Bird Houses and Cricuts

Well, we had a project this summer that ended up being a family project. Hubby cut the boards and milled down some old cedar shingles. My daughter helped me make some windows out of vinyl on my Cricut. I also did the shutters out of a beer can and ran it thru the Cuttlebug to give it some texture. We then painted them with alcohol inks to give them the look of old copper. The things you can make out of beer cans!
Hey, don't get me wrong here. I do mention beer cans and I do mention alcohol inks. They do not have anything to do with each other. Alcohol inks are just really cool alcohol based inks that colorize really slick surfaces such a metal, glass, and plastic. All those things that are normally hard to paint otherwise.

A Little about my Cricut

I really like to mess with crafty software programs and I love to play with my Cricut Expression. A Cricut is a machine that will cut out anything that you draw or bring into the software screen on your computer from 1/4 inch up to 2 feet! Oh, where would be without those special software programs? I love the fact that you can cut anything you want using the Make The Cut program also known as MTC. There is another program called Sure Cuts A Lot or SCAL that does about the same thing. For some reason I have both programs. They both do about the same but they each have their own little things that I like about them.
These third party softwares are the only reason I bought the Cricut. If I had to buy cartridges for all the projects I would be so broke I couldn't afford to buy the paper or vinyl to put in it! You can cut any font on the computer or search the Internet. You can cut out any dingbat you want. (You can Google that if you don't know what a dingbat is and NO it is NOT a dingy woman. I already hold that proud title!)
You can also design your own cutouts. It is endless what you can do with a Cricut. It is a lot of creative fun and I would highly recommend adding it to your personal "I need" list!