Making T-Shirts with Cricut

I was invited, by Ranieri, for a Cricut blog event in London. They paid my travel expenses, sent me a Cricut Mini and gave me some card from Papermilldirect.co.uk.

I was curious about the Cricut Mini as I make my own cards, but the machine can do far more than help with that. The Cricut machine uses a blade to cut intricate designs out of card, vinyl or sticky iron-on fabric.

I decorated T-shirts for my boys. I chose the teddy bear and monkey from thousands of designs available online. I re-sized them and set the machine going. Once they were finished I was able to peel the designs off and place them on the t-shirts ready for ironing. I was delighted with the finished product. They look professional.

The sky is the limit. You can create anything, from simple text - in any font you can think of - to complex pictures and patterns. The machine takes a little getting used to, but the software is straightforward.

I'm looking forward to playing with my Cricut Mini and improving my home-made cards by a factor of around one billion. My husband has his sights set on making his own band t-shirts and I'm going to decorate the boys' bedroom wall with something snazzy in vinyl - maybe some monkey and teddy bear wall art. Watch this space...

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Making T-Shirts with Cricut

Easy Leaf Rubbing Cards and Gift Tags

My children recently started collecting leaves on the walk home from school. One of their teachers had shown them how to do leaf rubbing.

Leaf rubbing is so simple, even for a small child. If they can hold a crayon, they can do leaf rubbing.

I was so impressed with my boys' art work that I decided to turn their leaf rubbings into cards and gift tags.

We're going to use the gift tags on their thank you teacher gifts.

To make gift tags you will need:

Leaves
Crayons
White paper
Coloured card
Scissors
A paper slicer
Double sided tape or glue
A hole punch

How to make gift tags:

Place your leaves on a flat surface.

Carefully place a sheet of white paper on top.

Hold it steady with one hand and rub over the leaves, through the paper, with the flat edge of a crayon.

Cut out your leaves, either freehand with scissors, or in rectangles with the paper slicer. This works well with several small leaves together.

Mount your cut out leaves on card with tape or glue.

Either cut out your mounted leaves (with a border) freehand or using the paper slicer.

Punch a hole in one corner, ready to thread with ribbon or string to make a gift tag, or stick to a pre-folded blank card.

We have made a pile of large gift tags to use as thank you teacher cards. Any leftover can be used to decorate birthday presents.

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Easy Leaf Rubbing Cards and Gift Tags