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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Some Birthday Inspiration to share...

Today I want to share some inspiration with you. This is a photo heavy post with some interesting images & patterns and a bit of fun at the end!

For my birthday, we took a drive up to Salem, Massachusetts, to visit the Peabody Essex Museum which was founded in 1799 and is the oldest continuously operating museum in the country.  If you live in New England and have a chance to visit this museum it is well worth the trip.  Salem, of course, is famous for the witchcraft trials of 1692, but it was also one of the most important ports in early America (until ships became too large for the shallow inner harbor).

The museum was renovated and expanded in 2003 and the space is delightful - bright and airy, even on a rainy day (we drove through torrential rains but the storm had passed by the time we left the museum).

The curves and "sails" in the atrium are a wonderful interpretation of the maritime history of Salem.

One of the current exhibits is called "Eye Spy, Playing with Perception" and it began with this angled mirror in the atrium.

I liked this quote - and it was particularly appropriate for some of the intriguing displays.

This seemingly random assortment of curved and angled metal rods...

...produces the shadow of a wooden artist sketching figure.  I am fascinated by the process that must have been used to determine the shape and placement of the metal to produce the perfect shadow representation of the model.  At first I thought the figure was drawn on the wall but it is not.

There were also several images formed by viewing an array of thread spools suspended on the walls through a viewing sphere.  The sphere inverts the image and sharpens it.

The painting represented in the first installation is Auguste Renoir's, A Girl with a Watering Can.

The viewing sphere is in the black stand on the right and in this photo you can see the array of spools which create an upside down version of the image that is flipped when viewed through the sphere.

Here is a close view of a section of the spools of thread from the left side of the array.  These images are a bit easier to understand because, as our son pointed out, they are simply "pixel" versions of the paintings with each thread spool representing a pixel!

Here is one more - can you see it?

When viewed through the sphere you can see that it is one of the Campbell's soup can paintings by Andy Warhol.

 In another part of the museum we saw this amazing shell dress sculpture.  It is called "Island Bride" and was made in 2002 by Brian White.  The inspiration was the sailor's valentines made from shells - taken to a much higher level!

The patterns and precision are amazing.

Here is the waistline...

the hemline...

a closer view of the flowers...

and another side view of the figure.

When we came home, I found the package I have been waiting for.  Thank goodness the Fed Ex delivery person had the sense to put it in a plastic bag.

Yes,  my Cricut Circle membership kit arrived on my birthday.  I think that is a lucky omen!

Here is my yummy birthday cake - not a Cricut cake, but one from a favorite local bakery.

It is covered with chocolate meringue and the center is basically made of thick chocolate frosting!

I managed to blow out the token candles on the cake.  At least they weren't the type that continually relight themselves!

Here are a couple of books that my son and his girlfriend gave me - I am looking forward to trying some of these patterns in my CM StoryBook program!

My husband found this set of tiny pencils for me - they are packaged in a CD case!.  I guess the idea is that you can take them along and color anywhere!

I love the way they look but I am not sure if I will be able to hold them to color any images.  Here you can see my son putting them back into the case after they spilled.  These are some tiny pencils!

Thank you to everyone who sent emails, cards, Facebook messages or comments to wish me a happy birthday.  It was so nice to be remembered by so many people!  I have a few "birthday" surprises planned for next week so stay tuned....

I hope you are having a wonderful weekend.  I am planning to have some crafting time with my new cartridge tomorrow...


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