Can I just tell you that I LOVE the Cricut?  I don’t have one at home but I have the use of one and I like days when I get to play with it. It just occurred to me the other day that some other folks might like to see some of the fun I have.  It may give them ideas too! Duh! 🙂

I used the George and Basic Shapes Cartridge (which comes with the original Cricut machine) for the HAPPY BIRTHDAY banner.  I cut a solid, yellow oval with two slots at the top for each letter at 3 1/2 inches. (I believe I pressed shadow and then the oval) and then I did the same thing with flower patterned paper with a letter cut out of the middle.  I made enough to spell out HAPPY BIRTHDAY. I used a dot tape runner to attach the floral paper to the plain paper being careful to line every thing up just right (there are more detailed instructions about the dot tape runner below).

Then I started on a party hat.  I used cardstock from the Cricut® Cardstock Pad: Basic Brights. And as you can tell I used YELLOW! I brought one end around to meet the other end, overlapped the ends a bit and taped them with good, strong, clear packing tape.

I used the HAPPY BIRTHDAY letters left over from center of the ovals on the banner I made and cut several stars from coordinating papers. Then I stuck them all on. I used a dot tape runner on the letters. (Place a stack of news paper or plain packing paper on your work surface, place the letter face down on the stack of paper and run the dot tape runner over the back. The dots that don’t stick to the back of the letters sticks to the stack of paper. When your paper gets sticky throw out the top sheet and use the next sheet. This allows you to stick your letters onto the crown without gobs of tape sticking out over the edges. )

I made my party hat into a crown by cutting peaks out with decorative scissors.  Then I stuck a pink feather boa to the bottom with hot glue.

I made two bows with orange and pink ribbon and hot glued them to either side of the hat, then I hot glued purple feathers tucked behind the bows.  I finished the hat off by writing “CINDY” and drawing squiggly lines and dots with a tube of glitter glue.

The final step was to thread a length of orange ribbon into the slots of the banner.  The whole thing took less than an hour to make and it was all sorts of fun.  If you want to know exactly which buttons I pressed on the Cricut and in what sequence just ask.  I’ll pull it out and figure it out for you.  Next time I’ll try to make a note of what I do exactly.