Mug Shot

I was not the least bit surprised when I received a phone call from my sister as I was painting the blocks for the countdown.  She had a project in mind in which she she wanted my help.  She explained that it was a year until her wedding date, and she wanted to post a photo announcing this on social media.  Little did she know, I was busy painting and adhering numbers and letters to finish the surprise gift I had secretly planned. She went on to explain that she wanted me to help her cut some letters on vinyl to put on a mug and create a "future Mrs. Ayan" mug.

This project required a blank mug. Although I had not thought of it at first, we ended up buying it at Bed, Bath, and Beyond:

The next part of the project began to feel a bit tedious and I was convinced would be the hardest part.  The task of finding the right font.  So we tried font after font.  We downloaded what seemed to be an endless amount.  Finally, we found one that seemed perfect!  We downloaded Stylish Calligraphy TTF and liked the curly waviness of it. We measured the mug and knew we wanted the words to expand around 3-3.5 inches in length and about 2.6 inches in height.

The hardest part was yet to come and we didn't even know it.  Peeling the letters off the sticky mat left us with a thin string of letters hanging off our finger.  We couldn't even make out what letters the string of vinyl were supposed to be.  We had to go back and forth between the Design Space image on the monitor and what was dangling off our fingers. Slowly we adhered, adjusted, pulled off, adhered again, until we formed the letters and words.  At one point we began using tweezers as well.
Looking at the finished product, it would never leave you to think that the placement of the vinyl was as difficult as it was, but we both had huge smiles at the end of this project!

Engagement Excitement!

Crafting is definitely a pastime I thoroughly enjoy!  I tend to craft in a crunch, when planning one of my children's birthday parties.  My crafting world reawakened this April when my sister became engaged.  I ran to Pinterest for some pinspiration to celebrate the engagement.  I decided to create a magazine holder and fill it with bridal magazines to kickstart the wedding planning!

This project required a quick trip to Ikea where I bought a magazine file.  I believe it may have been "Kvissle."

I then worked in Cricut Design Space testing different fonts to find two different styles that would work well.  I ended up using Soiree Lettering - Grace Script for the words: Congrats, Ever, Best, and Day.  The word "Congrats" is 1.59 inches, "Ever" is 1.57 inches and "Best Day" is 2.18 inches.  For the remaining words I used Cricut font Elizabeth.  The word "Time" is 1.54 inches while "to" and "the" are 1.32 inches and "plan" is 2.06 inches.
I then imported a google image of a ring.  I cut all the words using black Expressions Vinyl.

Peeling the letters and adhering them on a slant was the trickiest part of this project.  I found that using tweezers was the most helpful.