Gifts for School

I spent a lot of time this weekend finishing up making Christmas presents.  First on my agenda was gifts for my 4-year-old's preschool class and teachers.  Since he is in a regular preschool class and an afternoon Stay & Play, he has 4 teachers ~ that means 4 teacher gifts.  So, I made 2 desk calendar/post it holders and 2 treat jars and wrapped in really cute gift bags.  (I will post the gifts later this week).  To make the gift bags I used the Bag-A-Lope tutorial on Splitcoaststampers.com - it was so easy and super cute!  Check it out here:  http://www.splitcoaststampers.com/resources/tutorials/bag_a_lope/

I cheated a little bit - instead of stamping the front of each bag, I covered them with Designer Paper (SU! Dashing, ret.).  I used extra pieces of ribbon I had in a jar and added the tags I had made before.  I am really pleased with the way these turned out!

For his classmates, I made reindeer candy canes.  I cut the reindeer shapes on Chocolate Chip paper using the Doodlecharms cartridge for the Cricut.  I then used my Mono Multi Liquid Glue to adhere googly-eyes and a 3/4" Real Red circle (I used a punch for that).  I  must say - I am pretty proud of these as well.

I only bought my Cricut about a month ago - and I love it.  And, I know so many people say that you can get rid of all of your punches and dies for the Big Shot - I absolutely DISAGREE!  Yes, I can now cute so many more images, shapes, and fonts than I could with the punches and dies that I have; but I am still using my punches and Big Shot.  I used the Big Shot and the Two Tags die to cut the tags I have been using for all of my Christmas gifts - no Cricut cartridge has those awesome shapes.  I also am still using my punches as much as I was before getting the Cricut.  I still use them to punch out stamped images (setting up the Cricut to do that would take way too long) and also for simple things - like Rudolf's nose.  It was so much faster to punch 20 3/4" circles than to set up the Cricut to cut them.  Anyway, I do love my Cricut - but I will always love my Big Shot and my punches, too!  There is always room in my heart for another crafting tool!