Paris Party (Part Deux)

I previously posted details about last week's Paris Party held in honor of my daughter's birthday. In this post, I wanted to highlight all the things I was able to use the Cricut on to make this party a snap.

On our front door, I posted the word art "Paris" with the Eiffel Tower in it. I used vinyl that I am able to get from my brother's graphic design company for free. They frequently have leftovers from projects and he is kind enough to save them for me. So, this nifty little mood-setter cost me nothing, and came on my cartridge exactly as is. A punch of a button and it was ready to go.

Just inside the front door was the sidewalk scene (see previous post). On the French doors behind the scene were an Eiffel Tower and more word art. Hanging from the ceiling were an array of French inspired designs from the Summer in Paris cartridge. These included a shoe, perfume bottle, dress form, hot air balloon, and more word art. Again, all of this was done by click on Cricut. The only thing I had to do was decide my colors, glue the layers together and hang them up!

You know, no trip is complete without the classic t-shirt souvenir. Using the vinyl, I cut Eiffel Towers to use as stencils on t-shirts. I found these permanent fabric spray bottles at both Michael's and Joann's. The girls had a lot of fun with this and it was the easiest craft of the night.

In addition to the t-shirt, we also had table in which the girls made hairbows (see previous post on hair poms/rosettes for directions) and Eiffel Towers. Again, the 3-D Eiffel Tower came as a cut on the Summer In Paris Cartridge. I had cut the towers out before the party. The girls used glitter and gel pens to make designs on the cutouts and then glued them together using pre-cut notches.

I wished I'd had the cartridge 2 weeks earlier so I could have done my invitations with it instead of the stamp. I have to say, though, this cartridge paid for itself with all decorations and crafts it covered!

Thumbody Loves You!

And that thumbody is Me!!!
I must be a sucker! I got roped into heading up the valentine parties at the kids' school. Truth be told, I LOVE to plan parties. But I don't love trying to get 20 different personalities to cooperate with each other. It's like herding cats!

But, something fun has come out of the endeavor. A little silver in the cloud linings. One of the classes found an adorable foam craft project at Oriental Trading Company, but the cost of the kits, especially for being only foam, was cost prohibitive. So, I took it to the Cricut.

I am limited on my cartridges, so I had to improvise a little bit. The base/pot is from the Celebrations cartirdge. That's right - the birthday cartridge. I used on page 117 and then cut the bow off to become the flower pot. I did it again on my patterned paper cutting off the bow and the top lip to give the pot dots. The grass is from Plantin Schoolbook, p. 69. The stem is a lollipop stick that I stamped with ink to get the green color. The petal itself is from Accent Essentials . Although I did find quite a few other flower heads on other cartridges so look and see what you can find. I chose this one because it most resembled the flower on the OT piece and the shape was nice with the thumbrpints. The saying is hand done, but when I go to do 100 of these, I will be printing them out on the computer. The heart is from the Plantin SchoolBook again.

I hope this will delight our 100 second graders and their "thumbodies special."