Elephant Jokes

"Mom! Mom! What has 3 feet but can't walk?"

"A yardstick! Hahahaha..."

These are the kind of things I've been hearing lately from my two 7 year olds. Besides the endless "Knock-Knock" jokes, they have been telling me all kinds of silly riddles. I love how they crack each other up. Who knew that this is such a goofy age?

Perhaps that's why when I saw the elephant from Lettering Delights' new Pun Intended graphic set, I knew that I have to make a set of make-you-laugh cards for them. I've never seen or owned the infamous 101 Elephant Jokes book but a few minutes on Google was enough to make me cry:

"What is grey and flies? A jumbo jet!"

Haha.. 

"How do you know if there is an elephant in your fridge?
Footprints in the butter."

"How do you know if there are 2 elephants in your fridge?
Two sets of footprints in the butter."

"How do you know if there are 3 elephants in your fridge?
Can't get the fridge door closed. "


 I read and laughed and read and laughed some more but when I shared the jokes with Hubby, he didn't seem to get it. Yet I was undeterred. I knew that the girls would enjoy these. In fact, I was pretty excited that it was my turn to make the twins laugh.

LD's elephant graphic is so easy to work with that I did not even need to make the layers in Adobe Photoshop. The contrasting colors of the brown elephant means that all I needed to do was just trace and import the image in MTC. 

I knew that the cards were going to be quarter-fold sized or 4.25" x 5.5" so I cut the animals at a height of 2.5" and adhered the layers with foam tape. I used a lot of foam tape for this project not only because I had cut out so many elephants but mostly because the image is so simple, I thought it was important to give it more dimension.

When I first started on this project, my idea was to sneak in these joke cards into the kids' lunch bags when they go back to school. I like to surprise them with an occasional card when I pack their lunches and I just knew that the girls would love the jokes. But then, school is still 3 weeks away and I really can't stand to not tell these to them. So when I tucked them into their beds last night, I went ahead and told them all the elephant jokes that I know.

My goofy daughters totally burst out with laughter! I knew it! These riddles are so silly that they couldn't get enough of them! I was thrilled that unlike their father, they found humor in the absurdities.  The trouble was, by the time I turned their bedroom lights off, I had already emptied out my supply of elephant jokes. Making joke cards was now kind of pointless. But then I have had so much fun cutting all these elephants out and I still had the urge to cut more. That's when I decided that instead of putting joke cards in their lunch bags, I would make the girls little elephant note cards. I would leave the inside blank so that I could write little notes or even short riddles sometimes.

By the time I was done, I have a little army of elephant cards. Each little note card measures approximately 2.5" x 5" and they fit perfectly in the yellow coin envelopes that you can find at the office supply stores.

By the way, the tree image that I used for this card is from Lettering Delights' LD Woodsy Doodlebat font and I had to make a minor adjustment to it to make it MTC/Cricut-Cutable.

Lettering Delights' new Pun Intended graphic set is LD's Sneak Peek for this month and is currently on sale for only $2. However, you may only add this set to your shopping cart when you are checking out. In other words, you can only buy this set when you are buying something else.


All the words on my cards were printed with my Canon inkjet printer. I usually like to print using my Samsung laser printer but my Neenah Paper cardstock was too thick for it. It wasn't really fun when I had to remove all my now-ruined cardstock from that %#!#@ jammed-up laser printer. Thank goodness for these elephant jokes. At least they still made me laugh even when I had to look down and see my ruined cardstock.

"What is grey, wrinkly, and has streaks of black on it's body?"

An elephant jammed up in a laser printer!

hahahaaa.....

A Michaels' shopping trip: Martha Stewart punches

I'm breaking my one post a week rule today to show you what I found at Michaels' yesterday. 

The Martha Stewart punches have been on clearance for a while now and it seems that they have been marked down more. With the exception of the Barn corner punch ($6.99) and the ABC Border punch ($5.99) I found these punches for $4.99 each. I believe that the previous marked price was $6.99 and that is down from the original price of $12.99. Michaels' will probably mark them down further in a couple of weeks but I didn't want to risk not finding them later so I bought them. I was particularly happy about finding the cupcake corner punch because I already have the cupcake border edge punch. 

There were several other sets at my local M's but these are the ones I came home with.

I am aware that the reviews for the MS glue pad are mixed but I thought I would give it a try when it rang up at $2.49. I've never bought Stampology inkpads before but at $0.99 each, I could always give them to my kids if I didn't like them. 

My favorite purchase was probably the Strathmore Art Pad. I had used these 9"x12" papers for the Class Memory Book Covers and I love how thick the papers are. The other paper pack was only $1.99 and my 20% coupon took off another $0.40. 

The K&Co 12"x24" paper pad is $6.99 (down from $19.99) and the TPC Studio paper was $2.99

My local Michaels' store is putting out a lot of new stock including the new EK Success Cupcake Chain Large Border Punch. I did not buy it yesterday but I am pretty sure I'm getting it some time.

As always, clearance items vary from store to store and I've heard that the markdowns happened a couple of days ago. Please don't make a special trip to look for any for these but if you happen to go to the store, you might want to take a closer look at the clearance section.

That's all for today. Now to get back to entertaining the kids...

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!

Video Tutorial: How to Cut a Lettering Delights envelope template with your Cricut

Isn't it scary how fast time flies? In just 6 weeks, my kids will be going back to school. :-(  As mentioned previously, I am slowing down on my blog posts to spend time with them. I will be posting once a week until September when I can (hopefully) post more often. 

