Watermelon Birthday!

This is not a typical "21" year old birthday card but it fit perfectly for our son's birthday this weekend.  With an August birthday, he has opted for watermelon instead of a traditional birthday cake for a number of years.

The card base is 5 1/2 x 8 1/2 inches (a "large card") which is made by folding an 8 1/2 x 11 sheet of cardstock in half. I cut the watermelon from the new Cheerful Seasons cartridge at four inches.

There are four layers for the watermelon, the basic key and shift and the layer key and shift.

Here are the pieces of the large slice.  I knew I wanted to use a watermelon slice on his card.  When I counted the seeds in the watermelon I realized there were exactly 22 - so I had the perfect sentiment!

For the "21" on the front of the card I used the font on the Wild Card cartridge.  The sizing of the sentiments and letters is based on the card sizes so it is easiest to check the Real Size box once you have measured your card to determine the actual size you need.

I welded the words for the sentiment using Cursive 101.  This is a great cartridge for welding words - they fit together very easily.

I measured the available space on the card and found it was about five inches wide.  I typed in the words at one inch (the smallest size you can set on the slider bar) and then applied kerning at -.1 and used the nudge arrows to space the words properly.  Then I checked weld and used the lower right handle to proportionately resize the phrase to fit in a five inch space.  It ended up being about 2/3 of an inch high.

I used the smaller wedge of watermelon on the inside of the card.

The sentiment is from the Wild Card cartridge - once again you should use the Real Size box to get the size you need for the sentiments on this cartridge if you are not making the card they were designed to fit.  The sentiment cuts as three separate words and I spaced them differently than they appear on the key when I added them to the card.

The watermelon birthday cake was made by slicing the two ends off the melon and then cutting the center section into "cake" wedges.  The top "frosting" is melon balls piled high and the entire "cake" has lime juice poured over it which gives the melon an interesting taste.  His girlfriend found the recipe online and did a great job creating the festive cake - I just added the candles!

You can wish on a watermelon cake just like you do on a "normal" birthday cake!

Here is one more look at the card - the red gingham paper is some long discontinued Creative Memories paper and the watermelon and sentiments are all cut from Core'dinations cardstock.  I used multi-cut on 2 to get a clean cut on the sentiment.

This is a simple card that was just right for this birthday!

At first I thought I would not use the Cheerful Seasons cartridge as much as the Reminisce Accents cartridge but I have found that many of the images have great details and three or four layers.  If you would like more information about the Creative Memories cartridges you can read my review at THIS POST.

This is the last call to play along on the Scrappy-Go-Lucky blog hop.  All of the cards have been revealed so it should be easier to figure out the theme.  Remember - your guess at the theme and your favorite cartridge must be posted in a comment on Mandy's Original Post on the Scrappy-Go-Lucky blog to be eligible to win one of four new cartridges, Country Life, Happy Hauntings, Rock Princess and Winter Frolic.  The Schedule and links to the blogs are in THIS POST.   The winners will be drawn on Wednesday, August 18th (that is Perth, Australia time, so sometime Tuesday for those in the US). Good Luck!

Subscribe to Capadia Designs       

Retirement Album

I was asked by a friend to help put together a retirement tribute album for the woman who has been the Health Coordinator for our school district. She was the official representative to a parent committee I served on for a number of years and she worked with many of the parents in our community to promote healthy choices for our children. As is often the case when you ask for stories or tributes to be sent in before the event, there were not many people who actually got their tributes written and the emails sent. So we worked out a way to have the album prepared and ready for the retirement party brunch tomorrow which will be attended by many parents who worked on this committee.



I chose a Creative Memories landscape style (12 x 10) album - 8 x 8 seemed too small and 12 x 12 too bulky! This size was available for a limited time but I had some left in my inventory. We used a decorative paper pack called "Vintage" and a Milestones album kit, also in Vintage, which has lots of photo mats, journaling blocks and decorative 4 x 6 papers.



