I don’t know about you, but I’m so ready for spring! I have been MIA from the blog, and social media for a couple weeks now.  This time of year is always a little bit difficult. With seasonal depression, and the fun from all the big holidays being done, January and February are always a little gloomy and blah.  We passed around a few winter bugs which didn’t help things either.  But this morning the sun is shining, and I’m feeling better! Time to get moving again, and get back on track.  My middle daughter had a birthday this month. What better way to get started again than my sharing some of the fun we had there?  She loves cats, so we had a cat themed Social Artworking Paint party.  The girls had a blast! I used my Cricut to make these really cute magnets with the print and cut feature I want to share them with you.

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People are always asking me what materials you can cut in the Cricut.  The list is pretty impressive!  You can cut the usual papers, and cardstocks of course.  Plus vinyl, poster board, and even fabric.  But a lot of people don’t know that you can also cut things like leather, chipboard, aluminum (how cool is that?!) and magnets!  Cricut machines have two blades you can purchase, and between the two blades (standard, or deep cut blades) you can cut dozens of different materials.   For this project, I used printable magnet sheets!

I wanted to make a cute little take away party favor.  These middle school girls put some pretty cute stuff in their lockers at school.  I thought some cute magnets would be fun!  I had never used the print then cut option on my cricut. Shameful, isn’t it? It was so easy to learn though, and now that I know how amazing it is, I plan to use it way more often!

Here’s what you need to make your own print and cut magnets:

• Cricut cutting machine
• Cricut printable magnet sheets
• Ink Jet Printer
• Printable cat stickers (free for your personal use only please)

First you need to have a design in mind. Since we were doing a cat themed party, I made up some cute “Keep Calm and Meow On” cat images!  To save, and use these adorable kitties yourself (free for your personal use only, please) just right click on the picture blow with your mouse curser, and select the “save image as…” option.  That will save it to your PC as a .jpeg file which you can easily print, and cut with your Cricut!

Next, you will need to upload your image into the Cricut Design Space.  Open the design space and start a new Project. Then select upload and find the image on your computer.

You will need to edit your picture next.  This was a simple image, since I would be cutting the magnets out in square blocks. If your image is more complex, take advantage of that feature to do your edits.

Select the background areas on the image that you don’t want and click to delete them. I simply clicked on the white space outside each of my magnet boxes and it was removed.

Now you can save your image as a “Print then cut” image.  Select it from your library and insert it into your new project.

Resize your image so that it will fit on the printable 8.5 x 11 surface. I found that my cat magnets needed to be around 5×7 size in order to fit on the printable magnet sheets. After resizing, click the Green GO button.  This will send your image to your home printer first where it will print the design out.

After you’ve printed your design on your home printer, put it on your cutting mat, and load it into the Cricut.  Your Cricut machine will scan the image using the printed codes to know just where to cut.  This is seriously the coolest thing ever! Once it’s finished scanning, it will cut out your image.  Since this was my first time using the function, and the magnet sheets I wanted to keep things simple.

 The cut lines around the magnets came out a million times cleaner than I would have been able to achieve with scissors, plus, it was super fast!  All you have to do is peel the excess magnet sheet off the cutting mat, and it leaves behind your super adorable kitty magnets!  You could also make really fun stickers using the exact same steps, but substituting printable sticker paper instead of the magnet sheets.

I saved the excess magnet sheet scraps for another project someday down the line.

Cookie sheets from the Dollar store are great for holding or displaying magnets!

The girls had so much fun painting their Moonlight Meow pictures.  Some of them kept the blue background and copied the original design, and some of them wanted to do their own thing. It was a lot of fun to see their personalities come out in their individual paintings!

We had cat cookies, and cupcakes with pawprints on them to keep with the cute kitty theme!

I used a heart shape cookie cutter to make sugar cookies, and then used Starbursts for the ears and nose, and m&m eyes. They turned out pretty cute, and they were quick and easy to make!

The girls each took a magnet home with their fun paintings and the party was a success!