Design Team: Jennifer McCrae Week 1 Term 3

Posted by Anonymous on Friday, April 13, 2012 in | Comments : 4

 Jennifer's Easy, but Fab Party!

Jennifer is back yall! We are glad Jenn is back to the team, and telling it how it is! See how she pulled together a party in no time!

Testing 1, 2, Testing...

"The Lazy Song"

Today I don't feel like doing anything

I just wanna lay in my bed

Don't feel like picking up my phone

So leave a message at the tone

'Cause today I swear I'm not doing anything.

-Bruno Mars

I don’t have to finish the lyrics for you guys to know the rest of this song ;-)  But I do have a question for all of you...How many of you can relate to ‘The Lazy Song’ when it comes to your eCraft?

With Easter coming up this Sunday I scoured the internet looking for cute things that I could whip up for a little egg coloring party for my daughter and her friends.  I wanted something simple, but still bright and cheery and something that would add a little bit of whimsy since the party was for a bunch of teenage girls.

I gotta hand it to Martha Stewart, the woman is awesome!  Her site is pretty awesome too...BUT if that woman thinks I’m going to trace a pattern on paper and then cut that shape out, she is seriously loopy!

Its not that I’m lazy, I just prefer to be efficient :)  So to save myself time and some precious sanity, I let Mischief do the work for me!  lol  See, its all about being efficient; delegating...  things rolling downhill.  *snickers*  You get my drift.  And even better when they turn out super cute!  These Daffodil cups are easy - cut out your favorite flower a bunch of times, buy some mini baking cups, adhere them to the paper.  I double layered the cups and used photo squares to adhere them which made assembly even faster!

And because no party is complete without goodie bags; I made the girls goodie bags and filled them with trinkets that would be useful while they decorated eggs.  Once again I put my delegating skills to work and had Mischief create the tags for me. 

She also made the ears for the Bunny Surprise balls; another craft I stumbled upon while cruising through Martha’s site...  they’re cute - but don’t let that fool you!  Those things were not as easy you think, especially when they’re taking longer then you thought they would and you keep dropping them and watching them roll across the room!

Now that you had a chance to think about my question, let me explain what I mean about being ‘lazy’ with your eCraft.

Those are the papers I used to cut out my daffodils.  See how nice and clean those cuts are?  I love clean cuts and I’ll bet you do to!

These are the other two papers I used to make my daffodils...  Aren’t they pretty?  I’d hate to mess up a bunch of that paper trying to get clean cuts.

How many of you noticed these cuts?  Those are my test cuts; the first setting wasn’t right and you can see that the octagon didn’t cut cleanly.  So I did another test cut and that setting was perfect.  See, I used 3 different sets of papers to make my daffodils and even though 2 of them felt like they were the same weight, they weren’t.

Recollections paper cut great for me on a pressure setting of 2, the American Crafts paper was set to 4 and the Paper Studio paper was set to 3.  Now this isn’t the first time I’ve cut with those brands and yet I still did test cuts.  Why?  Because its a new day.  And I know that weather conditions in my area change daily and if mine change, I’m sure they change where these papers are manufactured too. 

Michief is a phenomenal machine, but we’re partners.  I depend on her to cut beautiful designs and she depends on me to make sure I’ve set her up for success.  And that means running test cuts every time I use her...even if I’m pretty dialed in to what setting I’ll need depending on the paper I chose.

-Jennifer

 How adorable and stress free is this?! Thank you Jen for sharing!

See more of Jen's projects on her blog:

http://www.firestormdesigns.com/

SIMILAR ARTICLES