Let's Get Take Out Sign

Over the weekend I had some special guests in my craft room.  Meet Sarah

 

My daughter Beth also decided to join us.  Beth has her own blog and YouTube channel

Sarah wanted to do some crafting, so I told her to find a project she wanted to do on Pinterest and we would could craft while my sister cooked dinner for us.  Sounded like a win, win situation for me.  Sarah found an image on Pinterest that said

Fork It

let's get 

Take-out

And the entire background of the image was covered in forks.  She wanted to re-create this look for her own kitchen.  I suggested that we do it in the colors of her kitchen so she started to look at all of my stacks of paper to find the right papers, and while she was doing that I jumped on the computer to find an image of a fork using MyCutSearch.com

If you have not used MyCutSearch.com before, it is a lot like a Goggle Image search just for images of items you can cut on your Cricut.  Just type in what you are looking for (using the singular form of the word . . . so in this case, fork, not forks) and the site will show you each Cricut handbook page that has a fork anywhere on it.  Sometimes it is the main image, and sometimes it is one of the secondary images in the different feature tabs or functions.

Once I paged through the images I easily found one that worked for this project and was on a cartridge I own. . . Wall Decor and More

Since I just wanted to cut the fork, I pulled this image up on my Gypsy and use the hide function to turn off the spoon, knife and plate.  This way I did not have to cut all of those pieces that I knew I was not going to use."

Since this was a quick weekend project I was talking photos on the fly, so I did not have the "perfect" lighting that I would like. Sorry, this is a "crafting gets real" kind of post instead of one of those where I retake the photos 5 times to get the perfect shot and lighting.

We cut out several forks in black, grey, a silver pattern and red and Sarah started to lay them out on the background paper.  The original plan was to then do the letters in black.  Once we had the forks arranged, we decided that it would look better to take the red forks out of the background and have the lettering over the top be in red, so we ended up with extra red forks . . . but we did use those for another project.  You can see that some of the forks were fully on the paper and some were hanging off.  

Once we were good with the background layout Sarah started to glue the forks down.  She stared with the center ones so that if things "shifted" at all she could adjust the columns as needed to the outside and not end up with any weird looking gaps.  Once the glue dried, Sarah simply trimmed off the parts that were hanging over the edge of the background sheet.

I think it turned out really cute!  This would be a great way to make your own personalized background paper for any project.

Next we cut and placed the lettering over the top of the forks.  I have to admit, the first set of letters we cut were a little too big . . . but we ended up using those for another project later on.  Sarah was having fun finding ways for us to use our "mistake" cuts.

Once the letters were all in place, there was a little bit of concern about how to keep everything lined up and just how we wanted it while gluing things down.  Beth suggested putting a piece of painter's tape over the top of the letters so that we could lift them up all together.

Once we lifted them off with the tape it did keep them all in line really nice, and it helped with the smaller letters . . . those little letters get so hard to hold on to!

The tape worked really good, but the only problem I had was there were a couple of places where some of the glue we put on the back of the letters got on the tape, which made it a little harder to peel the tape back up.  It was a LOT easier to remove the tape on the larger letters since we were better able to control the glue and get it just on the letters and not the tape.

I think if we would have used vinyl for the smaller letters I think it would have worked even better, since the adhesive on the back of the vinyl would have adhered the letters to the paper without the need for glue, and then we would not have needed to press down on the painter's tape as much . . . so then things would have peeled off easier.  Crafting is about experimenting and learning, so that is what I learned from this project.

Sarah had brought a few frames she found on sale at Target with her.  She said it was one of those purchases where she had no idea what she was going to do with the frames when she bought them, but when they are on clearance sale for a couple of bucks you just cannot pass up the deal.  (she has the making of a craft hoarder with thinking like that . . . that is coming from a self proclaimed craft hoarder)  :)

And here is Sarah holding the finished piece.  SO CUTE!

So what happened to those extra pieces I mentioned earlier?  Well, Sarah also had smaller frames, and she thought of a couple of people that she might like to give one of these to also.  So back to the paper stacks to find background paper.  She found some silver glitter paper that she cut down to fit the smaller frame.

She started to arrange some of the letters that were too big for the first project, but when doing an abbreviated version of the saying they worked just perfect.

I cannot remember if it was Sarah or Beth that thought of arranging the extra forks in a border like pattern around the outside, but whoever it was it was a really cute idea!

More gluing and trimming of pieces.  I totally forgot to take a picture of the other one "in progress" so here is the finished project . . . 

And here are the two small completed pieces next to each other

The one on the left used a grey glitter paper for the background and the one on the right used a silver paper with a white overlay.

So in the end, we created 3 totally different pieces from the one Pinterest inspiration piece.  None of them were exactly like the original piece, and that is the great thing about inspiration . . . you can use it to get the idea started but then personalize it and alter it as you need to.  And this also showed that even when you make mistakes, like when we first cut the letters too big, we can find a way to use them so that it is not a waste of the cuts and the time we had already spent working on the project.

I hope that this project inspired you to create something for your own space or for someone you know.  There are other crafting projects that Sarah wants to try out, and since I have a whole craft room for us to work in (and she is in a small space) and I have seen the Pinterest board she has of all of the craft ideas she wants to try . . . so I am sure we will be crafting together again.  Stay tuned to see what we decide to make next!