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I love working with wood and pallets to make customized, personalized signs for my loved ones and giving them as presents. What I didn’t love is the fact that the designs I came up with for these signs there were no stencils already made for them. The process I went through to paint letters and designs on wood were so tedious, time-consuming and sometimes downright frustrating.
But, hey, we all start somewhere and you do what you have to do with what you have…and that’s exactly what I did.
Take for instance this sign that I made for my sisters and brother last Christmas. I put a picture of our parents to the left then hand painted their favorite sayings to us kids while growing up. I literally printed out the text on an 8.5 x 11 sheet of paper, put it face down on the wood, traced over the outline of each letter, then painted within the lines (you can tell I’m not that great at painting on wood lol). Like I said, it was time-consuming and frustrating, especially for this recovering perfectionist. 🙂
I had heard about the Cricut about a year before and knew that it would cut out a customized stencil for me but to be honest, the price was just a little bit out of my budget and there were a lot of things going on in my life that needed my attention more.
Of course, with each wood project I did, I always told myself that ONE DAY I will have a Cricut Cutting Machine and these projects will go so much faster but until then carry on.
A couple of my friends had gotten Cricut machines and I was seeing all the wonderful projects they were creating. I would show my daughters the projects they were making and I think even they were impressed with all the crafts you can make with this machine.
Fast forward to Mothers Day 2017 – my daughter Brianna works at an Assisted Living Facility and she asked me and my other daughter, Makayla, to come and bring her lunch, so we did. Unbeknownst to me these two went in halves and bought me my very own Cricut Explore Air 2 and surprised me with it at Brianna’s work.
I was in the kitchen with Brianna while Makayla was calling me into the other room and when I entered it took me about a second or two to realize what was on the table. You can watch the video below. I really was come with all sorts of emotions.
I was so overwhelmed with emotion that my daughters would do this for me that I just cried. It was truly such a precious moment.
Of course, I couldn’t wait to get home, set it up and start using it.
Ever since then I’ve been crafting and doing DIY projects like there is no tomorrow. lol
I will say that even though my daughters bought me the machine they didn’t realize there were some Cricut Accessories that I needed in order to do my first project. I wanted to make sure I mention that just in case you are going to buy the Cricut Explore Air 2 for your loved ones.
I always love hearing the stories of how people came to owning their Cricut Machine so why not share with us in the comments what made you purchase one of these amazing cutting machines?
Happy Crafting!
Y’all Be Blessed,
Audrey
