There are several Cricut projects that you can use to make money. Don’t believe me? Just take a look around eBay and Etsy, and even local craft fairs in your area, and you will see what I mean. After all, seeing is believing!

Really, you are only limited by your imagination when it comes to money-making projects using die cuts. But to get your creative thinking cap working, here are four ways to put your die cutter machine to good use:

1. Diaper Cakes

If you don’t know what a diaper cake is, basically it is a popular baby shower centerpiece or gift, where the diapers are rolled up and secured, then arranged in such a way that they form a tiered cake. They are a very popular gift, but many people simply do not have the crafty skills nor time to create them, so others have made it their “business” creating diaper cakes. One of the most inexpensive ways to embellish the cakes is using Cricut cutouts. It is far cheaper to use die cuts to embellish diaper cakes, than to purchase stuffed animals, rattles, pacifiers, and other goodies that others typically use to decorate their creations.

2. Personalized Kids’ Art

Personalized kids’ art is a big business for crafters. Whether you use a mat and frame to showcase the die cuts, or decoupage the cutouts to a plaque, this is one of the easiest Cricut projects to not only create, but also to sell. Boost your earnings by making the art functional. For example, turn a personalized plaque into a coat hanger by adding pegs. Easy and fun!

3. Custom Cards and Invitations

If card making is your paper crafting specialty, why not make it your business! Considering how expensive store bought cards are, selling handmade cards can be quite lucrative. You would be surprised at the number of people willing to buy custom handmade invitations, birthday cards, and more.

4. Scrapbook Layouts

Just like custom made cards, there is a strong market for scrapbook page layouts. If scrapbooking is your thing, turn it into a working gig. Using a machine to make die cuts for your layouts will significantly reduce both your expenses and time to produce these layouts, resulting in a better profit margin.

That’s just four of the many Cricut projects you can start doing today to earn money. I’m sure you can think of more on your own. Don’t be surprised to find that you are soon profiting from your favorite hobby!

Visit Dawn Hall’s website for more Cricut projects, as well as great deals on a variety of die cutting tools, including the popular Cricut machine.

Scrapbooking techniques and tools have matured substantially over the past few years with more and more great scrapbook ideas discovered and shared within the scrapbooking community.

This article contains some of my favourite scrapbook ideas, tips and tricks that I want to share with you.

- If you have a photo and the background is busy consider scanning the picture and printing it in black and white. You could also enlarge the picture and crop out the busy part of the background.

Another idea is to use your craft supplies and cover anything you do not want to see with embellishments or add some wording using peel offs or custom rubber stamps.

- If you want to write or draw directly onto your photo I would recommend printing a copy. Not only will this mean you have a spare if the design does not work out it will also remove some off the gloss from the original picture making it far more easy to write on.

- Many people ask ‘What is the best way to attach vellum to my scrapbook pages.’ Vellum is see through so most glues will be visible. Try using brads, eyelets, staples, ribbon, paper clips or spray glue when using vellum as part of your scrapbook ideas.

- Most crafters will have specialist acid free pens in their scrapbook supplies. You would be mistaken to think that the best way to store these pens is upright with the nib facing down. The best way to store pens is horizontally as this keeps the ink evenly distributed throughout the barrel.

- To make your scrapbook stickers or scrapbook quotes stand out on your scrapbook pages make them 3D by adding a layer of ultra thick embossing powder. Alternatively you can use a 3D glaze. This technique will bring a new dimention to your scrapbook pages.

- If you want to have the appearance of a stitch on your photos, embellishments or wording you can use peels offs, rub ons or simple draw little dashes to give the effect of a stitch. If you are feeling more adventurous why not actually sew a stitch!

- Using brads as part of your scrapbook ideas is a splendid way to embellish your scrapbook pages layouts. When attaching brads to double sided scrapbook paper you may be faced with the dilemma of how to cover up the fastenings on the reverse side of the paper. The easiest way to avoid this problem is to attached the brads to the tag, photo corner or embellishment and then adhere to the page.

When putting together your scrapbook ideas it is best to plan in advance. Lay out the page before you stick it together to see if there are any changes you want to make before it is secured in place.

Vicki Churchill writes for a site that specializes in Scrapbook Ideas providing you with excellent tips and ideas for creating stunning Scrapbook Layouts. And how to use Scrapbook Quotes

Are you planning a graduation scrapbook for your favorite student? So how are you going to go about scrapbooking your graduate? Maybe an album of the high spots of school life up to graduation? Or some well crafted scrapbooking pages of graduation day to include in a family album? Some combination of each?

