Party Animals!

The countdown has begun. 4 more weeks until the 1st day of school and I am not keeping up with the Summer schedule that I have written up for the kids. Even though we started the break sticking pretty well to the to-do list, somehow as the vacation went on, the schedule slowly melted away too.

In a vain attempt to spend more time with my kids before the Summer Break is over, I am still keeping my blog post to once a week. We are having fun and going places but that does not mean that I have stopped creating. Today I will show you what I have Cricut-ted this weekend.

It's funny that when I look around my craft room, I see all these brand new, still in blister pack, Cricut cartridges. Yet what's on my cutting mat? Freshly cut Lettering Delights images. I know that I've been talking a lot about LD lately and that's probably because I am suffering from ProvoCraft-fatigue. Tired of owls, and birds. Tired of the limitations of Cricut Design Studio (No gypsy over here). Tired of exclusives. Call me a rebel but I have always enjoyed LD images and MTC has given me the ability to cut these images out and use them like they are cartridge-cutouts. Yes, it does take a little time to get the hang of MTC, and I agree that you may need to take time to tweak some images, Yet I love the feeling I get when I hold in my hands, an image that I once could only view on screen or print on paper. When I cut it out and put the layers together, it's almost like I have enabled the image to come alive. Even though it was not born from a Cricut cartridge. :-)

And so, since I am still getting a kick out of Cricut-ing a non-PC, not-from-cartridge image, I will show you these cards that I've made from Lettering Delights' Party Animals Doodlebat font. Yes, you heard me correctly, a FONT. You know what this means, right? Super easy to use in MTC. No color-conversion in Adobe Photoshop! Just load the font onto MTC, and make the layers right there and then! And, you don't have to buy a club membership to own this font. It costs just $3! And no, you don't have to buy it as part of a bundle either. ;-)

Don't be afraid of the squiggly, sketchy lines in this font set. Unlike most of the other sketchy-types designs on LD, this set is actually quite easy to cut out. For instance, these presents cut out with no alterations at all. Just open (or import, you know what I mean) and size it to whatever size that you want, then break, arrange, and cut!

I embossed all the colored layers with different dots embossing folders (swiss dots, polka dots, etc.), and handstamped the greeting. Voila! 3 quick birthday cards done in 15 mins! All I need now is for my child to bring me another invitation to a kiddie birthday party. This mommy has birthday cards ready to go, baby!

Just for fun, I decided to cut out the cow as well. I, *ahem*, came up with the sentiment myself. "Hip, Hip, Moo-ray!". Get it? Cow, Moo? :-P

The font was printed out with my laser printer directly onto the white "Recollections" brand of cardstock that I had bought at Michaels'. I used Lettering Delights' Keep Me Posted font.

Okay, who can resist this piggy? To make the cow and this pig Cricut-cutable, I had to do a minor tweaking to the image. I also really wanted to use the phrase "Pig Out!" but it didn't quite work on this card. I ended up using LD's Circles-Birthday Doodlebat font. See those color dots? Those were punched out with my 1" circle punch using my paper scraps from making the presents birthday cards. Why waste perfectly good paper scraps, right? I used MTC to cut out the black shadow for the dots. To give the card more dimension, I used foam tape to adhere the pig, present, and greeting to the card front.

So that's it for this week! I'll be back next week to share with you what the kids and I have done this summer. :-) Happy Cricut-ing, everyone!