Tutorial for covered Pringles tin

Yes, it is happening! I have a new ( long overdue) tutorial to share with you.

It's so easy to make that it barely needs a tutorial, but I'll show you anyways.

It's a Pringles tin that you cover with patterned paper and then decorate...all according to the season. Works great for Valentine's of course, but also for Christmas, Halloween, Easter and so on.

Perfect to give away your homemade cookies in or just some sweet treats.

 

I found the idea here. She used the regular size Pringles tin, but I don't wanna give away THAT many cookies;)

This is what you'll need:

Small Pringles tin
Mod Podge (or normal glue works too )
Paintbrush
Patterned paper
Paper trimmer
Whatever decorations you choose

Apply Mod Podge to your tin

Take your patterned paper ( approx. 3 2/16 inches x 10 inches ) and cover the tin. Let the sides overlap a bit and make sure your paper is tight and smooth all around.

Now you just have to decorate. Here I used a border punch and the Cricut. When you are done decorating apply some Mod Podge over the whole thing to seal it and give a bit of shine.

 

Then add a bow of some kind on top.

( My cookies were all gone when I took this last picture so this sad tin has nothing in it,ha,ha).

That's it for this time. I promise it won't take so long until next tutorial:)

Complete family

If you were wondering, I'm doing just fine:)

We have been busy here, preparing for my hubby's homecoming and after a few delays, he is finally back after 7 loooong months.

This is our happy family a few days ago.

I haven't had time to scrap lately,but I did bring out the Cricut and some vinyl to make this:

Now, when John is back I'm hoping that I will finally get some well deserved ME-TIME and my wish for Christmas is plenty of time to scrap and blog.

 How about you? What do you want for Christmas?

What's new?

When I started this blog, I promised myself to only blog about scrapping.
Sometimes that's hard when there's not a whole lotta scrapping going on in my life.
I'm not part of any design teams.
I'm not trying to promote the latest kit from a club.
I can't show off my latest layout that got published in a glossy magazine.
It's just me and all those family photos that I'm trying to get scrapped into an album.

If I hadn't promised myself to keep this blog strictly scrappy, I could tell you about:

1. how I joined Weight Watchers online a month ago, and  how I have lost lbs 10 by doing basically nothing else but counting points (and how fabulous I feel and so much more energetic)

2. or I could go on about homeschooling and what I like and don't like about the curriculum I chose ( and how I'm so happy I made this decision, because I love teaching my kids)

3. or I could go on (and on) about how to survive when your husband is gone ( in a frickin' war) for 7 months and we have just done half of it (and how the only way not to go totally nuts, is to stay busy. See #1 and # 2)


BUT this is a strictly scrapbooking blog, so I will only talk about that.

Many of you have asked if I will have a new design team or new guest designers for my sketches. The truth is that I haven't made up my mind yet. I have only two guest designer left on my list and after that I don't know what I will do.
One thing is for sure. I will keep on doing sketches and if I want someone to help me create with those sketches, I will let you all know here on the blog.


I want to show you my latest layout. I really, really like how it turned out.

I stamped, misted, stitched and used the Cricut.

All the flowers are cut out with a new Cricut cartridge from Close To My Heart (CTMH). And then, they were so smart to make matching stamps to go on top of the flowers.

This "Art Philosophy"  cartridge has 700 shapes, many of which coordinate with the CTMH stamp sets. There are circles, flowers, snowflakes, leaves, tags, cards, 3-D images, ornaments, frames, hearts, acorns, brackets, borders, birds, trees, Christmas trees, flourishes, decorative corners and tabs, arrows, keys, lace images, and a font with a font layer.

When you get this cartridge you also get 3 matching stamp sets and 3 sheets of dimensional elements.
The price for all this is $ 99 and you can only get it from a Close To My Heart consultant. Not from EBay, not from Provocraft or any other website you'd normally buy your Cricut stuff from. 


If you are smart (like me) you will host a CTMH party and you will get it HALF-OFF! Click here to contact my friend who sells CTMH.


That's it for today.
I'll be back soon with a giveaway.
Take care!

Different crafts

I don't know what happened to me?

I started the year so strong, scrapping almost every day and now all of a sudden I haven't scrapped in weeks.

I don't know if I have lost my mojo, but I just don't feel like scrapping at all...same thing maybe?

But I've still been a bit crafty though and I wanted to share my simple projects.

For the first one you'll need some cheap pens, a glue gun, silk flowers from the dollar or craft store and you'll need a nipper, I think it's called ( never heard the word in my life before, but I googled it)

Use the tool to pull out the stopper in the pen and fill some  hot glue in there and immediately push down the flower (also use the tool to cut off the stems of the flowers)

Isn't this pretty? A bouquet of pens!
Spray some of your favorite body or room spray on them if you wish.

