Stick Pin Swap

Hello!  This project is for a stick pin swap I was in via the Cricut Circle message board and I have been waiting to share them with you for quite awhile!  Everyone should have their boxes back now so today is the big reveal day! I was in Group 2.

So here we go!  Each was wrapped in a clear bag.  When you take it out of the bag, it looks like this:

Then you untie the ribbon and enjoy...

The card opens from the middle to reveal the pins:

Close-up of the pins:

The pearl topped pins were from Bargain Bill's, the green beads were from Hobby Lobby, the graphite beads and clear beads from Michael's, and the ribbon was from my stash.

All of them together before I sent them off:

This swap was a lot of fun and the pins I got back were beautiful!  Thank you to our wonderful hostess, JJewel!

I entered this into the Cricut Circle Magazine Challenge, which is to use our newest Cricut cartridge, Out of Character! This is the enjoy cut at 2", with all layers out of different color greens.  I embossed the front of the card with a Cuttlebug folder.

Learn and Play -Cascading envelopes

Wow - May was a crazy month!  I was so happy with all I got done on National Scrapbooking Day and the week following but then I didn't have a chance to make anything the whole rest of the month!  It was the last month of school and I am so happy to say now it is summer!  I am looking forward to staying home with my girls and getting my yearly dose of stay-at-home mommyhood!

To end each year, I make the group thank you card for our daycare sitter.  She is a phenomenal lady and we like to get her a gift for taking such great care of our kids all year long.  We are all teachers and she is a teacher's wife so the school year only schedule works great for all of us! I have made a word book and an exploding box in the past.  This year I saw something called cascading envelopes and wanted to give that a try. Here is the final product:

There are five envelopes, one for each child plus a final envelope for the parent thank you.  I decorated the envelopes by adding the phrase "Learn and play at Tara's" down the fronts of the envelopes.  I used the DCWV Animal Crackers paper stack for the background papers.

Learn from Out of Character at 2.75"

& from Letter Envy at 2"

Play from Out of Character at 2.75"

@ from Letter Envy at 1.75"

Tara's a mish-mash of letters from Out of Character, cut between 2" and 3"  The shadows are hand cut.

In each envelope, there is a thank you from the child. On one side is their picture (my daughter pictured here) and on the other side is their thank you along with a drawing from them.

The back side of the envelope looks like this:

When the whole thing is folded up and wrapped with Trendy Twine, it looks like this:

And from the side:

One thing I learned a little too late is that the thicker your project, the more envelopes and embellishments, the farther apart you should glue your envelopes.  I really would have loved to have my first envelope seem farther apart so it doesn't bow so much but live and learn. :)

She enjoyed it and I hope you do too!