(Uh-oh, I’ve just re-read that – I may have used the wrong phrase in connection with teenagers who are always paranoid about ‘spots’ appearing at the wrong time – remember it well! You may want to substitute ‘high points’ or some such other phrase! lol)

Even if graduation is just days away, it’s still possible to make a themed graduation scrapbook for your student. However, at this stage in the game you’ll be looking for some quick-make graduation scrapbooking ideas rather than recording the whole school career.

But let’s step back a second. The rush is on only if you want to present the scrapbook as a graduation gift. If not there is not quite the same hurry. And don’t forget, for many student there will be graduations at several levels as they progress. The most popularly celebrated are high school graduation, and of course, university, but many junior schools now hold graduation ceremonies. So your scrapbooking opportunities are multiplying…

However, if you are already drowning in all the preparations for marking this significant day in your child’s life then make it easy on yourself (and everyone else around you) by deciding that scrapbooking this job can wait just a little longer. After all, it’s waited all this time! You will be more satisfied with the result if you do it when things are less stressful, you’ll probably do a better job of it; and you’ll be less stressed for having one less thing to do before the big day.

That said there are some options if you’ve set your heart on giving this particular gift, and if you have to move fast to get it ready to present to your graduate, here’s one of our graduation scrapbook ideas which could be a life-saver for you…

The “Graduate’s Scrapbook of Memories” is a beautiful hardbound journal (spiral option available) looking just like a real scrapbook but without all the work and investment that’s normally needed to achieve it. – Particularly useful to the infrequent scrapbooker as well as the time-poor experienced scrapper. You just have to add your own photographs and stories or journaling.

If you want to scrapbook your graduate with this lovely book, go ahead and get started today. Order the album, then look out your photos and jot down your reminiscences, ready to get started as soon as it arrives. Then in no time at all, you’ll have your graduation scrapbook ready.

Scrapbooking design expert Genie Balfour writes on a wide variety of traditional and digital scrapbooking topics. To get the shortcut resource mentioned above, got to Graduate’s Scrapbook of Memories.

Sewing can be viewed as a hobby, although it was not a hobby a few hundred years ago when many people had to make their own clothing and other fabric items such as seat covers, curtains, and sheets. They needed to make their own items because in many places, there were no Sears department stores or Overstock dot com to order things from. Even if there was clothing shop or general store or catalog that they could order clothes and such items through, many people could not afford to do so.

Anyway, many people think of sewing as a class that they need to take in order to pass home economics or as something that their mother or grandmother knows how to do. The art of sewing and design is a great skill that you may want to learn for many reasons. Let us discuss just a few of those reasons.

Sewing Not a Necessity, But Still Very Useful

In this day and age, sewing is not necessarily a necessity for most of us. If you have a nine to five job, it will be more convenient to shop for and purchase clothing. Many people even enjoy shopping for clothing very much.

However, if we put a tear in a blouse or pants of ours, sewing or patching it up should remedy it. If you would need to take in clothing and do not want to hire seamstress to do it, it would be a good thing to have the ability to sew under your belt.

So, even though sewing is not a skill that many value these days, it can very well get us out of some sticky situations.

Sewing and Clothing Design

If you love fashion and designer items, you may have an interest of entering the fashion world and designing your own clothing line or something like it. If you do not know how to sew, how are you going to achieve this goal? True, not all elements of design and fashion require you to know how to sew, but if you want something done right, you have to do it yourself. Knowing how to sew and operate a sewing machine and the related equipment would be a great asset to have if you plan on entering the fashion world.

Pass Your Skills On To Your Children

It is always something nice and very rewarding to pass on knowledge to a child, especially if you have children of your own. One of your children may want to learn how to sew, and this would make a great activity that you could do with your child.

Teaching is rewarding, and sewing is a very useful skill.

So, sewing is very useful for sticky situations, for entering into the fashion world, and to pass unto your children. Sewing is a great skill to have, and something that you can definitely have fun with.

If you would like to get started in sewing, you can visit Jays site Second Hand Sewing dot com to find great brand name used sewing machines. You can find many great brands of sewing machines including great used Kenmore sewing machines.

When is graduation month for your students?

Growing up in Scotland, I always thought of July as being graduation month. But then UK people use “graduation” to refer only to being awarded a University Degree. Then I discovered High School graduation was a big thing in the United States and that happens around the end of May each year.

Thankfully, with the advent of the internet and online shopping you can buy graduation scrapbooking supplies all year round. And it’s just as well, for did you know graduations do not only take place in the spring?

