My Daughter’s First Year Birthday Book got here! Hooray! I have to say that I absolutely love how it turned out! It was cute looking at all the pages on my computer and such a great feeling to have her first year scrapbooked…but it was even better to actually hold the book in my hands and look through the pages. Everything was perfect! The book itself feels like a high quality book -thick pages, great colors, etc. I used ArtsCow.com to print. They have great stuff at the best prices I’ve been able to find online. My daughter loves to look through all the pages too!

Another fun project that my mom taught me – we painted shirts. We used her Cricut and a program called Sure-Cuts-A-Lot (which allows you to use any font or graphic on you computer to be cut out on your Cricut as long as you have one cartridge plugged in. It’s awesome! So worth it and makes it so you don’t have to buy the expensive cartridges. You just use whatever font you want on your computer!)

We used it to make some shirts for my photography business  – Poulton Photography:

What you need is a cricut, the program, and some contact paper (the stuff you use to line your shelves – it’s cheaper then vinyl.) Design and cut out your words. You will need some transfer paper for easier placement – especially with small pieces and the center of certain letters.

As you are done cutting out the project, you will actually pull out the letters leaving an outline of the word or picture. Apply transfer paper across contact paper and place sticky side down on shirt or whatever you want.

Slowly remove the transfer paper and your set to paint. We used regular craft paint (like the kind you get at Walmart.) We experimented with different brushes, and fabrics. Foam brushes work the best and cause the least amount of bleeding. We actually bought a huge foam sponge and cut it up into tiny cubes – it was much cheaper than buying the brushes and we could just throw them away when we were done.

Regular cotton fabric works the best – like a plain t-shirt. I tried a polo and it had a different texture on the fabric and didn’t work out so well… We also tried it out on a vinyl bag – the paint took several coats and it was quite difficult to keep the contact paper sticking.

Happy Crafting!