I have said it before… you can be artsy and not so much crafty! I wish I was better crafter, and sometimes I surprise myself with things I make, but I still consider myself arty, not crafty. However, this doesn’t mean that I don’t love a good challenge and doing crafts! When I was invited to the Cricut Explore Launch in Utah this past January, I was totally inpired by all of the things this machine could do, but my favorite aspect is that I can cut my own fonts and designs! When I use my Cricut Explore, I always start by making my SVG files in Illustrator, which makes this artist totally happy!
Right now, I am part of a fabulous team of ladies doing the Cricut Design Space Star Challenge. Each month we are given a choice of categories by Cricut and then we can create a theme as a team and all create projects to submit for possible compensation. (Because if you didn’t know… Cricut loves bloggers!) Fun right?? So for August, the category our team choose was fashion and our theme was pop of color. Right away I know I wanted to paint something (shocker, I am sure). I also knew that I wanted this project to be easy enough for anyone to do!! I had a roll of adhesive stencil film and unrolled it, sticking it to my Cricut Mat, then gathered my paint (gold and teal), Cricut tools, a fun wooden bangle, and varnish to seal it.
Next up, I had to choose what I wanted on the bracelet and I decided on some fun text! Over these last few months I have tried to treat each day as a gift, and never forget how quickly life can throw a curve ball. I also have a habit of speaking with a lot of southern slang, like “y’all”, “fixinta”, and “heck”, so I put in a bit of that as well!
I cut “Live the Heck out of Today” and “Love the Heck out of Life”, but I ended up merging the two phrases and using “Love The Heck out of Today”. I cut the stencil using the vinyl setting on my Cricut Explore and I have to admit I was really impressed that it cut such small letters on such a fine and sticky material. The words are only about .5″ tall at best!
I decided to spread the words out around the bangle, so I cut each word stencil out seperately with an Exacto knife and placed them around the bangle. Using my gold acrylic paint, I painted the small words “Love The – Out Of Today”. From trial and error, I discovered that you have to pull the stencil off quickly after you paint, or the paint dries to the stencil and it’s so small it simply lifts off with it.
Once the words were painted gold, and all of the stencils except “Heck” was removed, I got out my teal paint for the “Pop Of Color” and painted my southern slang with it. After I pulled off the stencil and all of the paint dried (which was very fast because it was so small) I applied a coat of varnish to the entire bracelet and TA-DA!!
You could do this same project and make hand painted bracelets with names, quotes, special dates, and more! These would make some super cute Handmade Holiday Gifts too! Today will only happen one time, so LOVE the HECK out of it!
Disclaimer : I’m a member of the Cricut blogger network and received my Cricut Explore to craft with. I am not being compensated for the Design Star Challenge Posts, but they are being submitted for the chance at winning some prizes. That said, all opinions and text are mine own!
Um. This is amazing! Such a great idea and this is something I would totally love to wear. xo
Love this bracelet! I love the stencil idea!