OK, Eric, this is for you.

My brother, Eric, faithfully reads my blog and is very free with the critiquing. For the most part, I agree with what he's suggesting. However, he insists that the blog would be much more interesting if I added way more tidbits about him. Not sure if that is a good idea. Let me know what you think.

Meanwhile, I think one of his suggestions of putting directions for my projects along with pictures of it IS a good idea. So here's my first attempt. He also mentioned he doesn't know how my Cricut works, so I'll explain that a little bit, too. Anything to make Eric a happy camper.

First of all we have a picture of the Cricut Expression. It is the big sister to the Cricut Personal Cutter. Instead of 6 inch by 12 inch wide paper, it uses 12 inch by 12 or 24 inch wide paper. Some of the images you can cut with the machine have small parts, so being able to cut them bigger makes it easy to assemble later. The next picture is of the cartridge. This is what gets loaded and gives the machine the info it needs to cut shapes specific to that cartridge. Then the third picture is the keyboard with the keyboard overlay on top. Each cartridge comes with it's own overlay because they all have different images to cut, but they all use the same keyboard.







Now for my project. Whenever I'm stressed I enjoy eating chocolate. We didn't have any chocolate when I got home tonight, so I thought I'd made some instead. Still didn't make me feel better, but the project turned out OK. I ended up having red licorice instead. The project is a triangular box that looks like a piece of chocolate layer cake - yum! This cut is on the Tags, Bags, Boxes, and More cartridge. It would be a cute box to put a small birthday surprise in (like chocolate!).



The expression has a key that is called fit to page. If this is chosen, the size of the image is the biggest size that will fit onto the size paper mat chosen. My project ended up being 9 inches (when laid out flat, not the completed piece of cake). After cutting that out I scored the fold lines. Scoring in making an indent in the paper so that it folds straight with a nice crease. Makes for a much neater project. The picture shows a paper cutter/scorer that I use. I have the score tool in it, not the paper cutter. It comes with both tools.



What's chocolate cake without frosting, right? I measured the back flap so that I would know what size to cut the frosting. For my size box I cut a piece of white at a strong 3 1/2 inches x 3 1/2 inches. This gives enough to fold over the top and punch the scallops.



Since you use a spatula to put the the frosting on, I used the Cuttlebug folder D'Vine Swirls to emboss the white paper to look like I swirled the frosting on. For a little extra frosting look, I used Stampin'Ups! border punch Scallop Edge.





Since paper frosting doesn't stick to cake very well, I put tape on the back flap of the cake box and stuck the frosting to it. To get the frosting on the top of the box to be at the same angle as the box, I folded the box flat on one side and carefully cut the frosting using the edge of the box as a guide. The did the same thing on the other side. Once that is cut, I taped that down to the top of the cake box.









Since you don't want the box to fall apart if you put something inside it, use some strong two-sided tape on the cake tip and long edge flaps like you see in the picture. Don't put any tape on the flap edges unless you don't want to put anything inside the box - at which time I ask, "Why are you making this gift box if you don't intend to put anything inside it?"



Now it's time for the sprinkles. I used some scrap paper in various colors and used the Stampin' Up! Horizontal Slot punch. Then I just glued those on haphazardly as it they were sprinkles out of a bottle.



Now for the best part of the chocolate cake - the frosting between the layers! I cut two pieces of white paper 1 1/2 inches by 5 1/2 inches. I used Martha Stewart's Dripping Goo on one edge of both pieces. I then used my paper cutter to cut them down for an overall width of 3/4 inch from straight edge to the bottom of the dripping frosting. In the first picture you'll notice I put a small bend in one end of the first piece. This bend will fit around the front tip of the piece of cake so that there isn't an area where you can see brown cake at the tip after gluing both pieces onto the sides. Then I glued the first piece of white onto the side. There was a little extra of the strip that was at the back flap. This piece is shown in the next picture. I wrapped that around to the inside of the box so that it looked more finished. Then do the same thing to the other side of the box.




. . . and the completed cake box once again.



Hope you enjoyed baking with me. No calories, but the real thing would be better. I'm sure Rosie would agree since no one is more addicted to chocolate than her!

Yeah, March 1st - that much closer to spring and no snow.
Jill