Here in the UK, the government policy is to have fifty percent of school kids going to university, so we have graduation ceremonies all year round – it’s the only way you fit so many in!

While searching the internet recently, I discovered that in the southern hemisphere you have winter graduations in July! Now that’s confusing! Being a northern hemisphere girl, the idea of July being winter and Christmas being summer, well I’m confused enough as it is! (It would be interesting to hear where you are reading this and when graduation is in your country.)

So, whenever your students are graduating, what graduation scrapbooking products do you need? At some point after the event you may be looking for graduation scrapbook supplies. What is available, and do you need special scrapbooking products?

No, you don’t have to splash out on special graduation papers. For most layouts, the graduation scrapbook theme will be defined by the photographs you include.

Having said that, if you go to the beach for a barbecue to celebrate your graduation, without the cap, gown and scroll or diploma, it may not be quite so obvious that it’s a graduation celebration. If that’s your case, you may want to either use graduation papers for the background or add graduation embellishments to your layout to re-enforce the theme.

Your local scrapbook store will have a selection of graduation embellishments you can add to regular scrapbook papers that will do the trick. You can also shop online at various websites such as Jo-Ann, Scrapbook or at the ScrapGirls store.

The folks at HOTP have two series for those under pressure: “Almost Done” and “Busy Scrapper’s Solutions”, as well as a large selection of paper books. Have a look and see if one of their styles will work for your graduation photos.

Even although there isn’t a graduation theme in their papers, HOTP have cute graduation Brad Buddies that will enhance your theme.

Die Cuts with a View has a “Scrapbook Kit In A Stack” available in 8″x8″ – which almost counts as a mini album. (“Scrapbook Kit In A Stack” 12″X12″ is also available.) The stack includes 24 coordinating patterned papers, 24 sheets of cardstock, 505 stickers and 32 vellum quotes – so you’ll have enough left over to mark your next child’s graduation, too!

Are you in a hurry with no time to wait for the mail man?

Then check out digital scrapbook products you can buy and download immediately. Remember you can print the digital files if doing a paper layout.

So no matter what time of the year you require graduation scrapbook supplies you will be able to get them. Enjoy scrapbooking your graduate. Do share some of the results with us at ScrapbookingGems.

Scrapbook layout expert Genie Balfour writes on a wide variety of scrapbooking topics. Here’s where to find examples of elegant page design and a host of graduation scrapbook tips.

Many people associate knitting with elderly women sitting in rocking chair on their porches while they rock back and forth knitting all day long. I have that same picture in my head when I think of knitting. However, knitting is a great hobby to take up. Despite what many people think, knitting is not just for older women. On the contrary, knitting can be a very useful skill to have.

Knitting Is Therapeutic

Knitting is a great way to exercise your fingers and get yourself distracted in a positive manner. Knitting does take skill to master, so you learn to be patient and focused when you start to learn it. Also, it is also a relaxing and therapeutic hobby that can take your mind off of the pressures of everyday mundane life.

Yes, knitting takes practice and patience. If you need a healthy distraction or need to do something that is a little different from your usual activities, knitting can be a great hobby to take up.

Keep Your Fingers Nimble

If you are a little clumsy or feel like your hands need to become a little bit more nimble, knitting is great to help you do this. Knitting needles and yarn are very small and thin objects that take much nimbleness in order to hold and use properly. If you knit often, this can do some good to cure a little bit of clumsiness in the hands.

Knitting Produces Useful Things

Think of all the things that you can knit. The possibilities are numerous! You can knit sweaters for yourself or make them as gifts for your family members and friends. You could make custom and very original beanies in all kinds of designs and colors. You could even make custom seat covers. There are patterns for all kinds of knitting projects. You can go wild and create all sorts of knits! Yes, the possibilities are endless when it comes to knitting. Test out and release your creative juices!

If you do not wish to use the knits that you create, you could make some extra cash by selling the fruits of your labor.

So, if you are in need for some sort of relaxation therapy, if you would like to improve the nimbleness of your hands and fingers, or if you would like to take up a hobby and learn a skill that will product useful things, knitting is for you. So, when you think of knitting, do not think of an elderly woman on her porch. Instead, think of the great benefits that you would receive if you were to take up knitting.

Jay authors the site Knitting Supplies, a site dedicated to the latest knitting equipment and accessories. You can find great knitting supplies there such as Clover bamboo knitting needles.

Have you ever indulged yourself in sewing? Was it to fix a button that was loose or tuck in the seam of a dress? The majority of people don’t remember the last time that they needed to use a thread and needle in their hands. Once sewing was a main occupation of at least one member of every home, as clothes were required to protect our bodies from the cold.