 

Then I wanted to show what Conrad and I made for his Valentine's box. We made this out of a cereal box and plenty of cardstock. I think it turned out so cute and now I will keep it in my scrap room forever. It makes me happy!

Last, I wanted to show what I did with some of all these paper flowers I've accumulated over time.

You'll need magnets, a glue gun and some of your paper flowers. I prefer the flatter ones like dahlia, fan fold flower and this flower.

Look here what a pretty company the Swedish royal family got on my fridge.

Well, I'm gonna head into my scrap room now and see what happens...I'll keep you updated:)

My Top Ten list, # 5 (long post)

I want to continue with my top 10 list; things I can't scrap without.

I'm now at number 5 and this will be a rather long post with many photos, links and information.

There is just so much to say about about...

#5 Cricut machine by Provocraft

I now own my third Cricut!?

I bought my first one in 2006, my second one in 2008 and my latest in 2010. And no, I will not buy another one next year. I'm completely happy with the one I have.

The first one I bought was what they now call "baby-bug". Just a normal Cricut. Two years later I sold that one and upgraded to a Cricut Create. It cuts 6 inch but has some of the same features as the Cricut Expression.

And last year I sold that one and did my final upgrade to the Expression.

And needless to say I just love it!

There's so much you can do with it.

Sometimes, but not too often do I use it to cut out shapes like here. The letters are also cut out with the Cricut ( the "Jubilee"-cartridge)

Mostly I use it for titles and my all time favorite letter cartridge is "Don Juan" ( The hearts are cut out with the same cartridge)

Circles are something I very often use the Cricut for. Like here. I used it for the flowers and leaves too.

For many of my flower embellishments you can use the Cricut.

Like the cardstock daisies

 and the cardstock roses

So just for scrapbooking, I use the Cricut for titles, diecuts, shapes and flower embellishments.

But there is so much more you can use it for.

Look what my friend made for me. Isn't it pretty?

She used the Cricut to cut out templates and then fill it in with paint.
You can buy plastic templates at any craft store, but you can also use cardstock, though it won't last as long of course.

The other day I made this and I absolutely love,love,love how it turned out. I have always been intimidated to cut out in vinyl and now I wonder why. It's nothing to it!

I used another favorite cartridge called "Songbird" and it's awesome because the letters connect.
I used the provocraft vinyl, though I'm sure you can find cheaper brands. And I did not use the transfer tape. It drove me nuts.
I just eyeballed and put the letters on the wall.I messed up a few times, but the stickiness did not disappear at all.

In my daughters room I cut out another quote, but I just used pink cardstock and ran it through my xyron

If you want ideas for wall words go to wallwords.com

There is just so much you can do with the vinyl. Cut out your favorite bible verse or make car decals.
My hubby now wants me to make something to put in his office.
See how the whole family gains from my obsession:)

Another thing that the Cricut is perfect for are school projects. Here I used it for my daughters Science project ( she won an award for it) I cut out the title and the bananas on the bottom.

So in between scrapbooking, home decor and school projects, a Cricut is totally worth every dime!!

And lets talk about dimes and dollars.

I paid $250 + $50 shipping for my first Cricut 2006.

In 2008 I paid $ 199 for my Create

and last year I paid $189 (including 2 cartridges) for my Cricut Expression!!

Do you see the trend here? Prices are going down!!

Don't ever pay more than $100 for the little one and no more than $200 for the Expression!!

Ebay of course is a good place to find great deals. I have both good and bad experiences with Ebay.I have shopped a lot there for myself but also for the retreats we've been planning. Some of the sellers take their sweet time to ship your order. They want their money within three days so you would would think they should ship within three days too. But not always.

I would say that one  of the biggest seller on Ebay for Cricut and cartridges is "Proudparents2005". I have bought from them and not had any problems, BUT 5 (five) of my friends didn't actually get their orders. Like never!

"Proudparents2005" would not respond to emails nor pick up the phone.

They have a 99.2% positive feedback which might seem high but, those 0.8% represent A LOT of unhappy customers!

I don't mean to badmouth anyone. As I said I never had a problem with them, but I just want to raise a warning flag here.

So where should you buy your Cricut and cartridges?

I bought my last Cricut from Cricutmachine.com and they have a lot of good deals.

I bought 5 cartridges there yesterday and they were $17.95 each! Don't ever pay more than $25 for a cartridge. That's a ripoff!

Diecutcentral also have awesome prices.

SO GET THIS! You will get a kick out this: "Proudparents2005", Cricutmachine.com and Diecutcentral are ALL THE SAME COMPANY!!???

They are also the same company as Papercraftingpro.com

How do I know?

