Hump day crafts: More gifts – vinyl and sewing

It’s finally starting to feel like summer’s coming here in the Pacific Northwest, but I used the last few so-so weeks of spring to make some gifts.

First is a tile I did for a friend who was leaving work to have a baby. We worked together for the symphony, and her husband is very into music (he sings in our chorale), so I thought a family/music theme would be nice. I found a couple of sentiments online, and combined them to come up with this:

The tile was just under 8×10 inches and had a white marbled pattern screened on it. I wish I could remember which fonts I used. The script one was PassionsConflict, the serif one I’m not sure. And I wasn’t particularly happy with how it cut on the Cricut. Very inconsistent thickness. Hmmm, maybe I should start saving up for a better cutter. And one that is supportive of third party software that does what I want to do.

(Mini-rant here: I will not buy another Cricut thanks to their litigious actions against small software companies that, in my opinion, made their product better. The only reason I kept the Cricut, which was a gift, was because I knew there was software that would let me cut my own designs. I’ll be researching the BlackCat Lynx, Pazzles Inspiration, Silhouette SD, and other cutters that SCAL will work with. I hope you will do the same.)

Next was Thing 1’s gift for her kindergarten teacher. We decided on a flower pot with pencils and flowers, so she could decide what it should hold long term. I bought a glazed pot and saucer, slapped on some chalkboard paint, glued them together and added a vinyl sentiment and date. The font was Fantini, and the flowers are from SCAL2’s shape library. (I love the shapes library. It helps me combine the awesomeness of SCAL with the ease of Cricut cartridges.) Then we added some flowers — store-bought and the home-made pencil variety. Here’s a photo before Thing 1 got to add her chalk message:

To hold the flower pot, I sewed an oilcloth tote, inspired by this one from purlbee. I had seen some oilcloth at Joann’s and was coveting a tote for myself, so this was the perfect excuse — uh, opportunity — to buy some fabric. T1 picked the handprint pattern:

I love and hate making teacher gifts, because there are so many neat ideas but I’m worried they’ve gotten them all and the gift will just be thrown in a closet or donation box. While I’m sure the heartfelt gifts are appreciated (my daughter also made a card and wrote a letter), I hope that at least some part of our teacher gifts are somewhat useful.

Oy! It’s been long week, with the extra volunteering in the classroom (dragging Thing 2 along) on top of everything else, so I’ll wait to post the other stuff I’ve been working on. Happy crafting!