You Rock - Jubilee

Today was a lovely day - my husband and I went on a garden tour and we saw some fabulous gardens so he now has some new ideas for plants for our house. (Photography is not allowed, so I don't have any pictures to share but it was a very inspiring tour). We stopped by the annual Library Book Sale and picked up a few books. Then I hurried home to teach another online "Getting Started" Design Studio class. The big event of the day, however, was our son's return from his concert tour. He has spent the last 10 days performing at various locations on the East Coast and his bus was due in late tonight in Boston.

I wanted to do a few more trial cuts with the Jubilee cartridge so I thought I might make a page layout for a photo or two from "the tour." On the Jubilee cartridge there is a prewelded phrase that says "You Rock" and I thought that would be perfect! I cut a triple layered version of this phrase - the top layer in orange glitter card stock (he likes orange a lot) and then a shadow in blue and a shadow blackout in bright green.



I also cut the five pointed star shape which is the shift of the "You Rock" key and the starburst which is the shift of the "the Big Day" key from silver glitter card stock, using the shadow key to make the points a bit thicker. When cutting the glitter card stock I use "multi cut" set for two times.



Then I started to play around with the cuts and try to arrange them in a layout. It was just one of those days - I tried lots of arrangements (and I will show some of them to you here) but I couldn't commit to any of them - probably because I wasn't working with actual photos. I normally do my scrapbooking by starting with a group of photos - sometimes I can just put together a "photo ready" layout but tonight it just wasn't working for me! (The blue circles here were to represent photos cropped to show just the faces in the stars).



I decided I needed to add some guitars - there are a couple of guitars on the Indie Art cartridge and I went with the more standard looking electric guitar - I cut it twice so I could mix and match the pieces and I skipped the top layer.



The actual guitar our son took on tour looks like this - it is a "Travel" guitar and is very compact with the neck ending abruptly and the tuning pegs moved to the body of the guitars in the hollowed out areas. It looks odd but it sounds great and can be set up for acoustic or electric style. (So I am really trying to explain that the guitar I used was just a symbol - I wasn't trying to make it an accurate representation!).



I rearranged (I decided that I liked the starburst from "The Big Day" better since it had more points)...



and rearranged...



and rearranged...



tried first one guitar...



then the other...



moved the title a bit to allow some journaling space in the lower right - but none of these pages made me say - "that's it!" so I decided to make a card instead!



I made a five by seven card base from plain black card stock and put my title on the front.



Then I chose the orange guitar for the inside and added the "Congrats" that I cut with the Cuttlebug from the "Everyday Greetings"A2 combo cut and emboss set.



After I stuck down the "Congrats," I realized that I had used a different shade of orange glitter card stock (which happened to be on the table near my cuttlebug). I wanted it to match the "You Rock" so I cut another one and put it directly on top of the paler orange "Congrats" - this makes it stand up higher from the card base and it actually a nice effect (another one of those mistakes that ends up making something you like better!).



Here is a closer view - you may be able to see the added dimension but it is a bit hard to catch in the photo.

I made a few more projects using cuts from Jubilee but it is very late so I think I will wait and share them tomorrow. For those of you who asked about the .cut files for the Home Decor ideas in yesterday's post, I will try to get them ready to share soon.

Indie Art Diamond Frame

A few people took a guess at the cartridge I used for this design - most thought George, with Stretch Your Imagination, Accent Essentials and Dreams Come True thrown in for good measure. One person did get it right - "abusyfamilyof6" said Indie Art with maybe a bit of George. The design was actually done with just one element from Indie Art.

I am often surprised by the ways some of the cuts on the various cartridges can be put to use to make very different looking new designs. I didn't think the Indie Art cartridge would have a lot of items I would use but I was wrong! Here is a picture of another frame I did using Indie Art - and a LINK to the original post from last July (the file is available in that post). This one looks like a perfect frame for the evil queen in "Snow White!"



For the Diamond Frame, I started with the item highlighted in this screen shot of the keypad.



Below you can see the original faceted diamond cut and the frame it forms when rotated at 90 degree intervals and moved carefully into position.



I cut the frame in three colors - I am planning to do a few more when I get back home. Here is the basic frame in dark gray.



I then took the various bits that are cut from the outlines and used them to fill in the holes - below you can see the darker gray outline and some lighter gray pieces added in to fit.



Below is the photo from yesterday's post, which shows the frame on a blue background with two colors added in to fill some of the areas - leaving the background to show through in other areas. There are many permutations possible which will lead to all sorts of interesting and different patterns.



You could use this as a frame around a special photo, using colors to suit the occasion (perhaps a wedding or an anniversary). This was sized to place in the center of a 12 x 12 page but you could easily make a smaller version for a card.

So thanks to those who participated for playing along in the guessing game - I hope you can use this design for one of your projects. As always, I'd love to see what you do with it!

Diamond Frame

Indie Art - Flaming Frame

I was convinced that I didn't "need" (or even want) the Indie Art cartridge - but then ACMoore put all Cricut on sale at 50% off this week so I took a good look at the items on the cart and decided that I could do some interesting things with them in Design Studio (and how could I resist for $25!).

Here is the first design that I have test cut - I called it a flaming frame but it actually makes me think of traditional Hawaiian quilts.

To create this design I simply sized one element to a bit less than the width of the mat and welded and flipped to create the four sides. In order to complete the welds at the corners, I needed to add a small shape as you can see in this screen shot



Adding this small shape fills the irregular areas which would otherwise remain and spoil the design - here is a slightly closer view which also shows the shape I used highlighted on the keyboard (to make things simpler I always try to use a shape from the same cartridge).



Once again - this cut requires a bit of patience as you remove it from the mat - I used my handy "super scraper" to help with the process



This design has some very small and thin points so be careful as you separate them from the background.



Here is another view of the finished cut - you can see how delicate these areas are



Here is the cut placed on a 12 x 12 piece of cardstock



I always like to see what the offcut looks like - in this case I think I prefer it to the frame!



Even the remaining center section is interesting and could be used on a page - so you could get three coordinating pages from the one cut.



The only bits not used would be these small interior pieces (and you could save these to put on a card!).



You could also place the center cut on the sheet with the outer frame with this result



The main difference between this and the cut is the elimination of the small bits at the four poles so those areas are more solid than in the original design.

Here is the mat after the cut was removed - this gives you an idea of what it would look like cut in white and place on a red background.



Here is the cut on a pink background so you can see how a more monochromatic scheme would look.



I hope you can use this design for one of your projects.

Flaming Frame