

Cartridges Used:
- Wild Card
- Wall Decor and More
- Country Life

Instructions:

1. Outdoor name sign: Cut out door sign of thick cardstock and adhere patterned paper.
2. Die-cut tree (Wall Decor) 3 times out of white cardstock, adhere as you wish to make it 3-dimensional and glimmer mist in two colors and adhere to paper.
3. Cut fence and die cut cloth line (base in brown, patterned paper) and several times grass (from green cardstock) and adhere together and on sign (Country Life).
4. Die cut from brown cardstock sign (Wild Card) and write your names with a white gel-pen.
5. Paint white bubbles all over patterned cardstock as well.

YOUR NOTABLE TIP–CUTTING LETTERS VS. WORDS

Today's Tip comes from message board member Scrapalette.  Thanks for sharing.

Q.When you have lots of words to cut out, like for posters, etc., does it better conserve your paper to cut by word, or by letter?
Example: I need to cut: National 4-H Congress, Discovery Days, Campference, Citizenship Washington Focus
Should I count the A's, B's, etc. and cut them like that, or just type in the words? The 4-H club always need to save money where we can, and if I can save some paper, that would be great!
Any suggestions? Thank you!

A. With large titles or lots of titles, I always count the letters, enter the quantity and CUT! Also, use paper saver mode. All those little letters, like "i", will cut close together and in a row instead of having them spaced in between taller letters.  It made it so easy to do multiple bulletin boards at school.

CARTRIDGE EXPLORATION

This week I decided I would write about "Bump in the Night", revisit "Wildcard", and "Summer Celebrations". Summer is the time for travel and vacations; I am putting my bucket list (wish list) plan together of all the places that I would like to visit. As I was exploring "Summer Celebrations", I started thinking of all the places that I have wanted to visit, Paris, Italy, Canada, etc. This cartridge has tons of wonderful images that are great for scrapbooking those fun vacation trips that I know we are all planning for the summer. Not only is this cartridge perfect for vacations, it's great for those other summer holidays as well. The creative feature that's included is: Layer 1, Layer 2, Phrase, Phrase Layer, Tag, and Card. This is a wonderfully designed new cartridge that you will want to add to your library. A few examples of the images that are included in this cartridge are: Flag Fireworks, Man Playing Golf, Superman, Tree, Bicycle, Sparkler, Canada Flag, Chair, Cupcakes, Wedding Rings, Barbecue, Solder, Eagle, and a Moose. Phrases that are included are: "Canada Day", "Independence Day", "Birthday Party", "World's Greatest Dad", "Summer", "I Do", "Fun in the Sun", and "Olympics". Usually summers are for relaxing but I know that if you have kids then your summers are full of lots of adventures and you end up taking tons of photos. Now you have a cartridge that will help you scrapbook those fun summer events. One other note is that you can also cut out tags and easy cards with this cartridge. Provo Craft thought of everything when they put this cartridge together!

As I was thinking about some of my favorite travel times with my family (we always did road trips) I thought of all the down time we (as kids) had in the car and decided that I would work on creating some games that kids could play on road trips. My ideas surround the Memory Game, Tic-Tac-Toe, and Go Fish. I chose the cartridge Bump in the Night to explore one of these ideas. Let me tell you about this cartridge: it's all about monsters(both boy and girl ones.) This cartridge is part of the Cricut Lite series and would be perfect for scrapbooking those fun dress-up photos (you know, the ones where your child is dressed up looking all sorts of funny and you have to snap a photo.) These images would be great for a little boy's birthday party, cut them out of vinyl for the wall decorations, and use them on party invitations and as cupcake toppers. See how the theme is monsters and everything matches, that's what I love about using Cricut cartridges, I can make everything match. Back to my traveling card idea—you could make memory flash cards using the monsters (make sure to laminate them, because kids always have sticky fingers and that will help protect all your hard work.) Use the same cards to play Go Fish and call it Go Monster (shuffling the cards might be somewhat tricky but I'm sure you could figure it out.)

Next, for the Tic-Tac-Toe game idea, I decided to use the cartridge Wild Card—first, because it fits another idea that I will share in a bit, and the other reason is because it has letters that come with the cartridge. For this game, all you need is a magnet sheet, Cricut Imagine vinyl, a deep cut blade, ribbon, and a tin box to put your game together in (see photo). This project is easy—print a pattern on your Cricut Imagine vinyl and place it on top of the magnet sheet (make sure you have your deep cut blade in place and use multi cut four times.) Cut a piece of the magnet sheet to fit the bottom of the tin box and it's lid and then cut out the letters "X" and "O" (see photo). That's it, place everything in the box and place it in your car for those times when you are on a road trip and the kids get bored. The main reason why I chose to revisit Wild Card for this exploration is because it is an adorable cartridge, that comes with cards & fun shaped envelopes. One specific memory I have of traveling in my youth, I went on a road trip with my friend. My mom, being all creative, gave me a bag with tons of goodies that were wrapped with a note on them saying, "open when you get to this town." There was an envelope or package for each town I rode through until we reached our destination. Now, I know this is not an original idea, but that trip was one of the best road trips I've ever been on because of all the fun packages I got to open. So the next time your kid has to go to girls or scout camp or even a trip to visit the grandparents you can use this cartridge, cut some fun envelopes and place little goodies inside each envelope for your child to open on the road trip. If you don't have this wonderful cartridge in your collection I would suggest you pick one up, you can make cards for all sorts of occasions. Just to review the creative features on this cartridge, they are Frame, Phrase, Icon, Liner, Blackout, and Alphabet. When I first received this cartridge I showed it to my sister and she was so excited to get her hands on it, but I told her she had to go out and get her own copy because mine would be busy for a while–lol.

That wraps up this exploration; I hope you have enjoyed my snippets of personal stories. If you don't have any trips planned for the summer, plan to visit the zoo or just spend some time in the parks, make sure to bring your camera because you will definitely want to capture the experience. Happy Summer everyone and Happy Crafting!!

Crafty Kimber

HELP FROM THE EXPERTS

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

"And that's the wonderful thing about family travel:  it provides you with experiences that will remain locked forever in the scar tissue of your mind.  " 
~Dave Berry