A Poor Man's Cricut

Am I the only person that must have been living under a rock and didn't know about the glories of Cricut's or Silhouette's? Until about a month ago, I was completely unaware of their existence. After my son was born, I didn't have the time, patience, or money for scrapbooking anymore. I left preserving our family memories to Blog2Print, and just had them make photo books of my personal photo blog. Anyway, I have been seeing the fruits of these amazing inventions on all of your blogs and I am green with envy!

I am working on a BIG project that calls for alot of custom vinyl lettering. I considered buying a Cricut and then my husband saw the price and went white in the face. To preserve my marriage, I moved on to Plan B and started looking at making a custom order from an etsy shop, but I became too impatient. Now I am onto Plan C and so far (though tedious) its coming along nicely. Here's how I did it...

STEP 1: I found a font and printed off the letters in the size I needed on regular printer paper. I then carefully cut out the letters.

STEP 2: Next, I taped a strip of vinyl adhesive to an old cutting board. I did this so it would stay put as I traced the letters using a pencil. Then I meticulously sliced the letters into existence, alternating between using an exacto knife and scissors.

Here's the finished product! I think it looks great! It probably seems too tedious, especially to those lucky owners of fancy crafting machines, but I pumped them out while watching a favorite flick with my hubby and so far I am pretty happy with my poor man's Cricut.

This project is just a piece of a MUCH larger project I am still working on. We are remodeling our laundry room! It's going to be soooooo beautiful. Just like every other project we tackle, half way through we start to think that we bit off more than we could chew. We stuck with it and now I just have to add the final touches. I hope to post about it next week with tips and tutorials. I hope to keep posting regularly this upcoming weekend/week but my mother-in-law is visiting right now and my father and brother-in-law arrive next week. For now here's a sneak peek teaser of what's to come:

Boring, clutter trap of a laundry room BEFORE:

$5 Craigslist cabinets we got from a gutted farmhouse:

Linked up to Tatertots & Jello, Funky Junk Interiors, The Girl Creative