Christmas in June

I know it is only June, but I wanted to try out the flag option for "Merry Christmas" on the Jubilee cartridge so I made a Christmas card yesterday. I used "country colors" - darker shades of red and green and a gingham patterned paper for this 5 x 7 card.



Here you can see the various "Merry Christmas" options. I cut the banner using "fit to length" on the Expression, using 6 inches for my length so the banner would fit on a 5 x 7 card. The Cricut calculated the height at 2 1/2 inches (I had completely forgotten about this feature since I usually cut from the Design Studio program - it is very handy to have this ability when you aren't using the computer).

I also cut the holly sprigs from the shift function - I used the "flip" button for one of them. They were cut at 1 1/2 inches. The gingham patterned paper was too busy for the "Merry Christmas" to show through clearly, so I needed to face the banner. There is not a blackout option for this banner. There is a foundation for the other flag (on a stick) in the creative features. Once this cartridge is added to Design Studio we will be able to create a blackout by hiding the interior contours.




I was able to cut a piece of paper in the appropriate size to highlight the cut out letters by hand - you can see my "patch" of paper above.



I added quite a bit of white pen stitching and some Stickles glitter glue in red on the holly berries. Now think thoughts of snow - winter will be here before we know it!

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.

Jubilee - cartridge preview

The third new cartridge I will be reviewing is the Jubilee cartridge. This is another full font cartridge with upper and lower case letters and six Creative Features - Flag, Runt, Village, Stilts, Shadow and Shadow Blackout. The basic font is tall and skinny. This font can look serious or playful.




Here is the full alphabet - remember you can click on the picture to have a larger view. Once again, I did not photograph all of the pages showing the letters - here is a sample of the A-B page. Just in case you are curious, the letter circled in red ("X"for Jubilee, "K" for Simply Sweet) is the "Key Height Character," which is the tallest character in the font. The other letters will cut in proportion to this letter unless the "real dial size" is selected.



There are foundation keys for the Flag and Village options so you can use these as layered cuts. I think the flags will be great for all sorts of projects and I can picture them spelling out a name or title on top of a castle cut. The Village option seems like something I would use for just the first letter of each word - but there could be times when you would use an entire row of little houses. The styles of the houses vary for different letters.

The Stilts feature makes an extremely skinny letter - I haven't had a chance to cut any of these yet (that is on my list for tomorrow). The Runt feature cuts letters that are a bit more evenly sized - but still with a lot of character.



The "Love You" phrase is charming with the heart in the middle and "Hooray" is perfect for graduations and other celebrations.



I used "the Big Day" on a layout already (posted yesterday) and I am sure that "You Rock" will be very handy for both cards and layouts.



"Enjoy" and a martini - perfect for a cocktail party invitation. The "Merry Christmas" options are charming - I like both of the flag options (more like banners here) and I think the village with the Merry Christmas cutout will make a great card!



Pre-welded "and" and "the" - useful words to have available. I like the way the welded words are done with slight tilts to the letters (and I hope that eventually an update for Design Studio will give us the ability to make words like this and keep them in a single "group" for copying and resizing). The tree and the mailbox go along with the village theme - I am eager to try putting the tree together.



Finally, there are a couple of interesting tag shapes along with the always useful "to" and "from/"

This font will be particularly nice for masculine pages and cards (but there is no reason not to use it for girls too!). Tomorrow I will be experimenting with some of the features and I'll have some new projects to post.

More Previews to share

This must be some kind of a record - I have posted something on my blog everyday this year but today I am posting for the third time in one day! I mentioned earlier that I had used Stand and Salute on a layout with no red, white or blue, and here it is. The suitcase cut has a border function connecting three suitcases in a row. I cut the suitcase in a light tan and the border in a dark brown to mimic the look of an old fashioned suitcase.



The title is actually from the Jubilee cartridge - I hope to have a review of this cartridge ready for posting tomorrow. I think the tall skinny letters are very attractive and I liked this prewelded title. I cut the blackout version of the shadow for this title.



The suitcase frames have tiny holes that did not cut very well for me - I was using textured, white core cardstock (which tends to be tricky when cutting very small details) and the larger center holes were fine, but the smaller ones on either side were causing some frustration when I tried to cleanly remove the tiny circles. I decided they would look better as "rivets" and used my gunmetal color Stickles glitter glue to create tiny dots - since they are raised up they do look more like a real suitcase. I inked the handles in a darker shade of brown and bent them back a bit for dimension.

I was thinking of this layout for a move and I thought you could add words or photos in the suitcases. I would put "moving to college" in the three suitcases but I am waiting for a Design Studio update so I can weld my words in the Jubilee font!



If you are a regular reader of my blog you know I hate to waste anything and love to find ways to use up the "offcuts." The pieces that are cut out of the suitcase frames are actually easy to reuse - they look like small mats that have had their corners cut with a "ticket corner" punch.



Just for fun, I put two of them on the front of a pale yellow A2 card and added a triple layered flower on each mat. They flowers are held together with a small pale green brad and I added orange Stickles to the centers



I did a few more trial cuts from Stand and Salute in the traditional colors. The US map as a flag is fun to put together and would make a great journaling box on a layout - just write on the lines! The star frame also works for journaling and could also be used for place cards for a patriotic party or labels for dishes at a potluck.



Since I normally do all of my Cricut cuts using the Design Studio software(even if I am not altering the image in any way), in order to preview three of the cartridges, I have had to relearn how to use the buttons on the machine ! Here you can see a little "blooper." I navigated the blade to the top of an 8 1/2 x 11 piece of paper and did a few cuts. When I went on to cut "Liberty," I realized that I had neglected to press "set paper size" and so my blade went to the top of the mat as if I had a 12 x 12 piece of paper. I ended up with the "L" in "Liberty" being partially missing but, once again, I didn't want to waste it and I actually like the look with the word starting "off the page" so I went ahead and cut the shadow in white and trimmed it to match.



I cut out a quick title from Simply Sweet - the first phrase that came to mind was "Girly Girl" (I think that has to do with another project I am working on and will share soon!). I realized after I cut it that I didn't have any photos that would fit - two full grown sons in our family - so I'll need to dig out some photos of my nieces! I like this font more and more as I work with it - it has a very playful, simple and clear style.



Finally, I don't want to neglect Home Decor - this is a solutions cartridge with only two creative feature keys but it is full of wonderful images and word art. It also is already available in Design Studio so I quickly did this little adaptation of the word art "Adore" by putting it inside one of the decorative frames.