Monday, March 29, 2010

Blog of a different kind...

This blog was to be a "documentary" about the Funktastic Faulkners...aka Robert and Heather. But having very few interesting things happening on a regular basis it became a semi-craft blog. So for today, I have decided to revert back to the intentional blog and give an update on the doings in our lives.

Last week was Robert's birthday and this being his first birthday as a married couple I wanted to make it special so I decided to have a "birthday week" instead of just one day. Some things didn't go quite the way they were planned...but when does everything go perfectly, right? The week included coconut kisses (a candy recipe I found), a fondue night with his choice of movie, meringue and hershey cookies (which did not turn out quite right), We still have horseback riding, but that got postponed til next week due to some unplanned events. It was a fun week and look forward to more birthdays with Robert.

This week Robert and I will be going up for an extremely fast trip to Utah to attend General Conference, Robert's mission reunion, and luck in timing, my cousin Lindsay's baby's blessing. We leave Thursday after work and come home Sunday after conference ends. I am really excited about this trip. Both Robert and I get to see friends neither of us seen in awhile, I finally get to eat Bajio's again, and really just get to spend a few days away from reality. This time, I just need to remember to actually use my camera :-)

And that, is the update on our lives.

Saturday, March 20, 2010

Mom's Birthday Card

My Mom's birthday was last week so I decided to make her a special card. I got the idea from a craft blog online and then modified it. The first picture is of the card in it's "presentation form". And yes, it's a box.



When you take the lid off the sides fall down and reveal the card. On the top side there is a gift card holder.

 


 





In the middle I cut out the 'Birthday Girl' along with balloons and butterflies. 

Thursday, March 11, 2010

Wedding Cards

Well, it is almost time for weddings to begin and both my mom and sisters requested cards for weddings they had coming up shortly. Here are the cards for those events.

The first one is the one I did for my mom. (Sorry, but for some reason it kept loading sideways onto the post). I decided to go with their wedding colors of a bright pink and green instead of the traditional looking wedding cards I have seen. I made it a long narrow card and made the envelope out of a patterned cardstock I found on sale at Michael's (which is where I get most of my stuff).


This second one (below) is for my sister. It is for my bro-in-law's best friend who is getting married later this month. I wanted to make this one a little more personal, since I actually know these people, so I put their names on the card. I also used their wedding colors of pink and brown for this card. Surprisingly a lot of people are having pink as their wedding colors. I made a matching envelope to go with this card as well.

I have discovered how to make envelopes and now will probably do it for all my cards. I like when it all goes together. :-)

Tuesday, March 9, 2010

The Amazing Cricut...in action

Here's a brief explanation of how the cricut works. You can do two different types of cuts.

The first is a single cut. The picture below is an example of this. This daisy border is one single piece of paper with the "unwanted pieces" cut out.

The second kind is a piece cut. You cut out each piece individually and then attach them together. Here is an example of a lady bug piece cut. Some piece cuts actually have a solid background that you attach the pieces to. 


Once you put all the pieces together you can add your own embellishment like so...

Saturday, March 6, 2010

My New Toy = New Creations

So in the last post that I did (2 seconds ago) I mentioned this new toy I got for my cricut. I Love It!. But you need special kind of files to use it with the cricut machine called SVG files. You can find a ton of those files on the internet but quite a few of them cost money. I am cheap right now since we are trying to watch our money, so I decided to create my own cut out files. To make these kind of files I had to get another program (that was free) to create my design in the free program and then save them to use in the other program with my cricut (It's not as complicated as it sounds, it's actually really easy to use). You can also use the free program to alter clipart, fonts, and other picture files to create a design.

These are my first two attempts in the creating a design from scratch. (The stork backdrop for the card, I used a clipart image and then made it into a silhouette).

For my first design I decided to go easy first so I did this bear who is made up of circles and ovals, which I then tweaked to make the body and legs. After I cut him out I accented his eyes and used my pastels to add rosy cheeks and little bit of a wear on the body.

The second design I did I decided to use the same design as the bear but just further tweaked it to make the body and parts of a pig (the ears were the hardest part). After I cut out the pieces I used a black marker to make the feet and then my pastels to add the rosy cheeks, the lighter parts of the ears and the wear on the body.

I am pretty happy with my very first attempts. I have decided to make a whole animal line. I have now designed a turtle and an elephant, but haven't had the time to make them yet. I will post them when I do.

Baby Coming Card

So my sister has a group of women she plays bunco with and they have a "secret sister" type of thing for the month of March. The women she has is pregnant and my sister asked me to make a card for her. I have never done a pregnancy card before and wasn't really sure how to do it, so I searched the internet for ideas. Not really seeing anything I was overjoyed about I decided just to wing it.
This week I got a new toy for my Cricut called the Design Studio where I can design things and cut it out with my Cricut. I LOVE IT! I decided to do a stork as a background for the card and this is the end result (after 3 or 4 tries). I wish it had turned out a little bit better, but I am still happy about it.

The two holes are where I am going to put some ribbon...but I don't have the kind I want for it so on my way to my sister's house I am going to go pick some up.
The envelope doesn't really match, but I made the envelope when I made the first card that had the same pattern, but then didn't end up liking it. I think it is still a cute pattern for the envelope so decided to keep it.
For the inside I found a cute little poem that I decided to use.