I've been loving the 'subway art' inspired projects that I have seen floating around the blogosphere lately. As far as I can tell, this item from Pottery Barn is one of the sparks that started the whole thing.

Here is a lovely Valentine's version from Tater Tots and Jello, she has a great tutorial on her site as well

A colorful rendition for the bathroom (cute) from I <3 Food For Thought

And a New Year's Resolution version from So You Think Your Crafty

I loved all of these and seeing as how I was snowed in today, I decided to see if I could make one myself, MacGyver style, using only thing I had in the house already.

I rummaged around in my craft room and found an old poster sized frame, black and white card stock, clear contact paper, a ruler and a glue stick. I covered the cardboard backing of the frame with black card stock. If I had been able to get out of the house, I may have opted for black spray paint, but this actually worked better than I thought it would. I tacked the sheets of paper in place with the glue stick and covered the whole thing with clear contact paper.

Next, I used my Cricut to cut out all of the letters I would need. I went with a 'Resolution' or 'House Rules' theme I guess. I used a ruler to align the letters and glued my little heart out with the glue stick. To secure the letters, once dry, I covered the whole thing again with clear contact paper.

Popped it in the frame, and ta-da! Subway art for the office.

Oh! and if you want to do something on a smaller scale, check out this FREE Valentine's printable from eighteen25--so cute!

There must be some kind of mad mistletoe shortage in these parts, which is weird because mistletoe is native to NC and it grows everywhere along the coast, but regardless, I have not been able to find a single sprig of it around here this year. And being a DIY kinda gal, I decided that surely I should be able to make some. Most of the time the stuff found in stores more closely resembles a sprig of eucalipitis with some glued-on white plastic berries. This is my result.

I used the Cricut "Joys of the Season" cartridge and cut out five leaf boarde r( )shapes at 1.5 inches in width, using two different shades of plain green cardstock. I then used a standard hole punch to punch out the round white berries. After gluing the berries to the leafy paper stems with a glue stick, I gathered the stems at one end and tied them with some silver glitter ribbon that I had left over from my wreath. And tada! Instant Mistletoe!

I had some fun with my Cricut yesterday and gave a much needed face-lift to my recipe box. Ta-Da!

Cute, right? I used the "From My Kitchen" Cricut cartridge to make the tabs and decorate them. I also used my recipe card design from a few posts back. Here it is again

incase you missed it.

There are four colorways avaialble on the orginal post. Enjoy!

I wanted to share the note cards that I made for my friend Katy's birthday gift. I just loved the way they turned out:

I used the 'From My Kitchen' Cricut cartridge for the ice cream sundae and lined the white envelopes with candy striped red and white paper.

I made 5 note cards for the set and packaged them in a larger red envelope (also made with the Cricut) and tied them with a wide aqua blue polka-dot bow. So Sweet!

I made some monogram napkins today to match my table runner:

 

Love the way these turned out. I found some fantastic vintage fabric patterns on Flcker ( 1, 2 ,3) I printed the fabric patterns onto Avery iron-on paperwith my inkjet printer. Put the printed sheets FACE DOWN into my Cricut and cut out my initials. By putting the paper pattern-side down, the letters come out backwards, which is just what you want for the iron-on paper. Place position the letters pattern-side down on an ironed linen napkin and arrange them however you'd like. Heat iron to the hottest setting and turn off the steam. Iron the letters in place for about 30 seconds. Cool for about 2 minutes and remove paper backing. And, Ta-Da! Custom monogram napkins that perfectly match my vintage fabric table runner.



*note: if you do not have a Cricut, these could be made by printing out letters in a font you like and using them as a stencil to hand cut the iron-on paper.

** also, putting the printed sheets ink-side down on the sticky Cricut mat left some residue behind, so I used a sticky lint rollerto clean it off. That also seemed to re-stick-a-fy the mat a bit. Added bonus!

Retro kitchen things make me happy, so I made some note cards and a calendar page today using my Cricut the "From My Kitchen" cartridge.





Special Papers:
Mod Aqua Patterened text/card stock from Paper and More
Silver Brushed Metallic card stock from Paper and More

Special Fonts:
Lemon Chicken

I used Microsoft Publisher to lay out the cards and calendar for print. So cute!