Get Well Paper Bag Card/Book

I started to make a friend a "Get Well" card, knowing she loved tea.  Then I thought it might be fun to incorporate some tea bags into a little book of sorts - which I've seen done before (very cute!)... and ended up doing it all in a pre-made paper bag album.  I had made these paper bag albums forever ago, used to sell them on ebay when they were the latest and greatest. 



Here's what the front ended up looking like...

I used my cricut for the "get well" from the Plantin Schoolbook cartridge

The cool part about paper bag albums is that if you make them correctly you have cool pockets (openings of the bag) to tuck things into.  In this case, I had some giant tags to which I added little pockets for the tea bags. 

I guess I didn't take a picture to show where the tags come out of.  To the left, you can see the edge of the tag peaking out of the opening... the tags are tucked right into the bag opening. 

I inked the edges of the printed sentences to add some interest









After I inked the edges I went over parts of it with some dark purple chalk







I also used some brads in addition to the adhesive keeping the pocket on

 I had a lot of different pages in this book but I'm just going to include the pages with the "tea quotes" and the teabag tags. 

Canning Jar Lid

I love canning jars.  I use them in my kitchen to store food stuffs (baking supplies, mostly)... I use them to give gifts, because they make a cute container when dressed up with a label or note/tag.  This one in particular is one that I frequently put together with a concoction of the repositionable glue used for making cricut mats sticky again.  It comes with some glue in the jar, a foam brush for applying the adhesive and directions (not pictured). 

Angry Birds, Part II

I never did save one of my Yellow Angry Birds, so here's a print screen (with a gray background instead of black - cuz right now i'm feeling lazy) of what I made in the cricut craft room.  I thought he turned out ok! 

Knights & Kings

I can't look at these pictures without giggling.  This was a VERY last minute "hey mom we have to dress up like knights and kings tomorrow" before they went to bed... needless to say, I may have spent too many hours with the duct tape, cricut machine and cardboard that night (errr... early morning) but the boys were thrilled with the outcome. 

Composition Book

I admit, I'm addicted to the bird.  So far it's been my favorite addition to any label I've made.  Today's post is dedicated to Miss. Hannah - we decorated some composition books for her to use at school and I thoroughly enjoyed not only the craftiness but watching her flip through my idea books.  I'm pretty sure she used an entire pad of post it notes to mark the things she liked.  To be fair, I gave her the post it notes and told her to do it... but it surprised me that she marked so many things!  The girl has got a sweet vintage flavor going on that I absolutely love. 

Here's my favorite of the day... We added a tiny little rinestone for the eyeball of the bird that turned out to be a cute embellishment

My cricut mats aren't sticky anymore

Being the frugal little freak that I am, I was a little bit dissapointed to find that it didn't take long for my cricut mats to loose their stickiness.  The cheapest I can find mats is about $12.00 for the 12x12 size that I like.  I'm sure I could use my Joann's coupon and get a bit of a deal on one but the fact of the matter is... I don't want to have to continue to buy them.  I did some searching online and my good ole YouTube didn't let me down.  I found a gal named Laurie with a SUPER tutorial on How to make your Cricut Mats Sticky & Reusable Again!!


It works, my friends.  The glue she uses is Aleene's "tack it over & over".  I got my 4 ounce bottle on Amazon.com for $8.97 with free shipping because it qualified for the super saver shipping and I purchased it with enough other qualifying items.  I think it might be fun to see how many mats I can re-stick with it so I'm going to keep track.  So far, it looks like I'm going to get a LOT of mileage out of it. 


Props to you, Laurie and thanks for the tip!  Check her out...