Celtic Medallion for St. Patrick's Day

Happy St. Patrick's Day!  I hope you have fun celebrating today.  If you find that pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, let me know!

I wanted to make something that "looked Irish" for the holiday.  When I saw this design in the Dover Sampler offerings, I had to give it a try as a cutting file.  (Remember, you can sign up for the Dover Sampler here - it's free.  I have no connection to the company - just a happy customer).

There is actually a vector file that you can download.  I could tell it was too finely detailed to cut well at a small size but I tried to cut this directly from the Dover file in a larger size (about 8 inches) using the Make the Cut program and my Silhouette SD.  It worked pretty well except for one segment where the paper pulled up from the mat and the blade and carriage then chewed up the cut.

In this closer view  you can see just how tiny some of the cuts are - particularly the cuts inside the "pretzel" shape.  I decided to bring the file into my Silhouette Studio software, trace it and eliminate areas that I knew would cut poorly.

I eliminated many of the interior cuts to come up with a design that I hoped would be "cuttable" in a card size.  Then I created layers so I could add colors to create the interwoven effect of the image.

I was very happy to see how cleanly the design cut after I had modified it.

 A lot of the lines in the design are less than 1/16th of an inch!

Most of the inner pieces stayed on the mat when I gently lifted the top layer of the cut.  Sometimes I save the negative space pieces to make a second image but I decided this would be too fiddly to try to adhere to another card.

I tried several color combinations, adding in some orange and yellow but I decided it would be best to use just shades of green.  I found two glittery sheets of Core'dinations Core Couture - one light and one dark green - to coordinate with the two solid shades I started with.

Once I had all of the layers cut, I did a "dry fit" to stack them up and create the design.  This design is not totally symmetrical and I wanted to be sure I had it lined up correctly.

I flipped the pieces over and made a light pencil mark on the back of the same point on each layer.  This gave me a quick reference when I was adhering the pieces together.

I used the Letra-Tac adhesive sheet for the delicate top layer.  These tiny dots are great for holding the thin layers together.  (Click to see my first post about this adhesive with more details).

Here is the adhesive side of the second layer after I burnished it on the Letra Tac sheet.  The adhesive holds the cut very well but you can peel it up and realign the layers if you get a bit off.

Each of the layers fills in a section of the design - the first two alternate with three triangles each and the last is for the connecting "ribbon" that weaves through all of the sections.

The second layer adds the darker green glitter cardstock.

Finally, the shadow background fills in the "ribbon" and adds an outer border.

For a little more sparkle, I added a light green Vintage Gem from Creative Charms in the center.  (These are included in the Inventory Clearance right now).

I looked around a bit more and added some gem stickers in three shades of green at opposite points.

I used lots of foam circles to lift the heavy layered medallion off the front of the card.  The card base is Papertrey Ink cardstock in "New Leaf" from the Perfect Match series.

 

I didn't want the medallion to just sit alone on the card front so I added a punched ribbon that I made with my Martha Stewart Infinite Loops punch.

I do not recommend using this punch with the glitter cardstock - I had a very hard time getting the punch to release and had to use a tool after each punch to pop it back into starting position (fortunately it only took three punches to get the border piece long enough for the card).

I cut the strip a bit longer and then trimmed to bottom to match the card.  At the top, I wrapped it over just a bit to avoid the "not quite long enough" look that you sometimes get when you try to cut the border flush to the fold.

I punched a four leaf clover from some of the dark green cardstock and added it to the back to finish the raw edge.

The width of the loops is about the same as the width of the lines in the medallion so I thought they went together nicely.

You could stamp a sentiment on the lower right corner...

...or add a couple more shamrocks.

You could also make this a vertical card.  Once you have the medallion made, there are lots of possibilities for using it.  I think it would also look pretty on a scrapbook page.

If you have questions about how I used the sample image to create this final design, let me know.  I'll add it to the list of videos I need to make!

Have a great weekend - we expect some nice weather from Sunday into the middle of next week (in the 70's!).

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"Lucky" Artist Trading Cards

 

Happy St. Patrick's Day!  I hope that it is a lovely day where you are.  We are promised temperatures in the 60's and that will be great.  We don't have any special plans for celebrating - no green beer or corned beef and cabbage.

I did participate in an ATC (artist trading card) swap this month.  The theme was "Luck" and I went with a pretty simple idea.  I have been challenging myself to use some of the Cricut cartridges that I "had to have" and that have remained unused or underused.  I remembered the holiday symbols on Designer's Calendar and knew there would be a suitable "lucky" image.

Here is the shamrock in a circle that I used to create the topper for my ATC.  The one rule for ATCs is that they must be 2.5 x 3.5 inches - the rest is up to you!

 

My first idea looked good in the computer (!) but was unrealistically small.  I cut some of these but the details were not very clear so I went back and tried with only six images instead of 15 in my grid.

These shamrocks are much more recognizable when cut.  The white and orange layers are simply guidelines I used to show the size of the card and a layer at 2.25 x 3.25 inches.  The colors are for contrast to help me see how things fit together.  The preview here is in color - before cutting I welded the shapes together so they would cut as a unit.

