Celebrations with Cricut Crafts

Adding Personal Touches to Family Celebrations

One of the reasons I like having a Cricut cutting machine is the ability to make personalized decorations for celebrations & gifts at a moments notice, because often times I only have a moment to prepare. One might argue that I can plan ahead to have more than a moments notice but I don’t think planning so far ahead is in my DNA. It’s something for me to work on for sure. 

Cake Toppers and Donut Cakes

One day I may put up a tutorial for my little cake toppers, but the concept is really basic for anyone that has used a cutting machine so I think I can accurately describe it here without the need for a full tutorial. Typically I start with a design that is overlapping a bit so that all elements are touching each other. This helps the cut piece to stand up on its own when placed on the cake. Then I cut the design out on a cereal box, one time in the orientation I want, and the next time mirrored. I glue together each of these layers just so we aren’t looking at Honey Nut Cheerios while we are singing to our guest of honor. Then whatever I want to cover the cake topper with ranging from scrapbook paper, cardstock, Washi tape or you could even paint it.

For the latest birthday around here my son wanted a new bike. It turns out with the stay at home orders many companies have a huge back order for bikes! Who knew? So while we didn’t quite have the bike in hand to deliver on his birthday, I wanted to have something to represent and remind him that his precious birthday bike was on it’s way. I threw together this biker to ride down the top of his cake along with his name and age. I just attach a craft stick or popsicle stick to the back and viola a fun cake topper. Another fun thing about paper decorations and cake toppers is they are easy to keep and include in a memory box or scrapbook. My kids love looking back on our family memories in pictures and mementos. 

For my Father in Law’s 80th I made this little donut truck to deliver his holey cake. He has really taken quite a hanker for donuts these days and I suspected he might enjoy my choice in celebratory dessert. I was not wrong. In fact one of the kids spilled the beans that mom was making him a donut cake and he was concerned that donuts would be destroyed in the making. He expressed many thanks that the donuts were kept whole just the way he likes them.

The truck and the 80 were welded together in design space for my background and cut out from a couple cereal boxes and black cardstock. The weld function allows it to be cut in one outline. I glued these layers together, then I covered the background with the donuts for the 8 and green paper for the truck. My intention was show an over flowing truck bed when looked at from the side. Often times my father-in-law when he was more able would drive around town collecting treasures to scurry away in his barn. At one point he built a frame on top of his truck for oversized pieces to be leaned against and stacked upon. It was quite the spectacle seen around town.

Another fun thing to do for birthdays is make personalized shirts, bags, journal covers, etc.  This shirt was made for my father-in-law, and although he can no longer see, I thought I might give something for his visitors to chuckle about. The hardest thing here was narrowing down the best phrase to put on his new shirt.

He has so many one liners that choosing the design was a challenge. I polled the family for some zingers and they did not disappoint. It was fun to be able to read them aloud to all on his birthday. We all had a good laugh together. To give you an idea of the caliber of one liners here are a few we were laughing about:

First baseball game in the Bible: Genesis 1:1, “in the big inning…”

Bible character to perish from foot disease? Samson…he died of fallen arches. 

Successful Kings have more prophets than losses.

Well you get the point, I ended up sticking to the truck filling the barn theme with, “Sure! That’ll fit on the truck!”

Cards and Banners

The Cricut also is great at making cards. These can be really easy to throw together quickly. If you’re short on time time you can simply google “birthday card free svg” and something will come up. I’ve been having fun exploring pop-up cards, maybe I will share some of my designs in the free resource library one day. My mom is such a Hallmark card giver, but I much prefer the homemade variety with a sweet personal note inside. 

Another fun decoration made with the Cricut is a holiday or birthday banner, whether it’s large to hang on the mantle or miniature to string between two sticks on the cake or table display. Check out the “Barton” banner that I made for our family pics the year we adopted our little one and changed her name to fit our family. I liked it so much this banner often is attached to our mantle.

One year for my little girl’s birthday I purchased a Paw Patrol birthday banner. One of the older kids, being used to mom’s homemade birthday decorations, asked me if I made it. I was thinking, well I could have made it but it would have cost me 10x’s the cost in supplies and time! Crafting is a dangerous hobby that gives you the confidence that you can make anything, but sometimes you need to consider the cost. I think this graphic below sums it up. 

I tend to shop at Hobby Lobby, craft fairs, and local home decor stores and think I could totally make that! I would change a few things to make it more to my liking and it would be way less expensive than whatever item that caught my interest. Then I get home and find 50 other things that need to be done first to keep the ship moving, or realize the items I need to create my knock off are a little more expensive or hard to find then I originally expected. And all the sudden the item I was going to mimic in my personal way no longer seems all that expensive and no longer takes precedence on my to do list. 

I think the downfall in my crafting is that I like to make new things and learn how to make new things all the time. The shiny newness draws my attention, and there are so many different things out there to craft with! I think this is why I sign up for helping with craft camps and organizing crafts for moms & youth groups. I love to share my crafts with new friends, but also like to explore other crafting methods and acquire fun new craft tools. 

We joke around here that whenever I enlist my husband to help prep for camp or start a project around the house he too “needs” a new tool to complete his projects. We have acquired many wood working tools over the past few years that have come in handy for my craft adventures. He doesn’t know yet, but I have many more plans for those various tools in his workshop.

My next crafting adventure is making t-shirts with the youth group girls in my 6th grade group. My go to for this task is tie-dye shirts, but we are going to try something different this year. Hopefully it’s a success and I will write about the fun we had on my little blog along with the lessons learned as I am sure we will have many!