Super Simple Birthday cards

I have come down with a dreadful summer cold - somehow having a cold in August seems so unfair! August is a big birthday month in our family. Within 8 days we have five family birthdays - my husband and both sons, my husband's mother and our brother-in-law (and that's before you start counting the cousins!). So I will be needing lots of birthday cards.



I am continuing on my quest to use up some of the paper in the many, many stacks I have accumulated (so I can buy more!). This birthday paper is from the DCWV 2008 Summer Glitter Stack. I took this photo to show how I "fussy cut" the paper to make pieces 5 x 3 3/4 inches to fit nicely on A2 cards. I can cut two more from the second wide strip and even use some of the thinner strips for card borders.



For this card I inked the edges of the glitter cardstock with dark blue and added a white layer to make a defined edge contrasting with the base.



On the yellow card I used Stickles glitter glue in lime green to outline the glitter cardstock - this makes a very sparkly card.



You could add ribbon or additional embellishments to the card but my inclination is to leave the front of the card simple and then add some personalization on the inside.

Jen and I taught a couple of classes today and I am finishing up a big surprise project that will be fun to share - it is definitely pushing the limits of my usual work! Here's hoping this cold turns the corner and I will be better by the weekend when we have a family reunion to attend.

We do have room in the Getting Started Design Studio class Thursday at 1 p.m. Eastern - if you are interested in joining the class please send an email to studiogoddesses@gmail.com to register.

Op Art Card (file and explanation)

Here is yet another variation of the "mystery" file - this is what will cut if you use the file without hiding any contours.



The card topper was created using only this element from the Sesame Street Font cartridge - repeated in five rows of seven and welded to create a single piece.



Because of the "glitch" in the software that does not keep a contour hidden if you hide only a single line of an item, you will need to "rehide" the lines each time you use the file. Just left click to select the line and the right click and choose "hide selected contour" from the bottom of the pop-up menu.



If you hide the outer line of the oval in alternating squares in a 4-3-4-3-4 pattern, your preview will look like this.



It is best to remove the cut from the bottom up - by lifting this way the ovals that are not connected at the tops will come off the mat nicely.



When you attach the cut to the 5 x 7 card you can use adhesive on all of the tiny lines to hold the cut down securely.



This is the card with the topper attached - ready to add additional embellishments or to use "as is" - there is a lot of flexibility with this design.



I tried my best to get the file to work so that you wouldn't need to hide contours each time you open the file. In the past, I have been able to use a workaround for this problem - here is a LINK to the post with the entire explanation on how to do this. I have been able to place two images directly on top of one another to "keep" the line I want to hide hidden when I reopen the file (you need at least three lines in the design for this to work).

Apparently the trouble arises when you try to use this fix on multiple welded shapes - the software goes haywire and can't figure out what to weld and in which order.



Above and below you can see two of the many "bad welds" I got when I tried over and over (adding items in different orders) to get this to work.



This is so frustrating! There is no logical reason that you should not be able to keep a single contour hidden - or that you shouldn't be able to use the "hide contour" feature on a pasted image without closing and reopening the file!



I made a lot of test cuts - now I have a nice little collection of ovals to use on other projects! I save the bags from the Studio G and other mini clear stamp sets and then use them to keep small offcuts together - sometimes I even use them!

So here are the important directions!

The file is set up with the first page to be used for cutting - you will need to hide the contours in whatever pattern you like before cutting. The second page of the file is exactly the same but the items are not welded. You can hide the contours you want to hide and then change the preview color to "audition" different color combinations. Page three is just a rectangle to represent the card base and you can vary the colors for the preview on this page as well. The final page is a blank page for viewing the preview.

Here are a few screen shots of various previews







It is fun to play around with the various combinations!



Be sure that you are on page one when you actually cut the file - if you cut from page two you will end up with a mess like this (The phone rang and I got distracted!).



Here is one more variation. In this version, I hid the opposite set of contours (3-4-3-4-3 pattern) and when I placed the topper on the card I bent back each oval slightly to get the raised effect.



Be sure to keep the adhesive only on the edges of the topper and the solid squares.



Here is a close view of the raised ovals.

If you look at the Sesame Street Font cartridge you will see that there are a lot of shapes that could be used to create unusual designs - have fun with them!

Op Art 5 x 7 Card Topper

Op Art Design (from Sesame Street Font)

The cartridge I used to make this design is Sesame Street Font (congratulations to Lianne for figuring it out!).



