Science Fair 2010 (part 2)

So there it sat. A cardboard that is but 3/4 the size of my 12"x24" mat. Do I really have to decorate it for Friday's Science Fair? I have 2 days. Argh. Frankly I'd rather be making a card but what's a mom to do?

I looked around the Craft Room and spotted my stack of cartridges that recently came in the mail. I see Songbird and really liked the flower image. I just needed to find a good solid font to replace that which came with the flower.

I searched through my cartridge drawers and decided that my go-to font, Don Juan, just wasn't going to work for this assignment. I never notice that most Cricut fonts are actually pretty skinny. We all know about that crazy anorexic font Jubilee, but even Simply Sweet was too thin and I almost settled on Alphalicious when I remembered that Robotz came with a font.

There! Exactly what I was looking for! Everyone sees the robots in that cart but I think that the font was totally overlooked. It's a good bold font and I know that it'll be one that I will be using often especially for the kids' craft work.

After some manipulation in Design Studio, I managed to cut out a whole bunch of flowers for the kids. I have to admit that it was hard for the perfectionist in me to watch them leave glue marks all over the "finished" flowers but I guess that made it believable that a First Grader did actually work on the project.

With some hot-gluing, the display board started coming together but yet I couldn't help but feel that there was something missing.

The display board may be small but surely there was something else we can do with the Cricut?

Science Fair = Display board = matching t-shirts? Oh, what the heck! Why not?!

And so we've done it - 2 days, 2 t-shirts, and 1 decorated display board. I think I've helped the twins enough to showcase their experiment and yet not so much that they can't own the project. After all, they came up with the idea for the experiment and the tests. They did the gluing, the writing ("No computer-printouts for you, kiddos!"), and the painting.

Not bad for a first Science Fair effort, if I do say so myself. For the kids....

and I guess, for me. ;-)

Science Fair 2010 (part 1)

Seven year olds are such funny little creatures. Everything is new and exciting to them.

"Mom! Look! A Butterfly!!", 

"Mom! We painted a penguin in class!",

"Mom! We're joining the Science Fair!"

Say what?

"Our school is having a Science Fair and... WE. ARE. JOINING!!"

Oh boy. Their First Science Fair.

My heart started beating a little faster as my head started to scream "No..." and yet I found myself doing a jig and joining the First Graders in their little happy dance. It's just so hard to kill such great enthusiasm.

It took a little convincing but the twins eventually agreed that instead of doing 2 Science Projects for the fair, they would share one. Right away they started cranking out ideas. So a group of boy classmates will be doing "Snail vs Slug. Which is faster?" but the twins weren't excited about doing anything that had anything to do with bugs. Twin B suggested making a light circuit but Twin A wasn't so keen. After a lengthy discussion, they settled on their theme but solemnly reminded me that they would need my help in putting their project together. So long as I didn't need to catch bugs or build a volcano, I was game. :) 

Two weeks ago, the girls came home with a 20"x15" piece of cardboard. Supposedly that is what they are to display their work on. I thought it was too small but we all agreed we will get the project done over Spring Break.

Spring Break was last week. 

The Science Fair is in two days.

Last night, I found this:

Sigh. In all fairness, they did come up with the experiment on their own and they did do the tests but they have no idea how to put all the information they had gathered on the display board together.

I have my Cricut, my Design Studio and my cartridges. I guess it's time to get working.

Hi Giraffe!

Get it? "Hi Giraffe!", as in, "High Giraffe". Yes, yes, go ahead and roll your eyes. I'm corny like that. :P

It took me a little while to figure this giraffe out. I mean, the image is long and odd-size. I didn't like how small it look on the Design Studio when I set the size within my standard quarter-folder card front. 

I finally decided that I like my giraffe big and I set it at 9.75" to fit this accordion card.

Yep. This is my first Create-A-Critter accordion card. The overall card measures approx. 6.5" x 16.5". Each section of the card is 6.5"x5.5".

