Getting Crafty on a Sunday Afternoon

With Valentines Day just around the corner, my craft room/office looks like a craft bomb exploded!

I've got multiple projects going on right now, but I wanted to share my latest Silhouette project...Teacher Water Bottles!  I made them for my daughter's third grade teachers, but of course, I had to make one for myself as well.  My husband swears I have issues with water bottles.  Everytime I see a cute one, or one with a new design, or I'm just bored with the last one I bought, I buy another one!

I am totally in love with my Silhouette Cameo...probably my best purchase in the past year - by far!  This was only my second vinyl project, but as you can see, if I can do it on my first try, anybody can.

First, I purchased these super-cute bottles from Wal-Mart.  What I think is so cool about these, is that they have a flavor infuser built right in.  I don't know about you, but I am more inclined to drink more water if there is a little bit of flavor added.  I tend to stick with the squeeze of lime or lemon, but now with the infuser, the flavor additions are endless.

Then, I started creating the vinyl pieces on my Silhouette Studio software.  I decided to create an "offset", which is like a background for the text.  I used KG Melonheadz font from Kimberly Geswein and Oracle 651 vinyl from CraftVinyl.com (which is meant for outdoors, so it should hold up well in the dishwasher, etc..)

I used the "cheap teacher" method to apply the vinyl.  Instead of purchasing the expensive transfer paper, I just used clear contact paper and it worked great!  First I laid down the background color (the offset I mentioned earlier).  Then I laid down the second color (the actual text) on top of that, making sure that I centered it all on top of the first color.

I love the final product and I hope my daughter's teachers do too!

And here's mine!

What do you think?

And my daughter's class Valentines filled with M&Ms...

And the next project for today is making another "Home." shirt for my daughter.  It's super-easy!  I just used my Silhouette to cut out the Texas shape and the "home." text.  I used cheap-o shelf paper from the Dollar Tree.  All you do is lay the big giant shelf paper sticker onto the shirt and apply some of the Clorox Bleach gel pen.  It only bleaches out the Texas shape, but not the text.  It's always interesting to see how the material will end up looking once bleached.  My 8-year old and I made one recently on a black shirt.  The black material ended up looking red, which was great since one of our school colors is red.

Okay...I warned you about the craft explosion, didn't I?

Now I'm off to help my 8-year old decorate her Valentines shoebox... (I'm pooped and it's only noon!)

2:00 update...it's done!