Cricuting

I mentioned in previous posts that Stacey gave me one of her Cricuts. I haven't used it much because I've been crazy busy with school. But this past month, I was able to play around with it for the first time. At work, we have this bulletin board right outside of our office. We use it to put helpful information for students about off-campus housing. For spring/summer, we had a sea-themed board. The office manager, Garry, loves Cars, the movie. So when we were thinking about a theme for fall/winter, he suggested Cars since the new movie was coming out. I thought this would be hard but we do anything to please the boss. So a light bulb went on in my head and I thought that this would be the perfect opportunity to familiarize myself with my Cricut! I knew that Stace had a Cars cartridge and asked her to send it to me. As soon as I got it in the mail, I brought my little Cricut to work and started to play! (It was awesome getting paid to craft...)

My first successful cut.

At first, I was a little frustrated because I didn't know how to work it 100%. I'd press buttons and it'd give me some messages that I didn't understand. I was about to give up when Chris, the only boy in our office, decided to give it a try. He was great at it! Once he got the hang of it, he explained to me how it worked and I was so happy! It was so much fun to see it cut with such detail. It really is an impressive machine. 

The final product.
(Don't mind the ugly handwriting on the upper right hand corner).

So I thought that the board would take about a week to make. But with the Cricut, it only took a day! I never want to cut anything with scissors again! We made a mountainous background with a winding road as the setting. After we assembled all the cars and little figures (my favorite were the traffic cones), I realized that the board was more decorative than informative! Oh well. Hopefully it will grasp students' attentions! 

I'm now really excited to work on my own projects. I have a couple of wall vinyls that I want to make, a scrapbook about Blaine's mission, and some cute wedding gift ideas. I probably won't start Blaine's mission scrapbook until we return from our summer vacation (we are going to get some mission memorabilia when we're in Delaware). But I do hope to do something before our summer is over! If you have any project ideas, please let me know!