All the cutouts are from CAC except for the sentiment which is cut at 0.75" using the Don Juan cartridge. The giraffe, bird, and tree branch were all "Flipped" just because I like them to face the opposite direction from what the cartridge dictates. That's just me, apparently I like to do things the hard way but you don't have to flip any of the images if you don't want to. The card will still look fine. :P

 Once again, I whipped out my Martha Stewart Grass Border Punch for the bottom section. I was going to go crazy decorating all that grass but then settled on putting just two lonely flowers. I think they look quite fine standing by the giraffe's behind. Or maybe I should have flipped them too. Or did I already? Hurmm.....

Nuts about you

I'm having so much fun with the Create-A-Critter cartridge that I am going to show another card that I made with it.  Once again, every cutout for this card is from the same page. In this case, the squirrel, the nut, and the words are from the same button.

I cut out the squirrels at 2" and as you can tell, the pink one was cut using the Flip feature. One thing to remember when layering for the squirrel is that you have to layer the tail BEFORE layering the body. I had done it the other way and then realized my mistake. A bit of the tail is tucked under the body and the handbook doesn't show that. In fact, the tail is labeled under Layer 3 so I naturally assumed that it would go on last. Don't make the same mistake I did. 

I'm not quite done playing with this cartridge yet so bear with me if the next card is also made with it. Enjoy your Wednesday. :)

Owl miss you...

Create-A-Critter is fast becoming my favorite cartridge. If not for the cute images, then definitely for the ease in layering. No messing with teeny bits of cutouts for this cart! Do you have the Hello Kitty Greetings cart? Ever tried cutting a HK image in 3" ? Layering those minute pieces of paper for a 3" HK is almost impossible. Not so for Create-A-Critter. I notice that 3" is just about the perfect size for my quarter-fold sized cards so I have been cutting my critters at that size. Putting together the layers for this size was really easy.

Lack of ideas for a layout? No problem! This cart makes it so easy for you to co-ordinate images. For example, you'll find the cow and barn on the same button, or a squirrel and a nut on the same page. I know that some other carts do offer images that go together on the same key, but somehow, I find that this cart makes it incredibly easy to put together a layout.

 For today's card, all the cutouts except the oval are from the owl button. The oval was cut from a jumbo Marvy punch. I embossed the branch and leaves with Cuttlebug's branch and swirl folders. Rhinestones was used to bling up the card and the owl's wings were stickled with Frosted Lace.

What does a penguin do on his day off?

Well, go fishing, of course! :)

Even though I desperately wanted to play with the Create A Critter cart as soon as I received it on Thursday, I couldn't get around to it until yesterday. The images on this cartridge are seriously cute. If you are into those cutesy kind of stuff, you can't give this cart a pass.  

All the cuts on this card are from the penguin button. Well, except for the oval shape which came from George and Basic Shapes. 

The dimensions of this card are your typical quarter-fold size or 4.25" x 5.5". The penguin was cut at 3" and the igloo at 2". Both the fish and "Just Chillin'" were cut at 0.75" while the oval measures 1.5" in length.

I just couldn't leave the white background alone so I embossed it with Sizzix's Three Dots Textured Impressions Embossing Folder and went over the fish, igloo and sentiments with Stickles. The fishing pole is just a toothpick with a thread.

Super fun card that I enjoyed making on my "day off" (Dh takes charge of meals on the weekends! Yay!).

My favorite kind of homework...

I volunteer in my 1st Graders' classroom once a week to read with the children and help the teacher with small assignments. I also make cutouts with my Cricut for the class but that's a post that I will make another day.

Anyway, the other day the teacher sent me an email that I need not help in the class this week as the kids will be using their reading time to do a Science project. However, she needs help with some cutting. So, when my kids came home, one of them handed over a large ziplock bag with a stack of cardstock and a note.

I usually spend an hour in the classroom but this "homework" took me two hours.

I have never made a Pop-Up anything before so I was intrigued with what she was going to do with these. My kids have no idea what the teacher's plans are but I was not going to let that stop me from having some fun with this concept. So in a half-hour, I managed to make a quick Easter card for the teacher. This is the front of the card:

But the fun was on the inside:

Since I have 2 kids in her class, I thought I would put two chocolate bunnies inside the card. 

Tada! And so I made my first Pop-Up card that day. :)