Back to School at Cuttlebug Challenge

This week the theme for the Cricut Design Team at the Cuttlebug Challenge Blogspot was "Back to School" - believe it or not it is only a month away for some people.  You can click HERE to go to the Sweet Treat Thursday post and see what each designer created.

We have a lot of families with young children moving to our street - as some of the "older" folks are downsizing and moving on.  Our boys are grown but I remember years of packing lunches - the only reprieve I had was when we lived in England and they attended a school with mandatory school lunch (and uniforms too - so simple for Mom!). 

To make lunch a little more special and to remind the children that you care about how their day is going, it is nice to tuck a note inside.  You have to be the judge of when this will become "embarassing" - it probably depends on the child!  You can add a little handwritten note on the back of the tag.

I used the tag from Plantin Schoolbook and set it up to cut six as large as possible on one mat.  The maximum size is 5.5 inches in order to use the shadow layer with the tag. 

You have to be very careful to avoid the "uncuttable" edges of the mat but they just make it onto the mat!

Next, I created a rectangle to use as a sizing guide for sentiments.  It turned out to be 3 x 4 inches.

I had some fun browsing around my cartridges for some appropriate phrases.  This was the first time that I used such a large number of cartridges in one file - there were ten.  I probably should have used the gypsy to cut the file but it only took a minute or so to insert them in the machine as the software asked for the cartridges it needed. 

The sizing rectangle was very handy to help me adjust the various cuts to fit the tags comfortably. I then nestled the cuts together to maximize the use of my paper - another advantage to working with Design Studio or the Gypsy.

 

I did one full mat and another half mat and cut them in a few colors so I would have options.  I have lots of leftover phrases now for other projects.  One tip - I set multi cut at 2 times to be sure I'd have clean cuts on some of the smaller items.

 

I added some quick pen stitching and accents with white and glitter gel pens.  The cardstock i used was just inexpensive smooth cardstock - these will probably end up in the rubbish so it doesn't make sense to use your best paper!

Since this is one of those Desigh Team projects where I made something that I probably won't use (!) I made a gift bag to give these to someone with young children.

The bag is the same one I used for the Beach project earlier this month - once again from Plantin Schoolbook - one of the most versatile cartridges of all.

The "abc123" label on the bag is from an ATC swap I did quite a while ago - it was a spare top (I didn't like the way the pen stitching turned out) that was in my box of "random things to use someday"...  It was made with Mini Monograms.  Here is a LINK to the original post.  I will try to find the file to post - for some reason I didn't link it in the original post over a year ago - it may be buried in the thousands of files in my DS project folder!

I hope you enjoy this simple idea and can spread some love along with the peanut butter in the lunches of your little ones.

I am posting the file I used so you can use the tags at the maximum size without having to figure it out again.  You will probably want to find your own words and phrases and may not have some of the cartridges I used so go ahead and delete and substitute in what suits you.  You can check the cartridges used in the Cartridge Library window - use the drop down menu and choose "This Project."

Lunch Box Notes

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