Spiderweb Tea Lights (with files)

Last week I posted some tealight holders for Halloween.  The bases are actually the lids from some Tropicana Orange Juice bottles - a great way to recycle.  If you missed this post you can find it HERE.

On the original tea lights, I used vellum rolled into a cylinder and embellished with punches and Creative Charms gems.  These are fast and easy to make.  I mentioned that you could design covers to cut on a machine and had several requests for files.  I decided to make a file for the Cricut and one for the Silhouette.

 For the Cricut file, I used a rectangle (from the George cartridge but you can substitute any rectangle) and the spiderweb from the Paper Doll Dress Up cartridge (this cartridge has lots of great extras on the feature keys).

I have used this spiderweb before for other projects and I set the size at 2 1/2 inches since this size had cut well in the past.  The overlaps for welding are very tiny but they cut neatly.  The base rectangle is 6 inches by 1 1/4 inches.

The overlap needed to make the six inch strip fit the juice lid holder is about 1/4 inch.  I added some strong adhesive along the edge and rolled up the base.

 Here is the spiderweb in the holder without a vellum liner.  I don't really like the look of the plastic flame from the battery operated tea light.  Of course it would be too dangerous to use an open flame candle, so I decided to use some vellum again to mask the plastic flame.

 The vellum softens the effect of the flame and gives more of a glow to the light.  I could have made the black collar a bit shorter but i wanted to be sure that there would be a good amount of overlap for the adhesive.  If you prefer to have the black band hidden,you could start with a shorter rectangle.

For the Silhouette version, I used the spiderweb that is one of the free designs included with the Silhouette Studio software.  I have cut incredibly tiny lines with my Silhouette SD so I tried a smaller size spiderweb for this design (about 1 1/2 inches tall).  This spiderweb is not slanted so I could make more of a grid pattern with the webs.

These very thin webs cut beautifully.  I used ordinary black cardstock that is usually sold quite inexpensively in packs of 25 or 50 at the big box craft stores.  I set the Silhouette at "Medium Cardstock" but I left on the pink cap that is used for heavier cardstock instead of changing the cap to yellow.

Once again, I didn't care for the exposed look of the plastic "flame" so I added a vellum liner.

The vellum gives a more finished look to the candle.  I found it easiest to simply roll the vellum a bit tighter than the spiderweb cut and slip it inside. 

When I added the adhesive to the edge of the vellum rectangle, I left a little bit exposed and then I could push the loose ends of the webs against the adhesive to keep everything in place.

Here are the two lights side by side - the different styles of spiderwebs create a different effect for each light.

The light in the center is the first one that I made with a spiderweb strip from a Martha Stewart border punch.  There are many more variations possible - so have fun experimenting with whatever tools and machines you have!

I have files to share for the two examples in this post.  I made the Cricut file in Design Studio but saved it as a .gypsy file so you can use it with Design Studio or the Gypsy.

If you have any questions, please leave a comment or send me an email.  If you download the files and use them, I'd love to see your web candles!

Spiderweb Tea Light  (Silhouette)

Spiderweb Tea Light (Gypsy)

It was another lovely day here and we saw lots of colorful foliage on our way to visit family.  When we got home, I made the Swedish Apple Pie (recipe was in the post HERE) and remembered to take a photo of the finished pie - so easy to make and super delicious!


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Birthday Tag Paper Dolls

It's another busy birthday month in our family.  The triplets turned eight while we were in San Francisco for the wedding so their birthday celebration was postponed until this weekend.  I had a "last minute" idea for tags for their presents and ended up improvising to create just what I needed.

We often give the boys similar but slightly different presents.  This year we chose three of the Eyewitness series of books and the books were about Pirates, Knights and Vikings.  I remembered that there is a knight and there are a couple of pirates on the Paper Doll Dress Up cartridge but I couldn't find a Viking...

I didn't have time to adapt an image using Design Studio so I did the next best thing - a bit of hand cutting and pasting!  I noticed that beard on the leprechaun page had points that could pass for horns and the hat for the pioneer boy had a rounded helmet look.  With a few snips, I trimmed the jagged edges of the beard and removed the lowest brim of the hat.  I cut the point off the beard and attached it to the back of the hat and then I had a helmet with horns!

 I used some of the simpler clothing from other characters and ended up with a fairly convincing Viking.

The dolls were cut at five inches on blackout to eliminate the facial cut lines so I could stamp their faces with the largest stamp in the Everyday Character Assortment from Peachy Keen Stamps.

I put together the three characters with very little time to spare so they are very basic - but cute!

Each character was adhered to a craft card stock tag card and attached the the wrapped book.  I added an extra layer inside the card - I inked the layer to make it ready to add a personal message.

It's always a bit tricky to do "separate but equal" gifts for kids but they seemed to like the books  (and the "green paper" bookmarks inside the cards that they will spend as they like!).

 

When we do birthday celebrations for the triplets, they blow out the candles on their individual cakes in age order (oldest first).

This year the cakes were each a different flavor and decorated as a soccer ball...

 a swimming scene from the movie Jaws II (complete with severed limb!)...

 and a Bruins hockey logo!

The cakes were made by their older sister and she did a excellent job with the designs (they tasted great too)!

It really is amazing to see how grown up the boys are - getting taller and more unique in their personalities everyday.

The take away tip for today
You can almost always find a way to make what you need with the Cricut.  You may have to resort to a bit of hand cutting.  When you look at the existing items on a cartridge just think about the shape and not the name or label.  You may be surprised at all of the alternative uses you can have.

