I suck at coming up with post names. I’m sorry, but I do.

How are ya? Well, by the time you’re reading this, I will have loaded my car up with 471 tests and delivered them to the education center. They will be gone. Out of my office. What are these tests, you ask? (If you didn’t, just skip on down to the next paragraph, I won’t be offended). I’m in charge of testing kids who speak another language other than English to find out what their English proficiency level is. I’m not sure how other states do this, but I have to do this by law or our school is out of compliance. It is a huge undertaking as the Kinders and 1st graders have to be tested one to one and it takes at least a half hour to administer the tests. My school has around 170 K’s and 1st graders so…. when you try to do the math, your eyes roll back into your head. At least mine do. Anyway, since this is a HUGE job, I have three helpers that really rock and help me get this done. So I wanted to do something special for them. Were you beginning to wonder if there was a point to all my rambling here? Don’t forget I told you to move to the next paragraph.

So I made them these:

I love stores like Dollar Tree and 99 cent store. I went there and managed to spend a bunch of money, but I came home with a ton of cool stuff!! I get a lot of my ideas wandering the aisles of these places because I think about what I can create with the neat things I see.

I bought some plain orange plastic trays and decorated them with black vinyl (cut with Maxx) so they look like this:

 

Just as an aside, do you see that pumpkin decoration in the top left corner? When I first got my chihuahua mix dog Duke, he fit in that pumpkin so I took a picture of him in it. When I uploaded the pictures from my camera, I noticed I didn’t pay attention to the nose of the pumpkin and a certain appendage was sticking out of it. I’d post the picture here because it’s really funny, but I don’t want to offend anyone.

 

This time I apparently didn’t notice the hard water stains on the tray before I took the picture. I considered photoshopping the spots out and then decided, “nah, I keep it real here.”

Then I saw these cute little orange buckets so I knew I could do something cool with them so I did their name on one side and a cute pumpkin face on the other.

Are you wondering why I use the Maxx for vinyl and the Zing for cardstock? Well, I’ll tell you: I’m extremely lazy. I have the Maxx set up so perfectly with vinyl that I do not want to change it. I don’t even have to do test cuts, I just stick it in and go. The other thing is once you start cutting paper, it dulls your blade faster and you won’t get as clean cuts for vinyl. So I definitely recommend getting a blade holder and a blade that you use exclusively for vinyl. I put that blade in Maxx over 6 months ago and have cut a ton of vinyl, but since I haven’t used it for paper, it still cuts beautifully.

Finally, I wanted to make them a set of Halloween cards, so I cut out some of those same shapes in paper and put together some cards:

I don’t understand their love for candy corn, but those three were eating it constantly. I personally hate candy corn. It’s disgusting. It’s right up there with Peeps. There are very few candies I won’t eat, but candy corn and peeps are…. ewww. I just shudder thinking about them. So I bought them some candy corn to fill the buckets at the bottom.

I hope they like their stuff. I sure appreciate everything they did, and while they got paid for it, I wanted to do something extra special for them to show them just how much I appreciate them.

Materials Used:

I got the graphics here: http://burtonavenue.blogspot.com/2013/10/freebie-friday-halloween-silhouettes.html They might not be free anymore, but any graphics will do.

Cool Halloween fonts

(I used LD Frightmares) Which is currently $1.

Worldwin Cutmates Paper

Zing

Make the Cut

Maxx

black vinyl

 

Settings:

Zing:

force: 100

speed: 10/10

.35 offset

Maxx:

force: 40

velocity: 250

Instructions:

1. Find graphics you like.

2. Find cool stuff  you want to decorate.

3. Cut out vinyl.

4. Get beverage of choice.

5. Apply vinyl to objects. I can’t say enough about using the masking tape method to make a hinge and make your vinyl easier to apply. I have a post somewhere that talks about that and has pictures!, but not sure which one. I will look it up though.

(You really don’t have to get your beverage of choice. I felt like getting two or three or four of them when my Mac kept crashing Parallels the other night.)

Well, I think that’s everything. See you next month!

The cards are 4.25×4.25 with handmade envelopes (4.5 x 4.5). I’m really digging that size cards because I like the square format and they are fun and different from the normal A4 size.

Stay Classy KNKers!