Thank you for the great response to my first video tutorial. To date, the video has been viewed 433 times on youtube! I would love to know if you have made any cuts with SCAL or MTC with my method. It would be fun and I would be happy to make a special post on my blog that features your work done using the Photoshop-MTC method. :)

I have spent this past week making a couple of cards with my paper scraps and this Lettering Delights Mulberry Lane Too graphic set. The images in this set have nice unbroken lines and I thought that they would be easy to convert into MTC-Cricut cuttable files. 

Using the same method as illustrated in my tutorial, I cut out the flowers with MTC. For the first card, I embossed the card front with my new Cuttlebug's Polka Dots embossing folder. I'm always using the Swiss Dots folder that I thought it would be fun to change that up a little. The sentiment was stamped with a Hero Arts stamp.

This card front of the second card was embossed with a Sizzix embossing folder while the "Smile" was stamped with a Hampton Arts wood stamp that my kids found in the $1 basket at Michaels'. I love this stamp but I love it even more that my girls found it for me. :)

I had such fun making the first video tutorial that I thought I would attempt a second one. This time I will show you how I use Make-the-Cut to cut out a Lettering Delights envelope template. Did you know that Lettering Delights has several envelope templates on their site? There is a graphic set called Card Cafe Ala Envelopes that has envelope templates. The template that I am using for this tutorial is "envelope 10"  from the graphic set called Peppermint Holiday Envelopes. 




Tutorial: How to cut out a Lettering Delights envelope with MTC in 5 steps:

Step 1: Open MTC

Step 2: Import and Trace.  

Select envelope and trace by selecting Import Objects>Pixel Trace.

Step 3: Break and Delete
Break and delete words and the duplicate layer of envelope.

Step 4: Smooth and Simplify
Use CTRL-G to remove excess nodes. In my video, MTC was not able to simplify any further. I still added in this as a step because I believe that it is a good habit to CTRL-G everytime before you send the Cut command.

Step 5: Cut! 

At this point you are ready to cut out the template but depending on the size of the envelope required, you might want to adjust the size before you click on the "Cut" button.

 
That's all for this post. I hope that you are all having a great Summer!

Video Tutorial: 10 Steps to Convert a Lettering Delights graphic into a MTC file

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Notice: Provo Craft/Cricut does not endorse the use of any 3rd party software. Cutting or communicating to any Cricut machine with any 3rd party or non-Cricut endorsed software or device will void the warranty of the Cricut cutting machine. As such, it might be prudent to wait until the warranty expires on your Cricut machine before trying out this tutorial.

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It’s here. I’ve done it. So many of you have asked me for this tutorial and I am so excited to tell you that IT'S DONE!! :-D

Thank you everyone for your patience. This is my very first video tutorial and it was truly a learning experience. For all of you who have ever made one of these, I applaud you. 

This video tutorial will show you how I convert the whale from Lettering Delights' Seven Seas graphic set into a Make-The-Cut file. I used Adobe Photoshop CS3 in this tutorial but I understand that the same tools that I used in PS is also available in Photoshop Elements so if you only have PSE, you should still be able to do the same conversion.

You are free to share this video tutorial on your blog or craft forum but I would really appreciate it if you would point back to my blog. I have worked hard to put this tutorial together and I would be grateful if you could support my blog by using my affiliate link when you make a purchase at Lettering Delights . You can use the coupon code "SpendTen" for a $10 discount when your purchase totals $20 or more.

Video Tutorial: 10 Steps to Convert a Lettering Delights Image into a MTC file




I know that this video tutorial could use a little more polishing and I realized that it might be a little too fast. If you miss a step, press the Pause button on your video player or refer to these instructions that I have written out here for your reference:

Step 1: Prepare your tool.
Select Magic Wand. Set Tolerance to 50.
 
Step 2: Open Lettering Delights file.
 
Step 3: Create the layers.
Select Blue Polka Dot layer and right-click to Layer via Copy.
 
Step 4: Increase Canvas Size
Select Image>Canvas Size and set height to 20.
 
Step 5: Hold down the CTRL key and the left mouse button to separate the layers.
 
Step 6: Make the image black and white. Select Image>Mode>Grayscale
 
Step 7: Sharpen the image with the Brightness/Contrast feature.
Set Brightness to -150 and Contrast to 100
 
Repeat Step 7.
 
Step 8: Save your converted image. This graphic is now ready for MTC or Inkscape.
 
Step 9: Import the new file into MTC. Trace.
 
Step 10: Adjust the size and split the image. Your LD graphics is now ready for cutting!


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If you enjoyed the tutorial, please leave a comment below and tell me what you think. 




Thanks. :-)

A LD newsletter mention

It's a good morning when you wake to a newsletter and see your card looking back at you. I just checked my email and as I was reading Lettering Delights' July newsletter, I see my recent whale card featured there!

First a mention of my garden in the Cricut Chirp 3 weeks ago and now a mention in the LD newsletter. That's 2 features in 3 weeks. Not a bad score at all, if I do say so myself. :P

Awesome Lettering Delights freebie

Here's a new freebie from Lettering Delights and it's a pretty cool one too. You can get a couple of FREE files just by being a LD member.

If you have an account with Lettering Delights, just sign in and you will find these already in your library. Just look under "My Library" and then "Freebies". To download the file, click on the  "Try Me Now" button and look under the "Download Entire Set" tab.

If you do not have an account with LD, just create one here. The freebies will be automatically added to your "library" and you can download them the same way as mentioned above. 

This is a great opportunity to use LD graphics for converting into Cricut-cutable files without having to buy the graphics. I use Make-the-Cut and Adobe Photoshop for converting their images into cut files. If you do not have MTC, why not give it a try? You can download a free trial here.

Also, if you find something else that you like on the site but do not want to pay full price, you can use the coupon "SpendTen" to take $10 off a purchase of $20 or more. The coupon expires July 31, 2010. Check out the coupon and other specials here.

Enjoy!