Before the 1700′s the sewing of clothes or any other type of fabric was completed by hand but around the mid 1700′s the first sewing machine was invented. It was manual but it consumed less time and gave good quality sewing results. As decades turned to centuries sewing took on many different forms, sewing classes became a skill that the majority of women needed to learn to clothe their family while the man of the house was away at work.
The Progression of Sewing

In due time, sewing become very popular for both men and women as clothes became more fashionable and trendy and tailors were the fashion designers of their time. Sewing has remained a hobby with the majority of women in the house who even had their clothes made by tailors, would enjoy sewing and doing other kinds of embroidering for some decorative things around the house.

Back then going and taking a sewing class was normal for enjoyment and sometimes was a requirement; but today it has become a type of rarity. Today taking sewing classes has what some consider to be a waste of time for many as they don’t indulge in such activities anymore. But, some people still enjoy the creations of their two bare hands and still have the option of signing up for a traditional type of sewing class.

Take a Sewing Class and Have Useful Knowledge To Last a Lifetime

Sewing can be a very useful skill whether it is in a household or as a profession. Many mothers who stay home because of their new babies search for new jobs so that they can make good income staying at home as well as bring up their children.

Sewing can be learned from the comfort of your home or on the internet as well. There are a lot classes and courses which can fulfill your requirements. For example; if you are looking to learn the basics, advanced or even professional sewing skills you can search it on net or just gather a group of people of interested in the same hobby and practice sewing at home.

Listen to Corbin Newlyn as he shares his insights as an expert author and an avid writer in the field of fine apparel. If you would like to learn more go to Sewing Buttons advice and at Sewing Basket tips.

For quite some time now, Scrapbooking has been one of the fastest growing hobbies and it is easy to see why – creating scrapbooks is a creative and fun activity that allows people to express their creativity in imaginative ways, while creating a beautiful product that preserves memories and will endure for generations to come.

There are many reasons why scrapbooking is so popular among arts & crafts hobbyists. Scrapbooks are simply a great way to preserve memories. In 50 years, it will be difficult for people to know what exactly was happening in photos without someone who was there around to explain the scenarios. That picture with twelve people all trying to fit inside a two person pup tent will not make much sense to family members who were not there, and with no one alive that can set the context, the memory is essentially lost. To help these sorts of moments live on forever, putting them in a scrapbook and providing a contextual story will ensure that these memories endure.

Another great benefit to creating scrapbooks is simply organizing the photos that are stored in boxes in the attic or basement or stuck haphazardly in those old photo albums that no one looks at. Those pictures were taken for a reason, so putting them in a scrapbook helps ensure that people will actually look at and enjoy the memories they preserved. Also, getting those pictures out of boxes and photo albums, and therefore out of the basement, will help ensure that the photos actually last – attics and basements are very moist environments, and are terrible places to store photos.

So now that we know some of the reasons for creating scrapbooks, the next thing to do is to get started. Thankfully, it is very easy to do so!

One of the greatest things about creating scrapbooks is that anyone can do it no matter how talented one may think they are. With the myriad of templates and embellishments available commercially, even absolute beginners can create wonderful scrapbooks they will be proud of. It really does not take much at all to get started, and upon seeing the finished product, most people are instantly hooked on the craft of scrapbooking.

It is important when first getting started to understand some of the basics of the process of creating scrapbooks. If one is not going to be using old photographs to create a scrapbook, and will instead be taking new pictures, then an inexpensive digital camera is an excellent choice as they make it easy to download your photos into a computer and printed, or uploaded to an online photo shop to have them printed. Going digital allows for even more creativity, as the photos can be easily retouched and embellished with graphics and special effects.

Once the photos are in hand, the next step is matting. Matting is the process of applying the photos, embellishments, and any additional memorabilia to the pages. Many even double or triple mat photos for a more dramatic effect. Through the use of creative color choices it is possible to create designs that really make the photos pop off the pages.

One of the best developments in the world of scrapbooking has been the arrival of pre-made professionally designed papers and templates designed specifically for scrapbooks. These professional designs are color coordinated so even a novice can create a scrapbook that looks great and has a unified theme.

When starting out with creating scrapbooks, it is important to relax and have fun! This is not work – take it easy, use some of the great, inexpensive supplies that are out there to help, and enjoy the creative process! Just like anything else, the more one does it, the better the creations will be.

Eric Mathieu operates a website specializing in arts & crafts. For more information and supplies for scrapbooking and other arts & crafts hobbies, visit 1-2-3-crafts.com.