Well, when I order from one of these above, I will get the bill from another one. Isn't that weird?

I don't really care how many websites they have as long as we can get our cheap prices, right?

Another thing I bought from Cricutmachine...or was it ebay... I can't remember now...is my CGull tote for all the cartridges. This cute thing holds up to 72 cartridges! I have a lot of empty spots left. I only own about 25 cartridges.

The last thing I want to mention about the Cricut is this:

Yes, it can get pricey with all the cartridges that you want to have, but have you heard about Make-the-cut??

It's a software you download that allows you to cut every true font that you have on your computer.

It's $ 58.36 and you would never need to buy another  cartridge again.

The latest I heard was that Provocraft had sued the owners to Make The Cut. I can see why, but also not.

I don't think Provocraft needs to worry and I'm sure they make enough money.

So the deal with Make-the-cut is that you connect your computer to the Cricut and they you can cut ANY font you have. And you know there's 1000's of free fonts to get:

http://www.1001freefonts.com/

http://www.dafont.com/

are just a few.

I really should use my Make-the-cut more often. I have used it only once or twice.

This title here is the true font "Beach"

Can you see that the letters are welded together? That's what I like the most.

I know you can do the same thing with the Designstudio.I  have it too, but haven't even opened it. Hubby gave it to me two years ago for my birthday and he is not so happy...

The designstudio and Make-the-cut are two different things. With the Make-the-cut you only need ONE cartridge to have plugged in your machine and then you never have to buy another cartridge again.

With the Designstudio you work with the cartridges you have.

If I had a bigger scrap desk -or less stuff on it-I would always have my computer plugged in to the Cricut and I know I would use Make-the-Cut so much more.

 ~

I think I covered everything I know about the Cricut machines. I'm far from an expert so if you want to correct me or add something, please feel free.

I didn't mention anything about Cricut Imagine or the Cake Cricut, simply beacuse I have never worked with them.

Oh, one last thing.

So my hubby wants me to cut out something for his office wall and he asks if I can cut out the Battalion logo? And I'm thinking...Sure, if you have the logo on the computer then I can cut it out with Make-the-cut. How awesome isn't that?

With Make-the-cut there really is no limits for what you can do with your Cricut!

Bonus sketch

I kinda like how this layout turned out

so I made a sketch after it

and made two new layouts based on the sketch

 

 

If you use the sketch I would like to see your take on it:). Could you please upload it to Facebook.

And if you added Scrap A Little as your friend, don't forget to leave a comment here so you can be in the drawing for a nice giveaway:)

Tutorial for cardstock Daisies!

 

I'm so excited! I have a new flower tutorial to share with you! I found these flowers on YouTube and I think they're just fabulous!  

This is what you will need:

• cardstock (without white core)
• Cricut or something similar
• wooden skewer
• spray bottle with water
• glue
• bling (pearls, beads, Stickles...) for flower center
• ink ( optional )
• glimmer mist ( optional ) 

In the video I saw she used  Sizzix to cut the flowers. I used my Cricut and a cartridge called " Walk In my Garden" ( the first flower- Daisy)

You will need 6 flowers in three different sizes.
I chose

• 1 3/4 x 2
• 1 1/2 x 2
• 1 1/4 x 2

 Lightly spray the flowers with water.

 Use the skewer to bend up the petals

 For the really thin petals I use a piercing tool instead.

This is what you will have now:

 Gently pinch the petals in between your fingertips.

Let them dry for 15-20 minutes before you glue them together. Perfect timing to start a new flower:)

After they are dry, glue the 6 layers together starting with the bigger ones.

Add some bling in the middle.

When you're done you can spray glimmer mist all over the flower. Click here to see how to make your own glimmer mist.

 Aren't they gorgeous ?

I used some of them here on this layout based on my sketch # 3. 

I'm working on two more flower tutorials right now:)

If you wonder how come I blog so often, I guess you could say that I am a bit  bored and lonely :(

Hubby is gone and the kids are busy with school and playing.

I don't know why I have so much time on my hands all of a sudden. I can't remember what kept me busy last year?

Oh well...scrapping and blogging is not a bad way to spend your time I guess... 

Latest giveaway winner

How's everybody doing with their New Year's resolutions?

I'm doing awesome...at least with my scrappy one;)

I have done 10 layouts so far this year. If I keep up this tempo, I will reach my goal (104 layouts) by March-April:)

Here's a page I recently made with my sketch # 5

and this one I did today- all made with SEI's "Addison" collection.

I drew a random winner for the latest giveaway and the winner is......

....Maria Castillo!! Congrats Maria!

(I need your address so I can send you this paper pack. Email me at scrapalittle@gmail.com)

I'm so happy that so many  of you liked the latest flower tutorial. You can look forward to another one very soon.