I hope you are having a nice weekend.  The weather is crisp and cool here with bright skies - if only it would stay that way!

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Luck of the Irish for Sweet Treats Thursday

 

Top of the morning to you!  This week's theme for Sweet Treats Thursday at the Cuttlebug Challenge Blogspot is all things green for St. Patrick's Day.  Be sure to visit to see all of the great projects the Design Team has created and then visit their individual blogs for full details.

My first project was this framed "Luck of the Irish" to decorate for the holiday.  Above you can see the preview in Design Studio.  You will need the Storybook and the A Child's Year cartridges to duplicate the design.  I used George for the oval that is welded in the center of the image but this can be changed if you don't have George. 

To make things a bit easier for you, I have added an oval from Plantin Schoolbook on the last page of the file.  If you don't have George, select the oval and copy it.  Then click the tab marked CUT for the frame, delete the George oval and paste in the oval from Plantin.  The weld box is already checked on the Plantin Oval so your file should cut properly.

If you do not have George or Plantin, you can use another oval from a cartridge you do own.  Start with a vertical oval and adjust the values in the Shape Properties box as shown above.  Be sure to check weld for the oval.

 

There is a separate preview page showing the words and two shamrocks.  Do not cut from this page - the weld is not checked so the color will show for a preview.  The words are created in one selection box so they can be copied and pasted as a group.  You can also alter the size if you want to use the words for another project.  Be sure to check weld if you copy the group from this page to use in another project.

On the page labeled CUT, I added four more shamrocks to make the best use of my paper.  The postion of the paper is marked on the tab - you need a 4 x 6 inch piece of paper placed at 3 inches down and in (X-3, Y-3) to cut the words and shamrocks.

Here is a photo of the 4 x 6 paper on the mat.

I used an inexpensive frame from Ikea for this project - I purchased several red and green frames at Christmas time knowing that they would be handy at other times of the year.

I used several shades of green paper (it is amazing how many I had and how tricky it was to find the right combination of three!).  Here is my trial layout before adding the white pen stitching and the Stickles in Lime Green.

 

Here is one more view of the finished piece in the frame along with the card I made with a few of the extra shamrocks. You can download the .cut file at this link.

Luck of the Irish

  

The "leftovers" card was made with some pieces of the same cardstock and the extra shamrocks.  The patterned paper is from a DCWV Spring stack from a couple of years ago.  I cut the light green squares at 1 1/4 inches and inked the edges.  They are embossed with one of the Oh My Crafts exclusive Cuttlebug folders in a brick pattern ( I think I had "Over the Rainbow" and the yellow brick road mixed up in my mind with the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow!).

I attached the shamrocks with glue dots and bent up the leaves a bit, creasing them at the centers.  The patterned paper had small circles with the words "Happy St. Patrick's Day" surrounding them so I added a bright green gem in the center of each circle.

  

I made this centerpiece last year and I thought that some of my current readers would not have seen it.  There are several files to help you create your own.  

 

I set up files for the little leprechauns at four inches with all of the sizes and paper placement worked out for you.  The leprechauns and the shamrocks in the bouquet are from the Paper Doll Dress Up cartridge.

  

There are also several card toppers.  The "Good Luck" is an adjustable file and can be resized to fit a full 12 x 12 page.

The posts for the various cards, the leprechauns and the center piece are all from March of last year from March 11 to March 15.  Here is a LINK to the posts from last March  - you can scroll down until you find the ones you are interested in.  To get directly to the page that has these posts click "older posts" twice.

I hope you enjoy these and that you have a Happy St. Patrick's Day!

One more Halloween idea.

If you have been reading my blog for a while you know that we have lots of young family members - triplet nephews in one family and a set of twins (niece and nephew) and their younger brother in another.  They all live in the area but not close enough to come trick or treating at our house for Halloween.  So today I made these little treat buckets and dropped them off at Grandma's house for delivery later this week.

I found the little orange buckets in the dollar spot at Target - 2 for $1.00.  They may still be available if you check a local store.

I set up a couple of files in Design Studio to make the decorations.  For the Halloween items I used Paper Doll Dress Up for the ghost, bat, cat & spider and A Child's Year for the witch on the broom.  I checked "weld" on all of the but the witch to eliminate the detail or "webbing" lines and avoid having so many tiny cuts in my vinyl.

By using Design Studio I could fit many more items into the space with a few rotations and some nudging.  When I cut vinyl I use blade depth 4, medium pressure to "kiss cut" the vinyl so that the backing remains intact.  This makes it easy to remove the tiny items by bending the vinyl at the cut line and peeling.  Be sure to smooth the vinyl down firmly on your mat to make sure it does not shift while cutting.

The names on each bucket were done with Keystone.  I welded them and adjusted the height to three quarters of an inch.  I cut everything from Wall Pops because I didn't need much room and the 6 1/2 inch stripes worked perfectly with very little waste - I actually have some leftover from the name mat.

The buckets have candy and a Halloween pencil (also from the Target dollar spot - 10 for $1).  I put in some green paper shred to make them a bit more festive.  Here you can see them in an apple basket ready to go with Grandma.  You may notice that there are more than six.  I decided to make extra buckets for the big sisters of the triplets as well - the oldest is 24 (I hope she doesn't mind being "one of the kids"!).


Just a reminder - Jen and I are doing several Design Studio classes this week - Word Books, Getting Started and Creating with Shapes.  check the Let me Show you How to Do that blog for times and details.