Thursday, February 13, 2014

Fun Projects with Cricut Craft Room and Vinyl

Yesterday I posted about this week's Free Cut in Cricut Craft Room. You know how much I love CCR. I wanted to share some signs I made not too long ago. I made quite a few for Christmas gifts. I love making them. I get to use my Cricut, CCR and play in my wood shop. Can't go wrong there! :)

So here are a few that I did.


Along with My Cricut Closet I also do woodworking. It's something that I've always dreamed of doing and just been able to accomplish over the last year. It's a lot of fun... and even more fun when I get to use my Cricut on my wood projects.

To start I had a 1x3 poplar board that someone gave me for FREE. (Gotta love that!). I cut several pieces down to a size that looked appealing to me. No special measurements. Plus I had a few scraps laying around that I also used. I spray painted them all black. The larger pic "something good's...." was an old cabinet door that I trimmed down.

(I shared this pic in a previous post... but I hadn't completed all the signs)

I used Cricut Craft Room to type up the words I wanted to use. I have a video on using text in CCR. While this video was made a while ago and some features have been updated in CCR... the basics are still the same. Here's a link.

So using CCR I added my text and welded the letters together for the cursive words... Faith, Hope, Love, Joy. I used Gypsy Font for those. For PRAY and FAMILY I used Close to My Heart - Art Philosophy. That is truly one of my favorite cartridges. LOVE IT! I also used Art Philosophy for the longer saying. I used CCR to place my text on the mat the way I wanted it to look on the board. 


Ok. So you may be wondering what I did here. This was a special order for a Christmas present for one of my friends. She called me up and asked me if I could make a sign saying this. It was something special to her and her mom. Her grandpa used to sing it to her mom and to her. I created a new file and started by using Cricut Craft Room Basics. She had given me an idea of how big she wanted the sign. So I added a square at the dimensions she requested and colored that Layer black. I then added  a second layer with my text and colored it white. I did this so I could see what it would look like. 
Next I played with it. Originally I just added the whole saying as one text block. Then I started over and added each word as it's own text block and moved them around resizing them till I had what I wanted. 

Next step... after getting all the text the way I wanted them... I cut them using my Cricut Expression 2 and some Vinyl. They came out just as I wanted them to. 


So all the white lettered signs were done with the Vinyl. I applied the vinyl and then used some Mod Podge to seal it so that they would not come off down the road. I used the transfer sheets to get them aligned. Also... when I couldn't find my transfer paper I had a roll of clear contact paper that worked just as well. 






The red words were done differently. I love the look of the vinyl but I also wanted to try something else as well. After removing the letters I kept the negative and I used these as stencils to paint on the other blocks. Worked great. Now you could certainly do some sanding and make them look distressed, but I chose to leave them as they were. The painting took a little longer but it was still super easy. 

The "Family" sign I added an extra step. After painting it black I used some red spray paint and painted it a deep red over the black and then lightly sanded it randomly and added black vinyl letters. I like the way it turned out. Here is a closer shot of it, as well as some more pics. 





Just one last note. I mentioned which fonts I used for each of these. If you look at them and think that they don't really look like those fonts... I squished and stretched and manipulated the text in CCR. So they may look a bit different. Just another feature about CCR that I love. You can manipulate images and text until you get the look that you want. :)

Hope you enjoyed these and that it inspired you to make some vinyl signs of your own. As always.. I'd love for you to share your creations with me. 


Wednesday, February 12, 2014

Bless This Home is the Free Cut this week!

Last week I tried hard to post the Free Cut of the week. But as hard as I tried I couldn't get excited about it so every time I tried to blog about it... nothing came out.

Not a problem this week. I LOVE LOVE LOVE this week's cut. 


I can't wait to make one of these. While I love my Cricut and all things to do with paper crafting... I am also very passionate about woodworking. So I always love projects that allow me to combine my two loves. Watch for a post this week where I show you how to make this. But there is a tutorial on the Cricut site on how to make this project as well. Click below. 

When you go into Cricut CraftRoom and just add these words to your mat... they will all come out the same size. If you click on the tutorial you will find a Cricut cut file with the dimensions you see above. 

There are NOT a lot of projects out there in the cyber world using this cut. I was only able to find one. But I wanted to share it with you. 

I think that you can find these wood blocks already made at Michaels or Hobby Lobby. But I though this was cute as well. 

I had the idea of getting a frame from Goodwill or the ReStore and frame this cut. I couldn't find a great example of what I had in mind... but this is pretty close. And of course.. you could use one of the other great fonts to make one of this for your family. But I want to do one with the Bless This Home cut. 

And don't limit yourself. You don't need to scrounge around for some lumber to try this cut. This is a great file. You could cut this out and put it directly on your wall... on a mirror... anything. 

Oooohhhh..... here is another great idea that I thought of. Again... these are examples of what you could do with this cut. Pick up a tile at your local hardware store or the ReStore and add your vinyl cut to the tile and put it on a stand. I actually really like this idea. 

I would link these projects to their creators but I pulled them from Pinterest and when I clicked on them they did not take me to any blogs. So please forgive me for not giving credit for them. 

Since there are not a lot of projects using this cut I encourage you to make something this week and share it. I can't wait to see what you make!!! 

AND... how awesome is this.... You can cut it free this week... but if you love it as much as I do you can purchase it digitally for only $1.99.