Saturday, June 21, 2014

Cape Cod Layout - Free Images of the Week


Every week, Cricut offers a set of digital images available that you can cut for free using the Cricut Craftroom or Design Space.  These are often sets that relate to current holidays or the seasons.  With summer arriving Saturday and many people headed for shore vacations, this week's free to cut set from Cricut is New England Shore.


To find the free images each week, go to the Cricut website and choose "Make" at the top of the page.  Then choose "Free Images"from the menu bar at the top.  They usually change on Wednesdays.  The name of the image set and the dates it will be free are listed in the box superimposed on the images.  Don't be concerned that it says "Craftroom Exclusives" - these images are available in Design Space (I believe all or  nearly all of the digital image sets are included in the Image Subscription).


There are six images in the New England Shore set.  I decided I needed a break from furniture moving and craft room sorting (it's amazing how many pieces of half used paper can accumulate when you let it pile up!), so I sat down at the computer and opened the image set in Design Space.  There are six images and I cut them all.


I used the colors in the screen images as my guide for choosing papers.  My colors don't match exactly (in spite of the stash of paper in my room) and I did end up changing a few from the samples given.  I cut the items in sizes that I thought would work on a scrapbook page.  The height of the boat is 6 inches, the lighthouse is 9 inches tall, the anchor piece is 4 inches, and the mariner's compass, life saver and helm pieces are all 3 inches in height.


I clicked "Go" in Design Space and kept loading and unloading mats (12 in all) and in a short time I had all of the pieces I needed.  By doing all six items at once it was easy to coordinate the color scheme.  You can see a few of the pieces that I changed.  I wanted my light house to have a red side instead of beige.  I also substituted navy for dark gray on a few of the pieces.


Here are the fully assembled pieces.  They are easy to put together with the typical Cricut guidelines cut into the shapes to help you line things up.  I decided to make my first paper layout in a very long time with these shapes.  We vacationed on Cape Cod two summers ago and I haven't done anything with those photos yet so these cuts inspired me to start a vacation book.


As I was planning out my pages, I realized that I needed a title and also found that the anchor piece just wouldn't fit in with my plan for the layout. I decided to save that piece for a card.


I was just going to weld letters together for my title but when I typed "Cape Cod" in the search box in Design Space I discovered that there is a "Cape Cod" title oval in the Destinations Image Set,  I thought it was funny to see all of the results with characters wearing capes.  The word "escape" also came up in the search but I think it is better to be over-inclusive than to miss images.


The spot I had for the title was 4 inches wide so I wanted the title to be about 3.6 inches to leave a bit of a border.  When I resized the oval to 3.6 inches it was only 1.81 inches tall.  I wanted it to be a bit taller so I unlocked the aspect ratio (just click the little lock icon, highlighted in yellow above, to do this) and changed the height to 2.25 inches.


Here is the left side of my layout.  I created water and waves using my old Creative Memories Decorative Edge trimmer.  These were discontinued a long time ago but I imagine some of you might have one sitting in your craft space.  I cut a strip of paper four inches x 12 inches and trimmed the long edge.  I used the darker blue to make three wavy strips  and alternated their direction.  When you adhere the strips, you need to allow room for the photo mat to slip inside the bottom wave.

If you are interested in making this exact style of water and don't have the trimmer, leave a comment and I will try to make an SVG file to share.


The mariner's compass makes a connector between the two photo mats.  I really like the way the line between the two shades of blue in the star lines up with the edges of the mats.  This is the only cut that gave me a bit of trouble.  The direction indicators are cut into a circle that is about one inch in diameter so they are super tiny.  I made several cuts because most times three of the four would be fine but one letter would get snagged.  I think a size a little larger than 3 inches overall would be better for this cut.


The photo mats are all cut at 4 1/2 x 6 1/2 for a standard 4 x 6 photo.  I cut a strip of gray cardstock at 4 x 12 inches to put behind the lighthouse and the title to balance the water on the left side page.  Changing the beige to red on the lighthouse balanced the red boat on the left page.  The helm piece works as a topper for one photo and the top of the wheel just overlaps the upper photo.   You don't want any adhesive right at the tips to be sure that a photo can slip under.


This is the two page spread without any photos.  I will show you a digital trick for planning how to choose and crop your photos for the layout in another post.  The background pages are 12 x 12 plain ivory cardstock.  I choose it because it gives a hint of yellow but keeps the page from having a tropical feel.  If you had a lot of journaling to add, you could eliminate the lifesaver image and put it in that spot.  It is a little odd to have it up there but I thought it looked a bit like a cloud(!).

It was fun to do some paper pages.  I am a very simple and "flat" scrapper.  I don't like bumpy things on my pages - I save them for cards and other projects.  I also don't like to spend hours and hours on making a page.  I usually don't use so many die cuts on most of my layouts but the time I saved by using the Explore and Design Space made it easier to convince myself to use nearly all of them.  I really like the way images are complete and in color when you are choosing them.

If I can keep things moving along with reorganizing my space - and keep it cleared up most of the time - I will have more room to work on pages.  I tend to have my craft island get more and more covered with bits and pieces of projects until I am working in a space about 8 x8 inches!  (Does this sound familiar to any of you - leave your true confessions in the comments!).
Here is a tiny view of "before" - the island covered with so much stuff and boxes and shelves in odd places as they move to new locations. I hope to get most of the rest of the things moved this weekend and I may need a quick trip to IKEA to finish up my plans.

Cricut Sales

Here are the other deals offered on the Cricut site this week.  These are affiliate links and I appreciate it very much when you use my links to go to the site and shop.  You can always click on the Cricut image in the side column too.  Thanks for your support of my blog!