Whenever you decide to do a sewing project, the right quality of fabric is necessary. Also there are so many colors, styles, designs that it can make your choice very difficult. Nevertheless, if care and the appropriate amount of thought are put into the decision, a good selection can be made.

While selecting sewing fabric, the pattern that is being employed often is very helpful to find what type of sewing fabric would be the best selection for that garment or creation.

In spite of this, many people believe in making things which do not have patterns, so they don’t get any suggestions. When such a case arises, people should choose the best fabric possible, but problems can develop from this too.

Selecting Sewing Fabric With No Pattern

When somebody works on a project without a proper design, it can be difficult for them to choose the specific type of fabric. Deciding on which color is not a big deal but there is something which belongs to every specific person and his or her opinion of which color suits them better will appear the best for that particular garment or item that is being made.

In addition to the type of color that is selected, the type of fabric is also very important to numerous people. Some fabrics are light whereas others are heavy, but this is not the only matter to deal with.

Another potential concern is how much stretch or what is called ‘give’ the fabric will have, as the application that the fabric will be used can be strongly influenced by the stretching capacity that the fabric contains.

Where to Go to Select a Sewing Fabric

There are lots of stores where a person can find a fabric of their choice for sewing purposes and what is being created will give the person a good impression of the starting place for searching for the fabric.

Some people will begin their search from thrift stores or at yard sales, so that they can get good bargains, but their fabrics are typically older and out fashion which doesn’t reflect the latest trends.

Those people who need good quality fashion at less expensive price can start their search from discount stores. They are good quality products as well as very fashionable and at affordable rate as well.

As for those people who are less than concerned about finances will go where the more-up scale fabric stores are in order to buy their sewing fabric.

Listen to Corbin Newlyn as he shares his insights as an expert author and an avid writer in the field of fine apparel. If you would like to learn more go to Brother Sewing Machine advice and at Sewing Table tips.

During my 21 years of teaching art and craft in secondary colleges in Australia and the National Gallery of Victoria, I have constantly heard hot discussion on what constituted art and what was craft. Questions fly around: is painting fine art? Is craft really art? The answer often depended on what medium the debater was using when expressing their own creativity.

I made the distinction thus: art is when you generate an image, idea, concept or design using your creative skills; and craft is the medium that you choose to express your creative design with. Craft includes painting in various mediums, sculpture, ceramics, fabric, photography etc.

Those who believe that Art should simply come from a deep seated soul and simply burst forth, using whatever is at hand to create it, may have trouble with my definition.

Another regular question I get asked is Can you teach creativity? My response is yes. Of course there are people more skilled than others and some have greater natural abilities than others. But basically, creativity can be taught.

My experience with teaching is that the more structured you are, the greater the creative skills become. I no longer believe that you simply have to express yourself, whenever and however you wish. Those who are prepared to build on basic skills such as observations, drawing, colour, and tone, will more quickly come to a creative solution to a problem.

And that brings me to another point. If you have a problem to solve, you not only are more likely to be creative, but you can also expect more satisfaction from your endeavours. So how do you find a problem when all you want to do is paint a picture? Van Gogh certainly had a problem he wanted to solve. He wanted to capture the aggressive movement of light and colour in an ever changing landscape of wind and rain and dust. He did not go out simply to paint a landscape, he wanted to solve a problem.

I think this is the biggest dilemma of teaching art in schools. Teachers try to teach a skill such as ceramics or silk printing, but the results are often most unsatisfactory because students were not given a problem to solve.

Let me give you an idea of what I mean. I wanted to teach a class to use air brush to create a strong design image on a large canvas. They were not told what the medium was going to be. First of all I collected a large number of balls and had the students draw groups of balls for 4 hours (over two weeks). This was their research. I specifically made them aware of drawing the negative space (background) as well as the positive space (the actual balls).

Once the research was completed I gave them the problem to solve. They had to create a design using two colours only which emphasised the negative space. The best designs came from those students who began to treat both the positive space (the balls) and the negative space (the background) as abstract shapes. By using a light box, they got the shapes more and more simplified until a truly beautiful and creative balance of two colours was achieved. The final job was the craft, the airbrush and tape technique.

So,is craft, art? Well, I do not think so, as I see a lot of good craft with no real art awareness. But I do believe for you to be successful and produce worthwhile work you have to marry both art and craft in a sensitive and insightful end product of your Work of Art.

Barbara Gabogrecan is a renowned author and award winning artist, having won 7 of the Australian Gift of the Year Awards, where she combined her art and craft into exceptional product. http://www.paintingandcraft.com