When items are welded the cutting lines are bold and the welded areas a paler gray.  This screen shot shows how the welds appear on the cutting page (the page where the images are on the mat).

If you look at the preview on another blank page it is easier to see the cut clearly and to determine if the welds are working as you expected them to work.

I added the word "Lucky" from the Straight from the Nest cartridge.  This is a cartridge I use a lot but I had forgotten about some of the word art.  The "Lucky" is actually a layer for the "Lucky Duck" word art.

I cut the dark green bases from Bazzill cardstock.  The slightly smaller layer is a pale green basketweave pattern from a Martha Stewart stack.  The shamrocks are cut from Core'dinations Core Couture glitter cardstock.  I used a multicut (2 times) on the glitter cardstock to make sure the details would cut cleanly.  "Lucky" is cut from DCWV metallic gold cardstock.  I added some random gems in two shades of green and gold to accent the word and one shamrock.

I often do the backs of my ATCs with a digital design, however, this time I simply hand wrote the information with a gold pen.

Here are all ten ATCs just before I mailed them away for swapping.

Here is another close view so you can see the pattern in the light green paper.  The basketweave seemed a bit "Celtic" to me.  I inked the edges of the card and the layer with gold ink (hard to see in this photo).

Creative Charms is having a sale to celebrate St. Patrick's Day - until midnight on the 17th (Eastern Daylight Time) you can use the code LUCKY17 to save 17% on any order.  You can also have a chance to win a packet of green goodies from Creative Charms - just leave a comment on their blog - here is a LINK to the post.  The more comments that are left on that post - the more packets of goodies that they will give away - sounds like fun!


The Lettering Delights Dollar Days sale is continuing and they have a special Lucky Irish Bundle that is free for today only.  You can visit the Lettering Delights site by clicking my affiliate link in the left side column or the image below.




There are also some early bird specials for orders placed by the 23rd:

Early Bird savings from March 15-March 23rd. 
Save 10% on $15 purchase or more with code: InBloom.
Save 25% on $35 with code: BiggerBloom.

Finally - you'll want to check out the Green Wednesday specials at Cricut.com - here is a LINK.  There are cartridges for sale for $39.19 and under - including Imagine cartridges.  Lite cartridges for $27.99.  Cricut Circle members get an additional discount and double reward points.

I hope you have fun celebrating today - remember to wear something green so you don't get pinched!


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A Digital Shamrock to share

I had a very busy day Tuesday and I have just a quick post for Wednesday morning.  There may be more later in the day if things are calmer around here!  Tomorrow is St. Patrick's Day and if you live in certain parts of the country it is a big holiday (in other parts, not so much...).

I mentioned that last Saturday we had the Senior Citizen's St. Patrick's Luncheon at our local high school.  There is a long standing tradition for the high school students to organize a Thanksgiving luncheon (junior class) and a St. Patrick's Day luncheon (senior class) and many parents and students participate.  These are very nice events and give the senior citizens a chance to see the high school and to meet some of the young people who volunteer to serve lunch.

 

The cafeteria is decorated with holiday themed items and the tables this year had shamrock plants with leprechauns and lottery tickets tucked inside for the centerpieces.

Our neighbor played the bagpipes to get thing started.  The room is large enough that the sound was not too overwhelming!  You may see some familiar looking shamrocks on the glass windows - another neighbor cut those with her Cricut.

My husband's a cappella singing group also performed before lunch was served.

After lunch (corned beef and cabbage), a large group from an Irish Step Dancing school performed.  The older girls had these lovely costumes and the incredibly curly wigs.  When they dance the curls really bounce!

The tinsel shamrocks hanging from the ceiling caught my attention and I snapped a few quick photos.  I used my Creative Memories StoryBook Creator Plus 3.0 software to turn this into a digital embellishment.  This is easy to do and a great way to really personalize your projects.  I often make digital "stickers" from photos I have taken and I particularly enjoy doing this with flower photos.  The pansies in the header on my blog are digital embellishments I made from a photo of pansies in the back yard I took a few years ago.

I want to let you know that the download version of Storybook Creator Plus 3.0 is on sale this month for $20 off the regular price.  You can buy this for just $44.95 until the end of March.  I use this program all of the time for so much more than just digital books.  It is one of my favorite crafting tools - I even used it for the page layout that I made for the Cricket Cruise contest (it was a "hybrid" page).

I use the PC version of the software.  There is now a new Mac version called sbcStudio and it is also on sale for $44.95 ($20 off).  I have not used this version yet but there is a lot of information available about it on my CM Personal Website.  You can click on the name of the program to go directly to the correct page.

The images above are low resolution screen shots just to show you how I was able to eliminate the background and leave only the shamrock.  When you create digital embellishments they are generally saved as png files so they have a transparent background and can be placed on top of other digital papers and photos. You can then create borders and other designs with your saved items.


I have a little St. Patrick's Day gift for any of my blog followers who love digital scrapbooking and crafting.  You can download the png file for the tinsel shamrock HERE.  This is an ad free instant download.


(If you are wondering - I haven't forgotten about the blogoversary celebration - I actually have  a few more items that will be part of the giveaways and just haven't had a chance to reorganize things...but it will be worth the wait!)

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