The highlighted key is the one item that was repeated 35 times to form this design. There are a lot of other interesting possibilities for new designs if you look closely at this cartridge.

My test cut worked perfectly. Then I tried to get fancy and make the file simpler to use (due to the "single hidden contour not remaining hidden when file closed and reopened" problem).



I spent waay too much time trying to "psych out" the software and get a fix that worked but I think that the number and complexity of the welds just made the program go crazy. Here are two of the very odd cuts I got on some more tests.

I will share the file tomorrow, once I have one more chance to try to make it work automatically. If I can't get around the problem, I will do a tutorial explanation to show you how to use the file. Unfortunately, due to the extra time I spent trying to refine this design and another HUGE project I worked on today, it is very late and I have to go get some sleep.

Another Quick Video - Layered Characters

I have received a few questions about the color separations for layered characters, so I thought I'd do a video showing one of the files that I created for a Cinderella cut. I have explained this in the past and posted some files on my blog but some people prefer the video format. Here is a LINK to some of the posts about Disney Princesses showing the layers with download links for the files I prepared.

The weekend was very full but I have been hard at work on some projects which will be posted in the next few days. I also have something new to show you that you can use with your Cricut to enhance many of the more intricate designs.



There were some more guesses on the mystery design but so far no one has named the cartridge. (The prize is really just a token gift but I didn't think it would be so hard to give it away!)

Here are the clues - with a new one added:

1. There is only one image used to make this mesh - repeated 35 times.

2. Hide Selected Contour is involved...

3. I have never shared a design made using this particular cartridge - I have to open a cartridge that is still in the box to test cut the design (!)

Be sure to leave a comment for me if you think you have figured out what I used! If no one gets it by tomorrow night, I will just pick a random name from the guesses I have received.

"Interesting" Paper used for Cards

I am back on my quest to use up some of the paper in the stacks that I have purchased. There are so many beautiful papers available that I can't seem to stop buying them, however, I want to put them to good use and not just be a collector!



A little over a year ago I made a group of cards using motifs from a piece of paper from an 8 x 8 stack - here is a LINK to that post.



The images came from this paper which had straight, even rows that were very simple to cut apart.



The paper I used for the new cards has nice nautical images which are placed in an irregular pattern. This made it a bit more challenging to separate the images into usable sizes for cards.



I couldn't just cut straight lines without ruining some of the images, so I used my Creative Memories straight trimmer to cut them apart in groups. There is an arrow on the blade that shows the exact position of the tip of the blade so I knew where to stop my cuts in one direction and then I could make another perpendicular cut to separate the image or images.



Here is the same paper "exploded" showing all of the cuts I made.



These are the "regular" shapes (squares and rectangles) that I cut from one sheet of paper.



These two pieces are odd shapes - I could use them as corner embellishments on a scrapbook page or cut all of the images apart.



Each card is slightly different. For this one, I added a layer of white cardstock just a bit bigger to mimic the "grout line" between the photos. I inked the edges of the patterned cardstock with brown but left the white cardstock plain.



For this card I inked the white layer and the image layer with dark blue ink.



Here I left a small white edge on the lighthouse image when I trimmed it and then mounted the image on blue paper that I inked with dark blue.



On this card, I inked the edges of the image and layered it with white cardstock again. Since this was a single image, there were no "grout lines" and I made the reveal of the white layer quite thin.



These are all A2 size cards (5.5 x 4.25 inches when folded).



If you look at the top right and bottom left groupings, they are more suited to a square card format. However, I could separate the strip of smaller images to create two pieces for cards. I haven't decided yet which way to go with this. I generally don't make a lot of square cards to avoid the mailing surcharge but I do like the look of square cards and if they are hand delivered you don't have to worry about the mailing issues.

It is fun to try different variations and to put these pieces of paper that can be found in many stacks to good use. I know that there are several other stacks in my craft space with pages that are just waiting to be cut up for cards!

I hope I have inspired you to have some fun checking out your stacks for likely pages and that you will be making some new cards to use up these papers.





Another quick note - I never thought it would be this tough for someone to guess which cartridge or cartridges I used to created this design. I will give a couple of hints.

1. There is only one image used to make this mesh - repeated 35 times.

2. Hide Selected Contour is involved...

Be sure to leave a comment for me if you think you have figured out what I used!