For the people in who sent their messages in advance, we were able to print the messages on the Vintage patterned paper or a matching parchment paper and arrange them in the book (the messages are covered in these photos). The paper pack we used was sized for the older version of the Creative Memories 12 inch albums which had pages slightly less than 12 inches wide due to the "jeeping" strip that reinforces the page edges. We trimmed these to 12 x 10 to "wallpaper" about half of the pages and use the remaining strips to decorate the opposite pages.



It really makes things so much simpler when you work with a coordinated set of papers. The book looked great with just the two packs of CM paper but I thought I could add a bit more style with some Cricut cuts. I chose various cuts from the Storybook cartridge and filled a mat with images. I cut these images in several colors to add as accents on the pages. The page at the center of the right side above that is just a background paper is waiting for a printed poem that one of the guests will be bringing tomorrow.



I did not put the the page protectors on the pages yet, but I can add them after the messages are completed. When people arrive at the brunch they will have a chance to write a few lines on one of the journal mats or in a blank area on any of the pages. I will have tabs on the pages that have empty spaces and make sure that all of the lined mats are used first.



I added the Storybook cuts on various pages to give a more finished look and I have a folder with lots of extras that can be added on the spot if there are any "blank" areas after everyone signs the book. Some of the mats would be suitable for photos and we may try to have a few photos taken at the event and have them printed to add to the book later.



For the cover page, I welded the words "Thank you" and the name together using the Cursive 101 cartridge - this cartridge is wonderful for welding! The leafy branches are from Storybook once again.

I am sure that by the end of the brunch this book will be full of messages and it will be a lovely memento for Kathy to take home and read through.


(If you want to see the pages at a larger size, just click on the photos. Here's a little quiz for you - how many Storybook cuts did I add to the album?)


One more note - our online classes have been going well so far - thanks to those who have participated! We have set up some more "Getting Started" classes for next week and will be adding new classes soon. Just click the link at the top right of this page to go to the teaching blog for class details.

You must be the Change....

It has been a long time since my last posting about words on the wall. Today we were celebrating a family birthday and I finally cut and installed this quote for my sister-in-law (we had talked about this months ago but just hadn't done it!). I decided to use a cursive font so I could cut entire words that would weld nicely and stay on a level line. This made installation easier - there were only 12 words plus Gandhi's name. I used blue painter's tape to get a level line on the beam.



The photos are long and skinny so here are a couple of close up views of the quote.



I used the Wall Pops vinyl which cuts beautifully in the Cricut. I set the blade depth at 4 and pressure and speed at medium - these settings cut the vinyl but not the backing so you can just peel the entire word off the backing without having to fuss with separating the letters as you would if you had individual letters fully cut out through the backing.

By using Design Studio, I could conserve the amount of vinyl I needed to use. First, I typed out all of the words and welded them as you can see in this screen shot.



I then checked the quote and realized that I had written "want" instead of "wish," so I fixed that and also added Gandhi's name. Once I had all of the words sorted out, I started copying and pasting them onto additional pages in the file, rotating the words to fit as closely as possible. Here are screen shots of my two cutting mats - one 12 x 24 and one 12 x 12.






For the quote, I set the letter size at 3 inches and I then did Gandhi's name at 1 1/2 inches. I thought that the printing 101 "G" was easier to read than the Cursive 101 "G" so I cut both versions for my sister-in-law to choose her favorite. Below you can see the two choices...



I also cut quote marks and an equal sign to trim for a "dash" before Gandhi's name. I had forgotten the period for the end of the sentence but we just used a regular hole punch to cut one.

By carefully "squeezing" together the words for cutting, I was able to create the entire project with 30 inches of the 6 1/2 inch vinyl stripe size of the Wall Pops. When I bought the vinyl it was about $10 for a 16 foot roll so the cost to make this was very reasonable - less than $2.

Here is a LINK to a few other posts on my blog about wall words projects. These are a lot of fun to do and I am now motivated to get some done for my studio!