One Down...Only About A Thousand More To Go

 Remember when I showed off all the cool toys in my toybox? Well a few weeks ago I finally got a chance to play with them! I whipped out my little Cricut and created some "Will You Be My Bridesmaid?" cards. I wanted to wait until all of my bridesmaids had received their cards and given me their answer before I showed the project off. 

It's a pretty easy DIY project, mostly because I tried making it more complicated and just wound up getting frustrated and gave up after countless numbers of tries and failures. Finally I realized this was a simple project and I shouldn't dwell on it too much. Although it was difficult for me to give up and keep it simple I realized my sanity was more important then the fancy project I'd envisioned.

So how did I get from this...







 
 








 To this? 







Well it's elementary, my dear Watson...first I opened up my fabulous Cricut Design Studio

 I laid out the 3 dresses and one tuxedo I needed for my 3 bridesmaids and 1 bridesman on the screen and after several attempts and even more explicatives screamed at the Cricut I figured out the way the mat is laid out on the screen is not identical to the way it goes into the Cricut. And when I was using 8 1/2" x 11" paper on a 12" x 12" mat it was verrrry frustrating when the paper and the designs weren't perfectly matching up. 

When I finally got it to work...

the dresses came out beautifully...this just reinforced my love of the cricut (oh by the way, please ignore the date stamp on the photo-I forgot to reset the date on the camera I didn't make these cards last year before I was even engaged I promise) after I cut the dresses it was a matter of figuring out how to get them off the mat, which incurred more cursing and I almost needed a little liquid calm. But I did manage to get them off the mat and ready to be put on the cards...

 
 But I couldn't decide how to mount the dress onto the card...

So I looked through my stash of craft supplies and found my foam pop dots...score!!! 

Now the dress would be slightly above the card giving it the cool shadowy effect underneath.


But now I was confused as to how to incorporate "Will You Be My Bridesmaid?" onto the card since as you can see, the dress took up majority of the front of the card. Then I remembered I had this cute little font I'd downloaded from dafont.com called Jellyka-Love and Passion
















A quick little type into the wonderful little Microsoft Word and I wound up with 4 neatly written "Will You Be My..." plaques for my cards... 2 bridesmaids, 1 maid of honor, and 1 bridesman. 


 

I added a couple more pop dots to the
back of the plaque and stuck it on the inside of the card.












After countless tries and fails, and finally four victories I wound up with some wonderful cards that I like to believe my bridesmaids will treasure for ever and for always.

The best part of the whole experience? I got a card from one of my bridesmaids with a simple word on the front...

I'm glad to finally have one DIY project checked off my list, the journey of a thousand projects begins with single one.