Paper Crafter

My friend Erin is super crafty and really into scrapbooking and cardmaking and all those paper crafts that have terrified me for years. Paper crafting-- I don't know what it is about it, I am just not patient or skilled enough to complete a project. So I don't. Erin laughs at me each time I express my fear of paper crafting.

Reeeewind about a month to Christmas. Santa was extra nice to me. He put a Silhouette under my tree. Yay fun. I was expressing to my friends once again that I was not a paper crafter and Erin said-- well you've got a silhouette now, so you are about to be. 

And I have to be honest with you, while I was BEYOND tickled about my new crafty gadget... it sat untouched for about four weeks, because I was still pretty intimidated by it. And you know... there's that paper thing...

Anyway. I finally busted it out about a week or so ago, and OMG I will never go back. I have barely scratched the surface of what this thing can do, and I am so loving it. Yay.

The first thing I made was a Happy Birthday cupcake topper for my niece. Not really ambitious or exciting, but it turned out cute and I was happy. (didn't take a picture...)

Z was impressed and asked me if I would make him a bookmark. I was like yeah, sure... and put it at the end of my to do list. Then he asked about four more times that same day, so I relented, and designed him a bookmark. 

(I had to put the thing together with fabric glue because I had no regular glue... Not a paper crafter, remember???) He was very impressed. We went to the store to get appropriate glue. As I type this he is requesting 2 more bookmarks. Husbands are silly.

At the beginning of the year there was this little thing going around on facebook where people who responded to a status post would get a handmade gift in 2011... and I decided to play along. My gifts are done, and I was trying to decide how to wrap them and I thought of those little pillow box things... and wouldn't you know... My Silhouette can make one of those. Easy peasy. 

But it couldn't be easy peasy, could it? It needed to be pretty and personalized... and well...

It needed to have intricate paper flowers on it. 

I did have a lot of fun designing and putting these flowers together after my spiffy machine cut them all out. All these shapes are ones that come with the software already, so that's pretty awesome too!

And I figured out how to weld all my text together so I could easily personalize them without a million tiny pieces to glue down.

And they are just colorful and make me happy. Oh, and if you happen to be someone owed a gift, and you see your name on one of these boxes... well, your gift is ready!