Teaching a Daughter to Use the Cricut Expression and the Gypsy

A couple of weeks ago my daughter Deborah came for a long weekend visit. When she saw all the scrapbooking equipment and supplies I own, she wanted to learn how to use them. First she wanted to decorate her new netbook with vinyl cutouts. I had never used vinyl myself, even though I had recently bought two colors and transfer tape. With the help of the Gypsy using Birthday Cakes, Animal  Kingdom and Printing 101 cartridges she was able to nicely decorate her netbook. I must say the use of vinyl is very easy.

After decorating the netbook she was all excited, giggly and still feeling very crafty, so I suggested she make a card for one of her nephews whose birthday was coming up. Once again she used the Cricut Expression and Gypsy, but she also added learning how to use the Cuttlebug with Swiss dots and Spots & Dots folders. With the  Gypsy using the Birthday Cakes and George & Basic Shapes Cartridge she learned how to flip one of the dinosaur pieces and how to weld a rectangle from George between the feet of the two pieces. She learned how to score the rectangle using the Martha Stewart Scoreboard. The grass with cattails used was from Paper Dolls for Everyday. The Happy Birthday with balloons and number 8 were from Birthday Cakes. Marcus was from Cuttin' Up. The cardstock used is AC Cardstock. The card is  5.7 wide and 4.32 high. A 6X6 envelope was made using the Martha Stewart scoreboard. Adhesives used were Zig 2-way and Glue Dots. White gel pen and Zig red pen were used for the mouth.

Free as a Bird

This layout was made using many pieces of scrap cardstock. The window panes in the window are a piece of the cartridge packaging. The cut shapes of the photos were done with a Fiskars Template and Shapes Cutter tool that I had bought at least five years ago. This was the first time I have ever used it. And I found it quite easy to use with very little effort. The window and the oval cut bird in the tree are elevated with Pop Glue Dots.

Products used Cardstock (DCWV, AC Cardstock, The Paper Company); Paper (K & Company); Provo Craft (Gypsy, Cricut Expression, Serenade, Christmas, Graphically Speaking and Printing 101); Tools (Fiskars template and shape cutter)