Digital Images are all 1/3 off.  If you bought the Explore with the Autoship from HSN, now would be a good time to use your $10 digital download code.  Click HERE to see the Digital Images on sale.

http://www.shareasale.com/r.cfm?B=616071&U=593159&M=51766&urllink=


Cuttlebug Machines are $10 off - you can see them HERE.

Remember - you can get free shipping within the US if your order is $35 or more - so the Cuttlebug would ship free.  Just use the code FREESHIP35.

These deals are available until the 24th of June.

Happy First Day of Summer!  It has been beautiful here - not too hot and not humid at all.  Our fingers are crossed for this to continue for the next week or so.  We have lots more furniture moving and gardening to do this weekend.  Next weekend we'll have most of our family here for a big cookout party.  I am determined to have all of my craft things off the pool table before then!

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9 comments:

  1. Your LO is totally awesome you really did do a fantastic creative job. I love to scrap and do almost everyday and Love my Cricut I do have the Explore and have so much fun creating neat things on it and I still use my Expression with the cartridges. I use my Explore for anything that can't be done on my Expression the best of both worlds. When I scrap yep things get everywhere but after I'm done with a LO or 2 pg LO I straighten up put everything away and am ready for the next one like yesterday I finished a 2 pg LO where I had used 10 cartridges and my Vagabond so had lots to put away you can imagine the amount of paper and cartridges to put back in their zipper cases or the acrylic cartridge case...so I'm ready to go on to my next papges.
    Thanks for sharing your room and your awesome LO. You are a very talented scrapper

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    1. Thanks for the nice compliments Joan. I hadn't done a paper layout for a very long time but the shapes just inspired me and I think I am catching the "scrapping bug" again. You sound very organized - if only I could make myself clean up after every project but it just doesn't seem to be in my nature! I am hoping I can tame things a little by adding more containers to throw the scraps into until I can figure out how to use them. Sometimes I get great ideas just because I left something out instead of putting it away - but you can take that too far!

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  2. Thank you for sharing your layout, love all your little suggestions and ideas! Your craft room looks fantastic, you are such a lucky lady! I would be interested in the SVG file for the water if you do design one. We celebrated our 30th anniversary with a cruise to Alaska and it was awesome, you've given me some great ideas! Thank you!

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    1. Thanks Marilyn! The room is coming along - I decided to make it a priority and set myself the deadline of our family coming to visit next week. I think I will be close but perhaps not everything will be finished (I know I can't paint the walls in the second room - the room that is supposed to be for the pool table and TV but I have gradually crept in to that space over the years!) The cruise sounds fantastic - that is something I have always been interested in doing - maybe after my husband retires and we can take a long trip. Congrats on 30 (plus) years! I will try to get to the SVG file soon - it may be a little tricky to figure out how to make it the full page width but I am pretty sure I can do it on a diagonal.

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  3. Hi Diane
    I was so happy to see your email today pertaining to this free image:)
    So I rushed right over here to your blog so I could comment!
    I was first on the Cricut Craft room and found this and tried to figure out how
    to put them together…yikes what a mess, plus no color pic's to even get an idea
    how the lighthouse layered. Thinking that was a lost cause I went to email and low and behold you had this great pictorial lesson. What a blessing….
    Thank you soooo much for always showing such precise designs, ideas and inspiration!
    I like everyone else would love to have an SVG file of the waves.
    QUESTION PLEASE, can you use a regular Cricut machine with the Cricut Design space created for the Cricut Explore?
    Thanks again, the time you give to write your blog is an inspirational treasure for me.

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    1. Hi J - I am glad you liked this post. It's great to hear that the things I post on my blog are helping people.
      The Design Space is only for the Explore (so that makes it one of the reasons to buy an Explore I guess!). You can access the Design Space and look at the images you want to make with the Craftroom - at least that would give you some ideas for colors and layers. But you will need to set up your project in the Craftroom to cut on any of the other Cricut machines.
      I will try to get the SVG done soon but things are pretty hectic right now - it may have to be after our family leaves. Do you have a machine that will cut SVGs? I could probably do a PDF for hand cutting. Just let me know - thanks!

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    2. Thanks for responding Diane.
      Yes, I can cut an SVG on my Silhouette, but no rush, take your time and enjoy your family. I'm in no hurry:)
      Good to know I can view on the Design space, I'm sure that will help for getting an idea about layers. Hmmm, my pocket book is not really in the mood to get another Circut machine :)
      Best Regards.
      Julie

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  4. Your post today inspired me to clean up my craft room - I know what you mean by that 8"x8" work space. I have a lovely craft table and it's always covered with bits and pieces of works in progress or leftovers and I have hardly any space to actually use for creating! I even rediscovered my old original Sizzix dies today! Was glad to see I can still use them in my Cuttlebug after a quick Google search.

    QUESTION: I know you save a lot of your offcuts to use in other projects and I wonder how you store them? I too can't bring myself to throw away perfectly good stars, hearts, etc. and I've currently got mine all thrown into a gallon Ziploc bag, but that's certainly not a good way to know what I've got and there's always a chance things will get messed up in there. I wonder if you've come up with a good solution to this. Any suggestions are appreciated!

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  5. How do I --- or can I --- get the images in SVG to cut with a Shilhouette? Sorry, but that's what I have. If so, how do I go about getting them without buying that Explore. Guess I am a little lost here...

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Thanks for taking the time to leave a comment. I love to hear from the people who read my blog. I moderate all comments to keep spam off the blog without making you decode the squiggly letters so your comment may not appear immediately.