February catch up with Emma Jewell

5 March 2021

As we wave goodbye to the second month of 2021, we’re catching up with Cricut UK content partner, Emma Jewell, to find out what she’s been up to.

Hello!

I didn’t think I’d been up to much in February, but looking back it seems I’ve actually made lots of projects and been a busy bee!

Crazy for cards

I kicked the month off by getting stuck into a bit of card making. I don’t give myself as much time to get stuck into papercraft projects as I would like, so I made sure to set aside an afternoon to have a play. I wanted to use my Cricut Joy to create some cards that weren’t the normal insert card style. I set about resizing some card projects and images in Design Space and created a pile of lovely intricate cards.

The boom box card went down a storm on my Instagram and my Facebook group and I’ve seen lots of others discovering this gem of a project. Take a look at the image set ‘Crazy cool cards’ in Design Space; there are some great cards in there.

To adapt the cards for Joy you’ll need to take away any score lines (you’ll need to add the score lines by hand). Also, make sure to search the image section with your machine mode changed to Maker or Explore as this will bring up any cards with score lines that aren’t usually visible for Joy.

I also got a lot of love for this aperture deer card I created from a shadow box design in Design Space. I have a blog post with all of the steps if you would like to create your own!

Hochanda shows

In February I worked with Hochanda – the craft shopping channel twice for Cricut. I’m still skyping in from my craft room at home and have spent some time behind the scenes investing in boring things like longer cables to make this look as good as possible.

The main focus for the Hochanda Cricut shows this month was Cricut Joy and card making. This meant I got to showcase some of my favourite card designs in Cricut Design Space!

Research and reading up

I’ve been feeling a little uninspired (no doubt due to being stuck inside the house) so headed to eBay and bought a lot of vintage craft books to get some inspiration. Some of the projects are so funny, but there are definitely lots of projects I can reimagine for 2021! I’m excited to get started recreating!

I don’t often get to sit and craft for no reason now, so to remedy this I booked myself onto a bargello workshop with the queen of bargello (and fellow Cricut lover) Nerissa Pratt from the Bargello Edit. She sent out all of the materials and we spent a lovely morning on zoom learning to make a bargello plant pot cover.

I highly recommend bargello, I’ve definitely already got the bug! It’s one of those really easy and chill crafts that comes together quickly and is great to do whilst sitting in front of the TV.

Upcycling crafts

I have a box of blank items, that I like to grab if I want to make something but haven’t got a project in mind yet. I’ve had this white vase is there for a while and wondered what to do with it, I found this fun balloon animal image in design space and thought it would be so cool on the vase. I might put balloon animals on everything it turned out to be so cute!

Craft haul

I treated myself to a bit of a craft haul from Hobbycraft this month, I can’t wait to be able to wander aimlessly around a craft shop again! I’ve had my eye on a badge maker for a while now and decided it was finally time to treat myself to it!

I’ve been keeping my projects with it pretty simple so far, just making badges out of patterned paper, but I’m planning to use the print and cut feature on my Maker to create some really cool badges! It will be interesting to see how I can use both together.

Spring projects

Since spring is coming, lots of the projects I have been working on lately have been very floral. Two of my projects for Hobbycraft this month included paper flowers. This pastel spring wreath used 2d flowers to make a 3D project when all glued onto the wreath together.

Then my latest project for Hobbycraft shows you how to create 5 3D paper flowers, poppies, daffodils, lillies, carnations and roses using a mix of techniques. You can watch the video here.

I created two projects for the Ryman blog this month. I did a tutorial for some beautiful draw then cut floral notecards and a really fun kids crown tutorial. These are both quick and easy projects that could be made on any Cricut machine.