Crafting with Kids

My adorable  niece loves to use her mother’s Cricut Expression 2  to create fun zany crafts and classy scrapbook pages.  She is often accompanied by her younger siblings who insists on taking their fair share of  turns to “push the buttons” for her.  Little brother got bored of waiting and stuffed a wad of paper up his nostril.  His special craft became stuck in his adorable little nose.  Mother was unable to retrieve the foreign object which was lodged so soundly in its place. Little boy, paper wad, and  mamma  paid a visit to the doctor’s office.  At least it was paper and not a bean or dried up pea.

I could think of many other more useful things to do with paper…and a lot of other fun things to do with my time if I’m bored.  However, three-year-olds have their own agendas and  ideas about crafting with paper.  At least he shows an interest.

It is important not to leave the munchkins out of the crafting equation.  They enjoy playing with Cricut  just as much as any  adult.  I enjoy crafting with the kids.  It keeps me on my toes.   I’ll be extra diligent to watch my nephew just in case he decides to be “crafty” again.

Be sure to check out Crafty Kimber's cartridge exploration of the H2O Seasonal Cartridge and the Black & White Imagine Cartridge and read cool crafting tips about crafting twine storage 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!

**Header project made using the cartridge: Summer Celebrations.

ANNOUNCEMENTS

MESSAGE BOARD HIGHLIGHTS

This week's highlighted threads are:

• Birthday Bash
• Frosty Cupcake
• Berry Special Birthday
• You Are So Sweet
• Have a Great Birthday
• Pillow Cases

CUSTOMER SPOTLIGHT

Name: Laura Somerlot
About: I love paper crafts and finding ways to make boring things more exciting. This is a personal journal that needed tabs to be more functional so of course I used my Cricut!

Suzanne's Project: Songbird Journal
Cartridges Used:
- Fabulous Finds
- Songbird

Instructions: Using Songbird, I selected a cage and bird to match my appearance and cut it to scale for the cover of the store bought spiral bound journal.
I then inked the edged to give it a worn look.
Using Fabulous Finds I cut the tabs and adhered them using paste.
I reinforced them with clear laminating sheets so they would be more durable.
I added details to the tab pages in the theme for that section.

YOUR NOTABLE TIP—TWINE STORAGE

Since this is craft related - I thought I would post this here as well.

After fighting with my twine every single time I used it or a little demon baby got into it - I came up with a plan to turn this:

Into This:                                                       And eventually this:

CARTRIDGE EXPLORATION

This week for my exploration, I decided that I should figure out some summer kid’s crafts using some of the Cricut cartridges that have summer images. I remember when I was young reading books, cleaning the house (yuck), and making crafts.   There are a variety of cartridges, which have images on them you could turn into fun summer projects; one cartridge I had forgotten about was “H2O”.  Once I picked it up, I discovered a whole bunch of fun summer images.  This cartridge is part of the season collection so when you find one you should snatch it up, because you might not find it again. Some of the images that come on this cartridge are: Water slide, pool, sandcastle, sun, beach ball, kid snorkeling, sprinkler, and a lifeguard. This cartridge also comes with some phrases, for example, “Splish Splash”, “sunburn”, “days in the Sun”, “Water Park”, and “Cannon Ball”.

One of my favorite things to do when I was a kid was to draw or color, this gave me an idea and I thought it would be fun craft to decorate some fun inexpensive plain paper notebooks.  I found some hard wire bound books that were not a lot of money and used images from the “H2O” cartridge to make a fun summer coloring book (see photo).  Another idea for a kids craft is using buttons and craft glue.  I used a stretched canvas because I had it in my craft room, cut out a letter using a fun material. Note- I also painted the back of the canvas so my material would stand out, and when using material you need to iron some heat-n-bond fabric fusion so that the material is stiff when your Cricut Expression 2 is cutting out the letter.  I used the “Cricut Alphabet” for my letter and used craft glue to glue it to the canvas then threw buttons onto my material.   After I had arranged the button the way that I wanted, I pulled them off the letter and laid down a bunch of craft glue (I used quite a bit because I knew it would dry clear), do only a section at a time and start laying the buttons back into place. Once you have the base layer then start stacking the buttons on top of each other. Let your project dry for a few house and then hang it up somewhere in the house.  I thought this would be a fun family project; kids could do them for their room, as presents for grandma or even neighbors.

Other basic kid’s crafts would be cutting out the boxes, purses, paper doll & outfits just so the kids could play with the iamges. Cricut cartridges have tons of different images and 3-D images that any kid would love to watch the parent cut out something for them to play with. Another idea that I had exploring the new Cricut Imagine “Black & White” pattern cartridge was to make a flower bracelet.  I printed a few of the black and white patterns onto white cotton material. I placed the material onto the adhesive Cricut mat and pressed the print paper button, placed the mat into the machine and let the Cricut Imagine do its work. Once I had the material with a pattern on it then I could make flowers.  One of my patterns I ironed some heat-n-bond adhesive to the back of it so I could cut out a variety of flower sizes. Many of the Cricut cartridges have flowers on them, just pick your favorite flower and cut out different sizes. Then layer them on top of each other, next I used a needle and thread and   them together as well as criss-crossed the center to help pull the flower peddles closer together.  I took another pattern and cut a strip of material, rolled it up and then wrapped it around in a circle to make it look like a rose. For the third flower, I cut up small squares and folded into a triangle, this flower I had to stitch one end of each of the triangles together. Then I moved the triangles to form a circle then stitched the center again to keep the circle in place.  Now that the hard part is finished, hot glue buttons in the center of the flower added some texture and sewed the flowers in place on the ribbon.   I used Velcro to hook the ends of the ribbon together; used fray check on the ribbon then sewed the ends to look professional. This “Black and White” cartridge is a fun new pattern cartridge design to use with whatever you want.  I love the designs, some examples of other designs on this cartridge are: crowns, oval frames, damask, ruler, poke-a-dots, clocks, etc see photo to get a better idea of the designs that come with this cartridge.

Well, that wraps up this week's exploration, check back next week as I continue exploring new cartridges in the Cricut family.

Crafty Kimber

HELP FROM THE EXPERTS

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QUOTE OF THE WEEK

"Memory is a way of holding onto the things you love, the things you are, the things you never want to lose."  ~From the television show The Wonder Years