Make your own Patterned Paper

I thought I'd show you another experiment with the gelly pens. If you read my blog regularly, you know that I love to make mesh designs using a motif from a Cricut cartridge and the Design Studio software. Many people wanted to know how I make these and we have a new class on Let me Show you How to Do that for Full Page Designs (click the link to go to the LMSYHTDT blog for details on registering).



I tend to take these designs to the limit and sometimes I find that I can't successfully cut a design because it is just too intricate. Sometimes it will cut well but be nearly impossible to lift from the mat. So I thought I could try using the pens to draw one of these extremely intricate meshes.

I started with the element highlighted on the screen shot of the keypad above.



Here is the element in preview (it is one of the "tiny icon" images on the Storybook cartridge so I am sure you couldn't tell what it looked like from the screen shot - I just wanted to show you the key location).



Here is a screen shot of the preview - you can see how dense it is!



I loaded up the mat with pale green paper and put the dark green gelly pen in the holder. Once again, I don't really understand how the software directs the cutting/drawing process - first the outline is drawn and then the design is filled in but there is some skipping around until the design is complete. This one took a long time to finish - but it finished!



Here is the final drawing on the mat - there were just a few tiny spots where the line was not continuous but they will be easy to fill in. I certainly would not want to try to lift a cut of this design from the mat!



Here is a close view of the drawing. I have created a simple piece of custom patterned paper. I have a plan in mind for this paper, however, you will have to wait a day or two to see what I am going to do with it since I am away from home and my Cricuts (no room in the car to bring one along!).

If you want to see some other gelly pen projects you can click HERE for the prior posts about these pens.

Here is a link to the US site where you can purchase a set of pens and the holder:

Scrappy-Go-Lucky


What a hot and muggy day it was today - we had some torrential rain (catching the edges of a near hurricane). It took a long time to get the car loaded for the trip to NJ and we were all dripping! The trip went smoothly and we are relaxing at my sister's house before the college move-in tomorrow.

More Gelly Pen Experiments...multi colors!

I have had a very busy day - we are getting ready to take our younger son back to college and tonight we went to a family dinner so we could see lots of aunts, uncles, cousins and grandparents before he leaves. I also taught a class on Full Page Designs and I am getting a few new files and articles ready to send to Custom Crops.

If you haven't checked out the Mystery Challenge projects yet be sure to visit the Custom Crops site to see them. Here is a LINK to the explanation about the Challenge and there are links to each Designer at the bottom of the page. There is an amazing variety in the projects and the choices each designer made to use all of the items we were sent. This direct LINK will take you straight to my project. I'd love it if you would write a review of my project on the site. This is the first time Custom Crops has done this type of challenge and they are looking for feedback

I had been thinking about more projects I could do with the gelly pens and I also had "hide selected contour" on my mind. Provo Craft asked people to send in some Design Studio files so they could test them on the new Gypsy device and I sent a group including some where I used "hide selected contour" because we have been told that the Gypsy software does not have this feature so I was curious to see if they would be "cuttable" using the Gypsy. I'll let you know if I hear anything about the results.

It occurred to me that, by using "hide selected contour" I could use the gelly pens to create multicolor designs. I found a simple design from Accent Essentials to test my theory. I made a file with separate pages for red, green and blue pens - and it worked just fine!



Here you can see the blue circles as they are added to the green design.




The red circles are filling in in this photo. There were few spots where the pens skipped a tiny bit (gelly pens just do this sometimes) so I drew each page twice to insure that all of the colors were complete.



The last step was to cut the design out using the shadow feature on the cartridge.

Here is a more detailed explanation of the file:



I chose this element on the Accent Essentials cartridge for my "trial run" on this technique.



Here is the element as it appears when you add it to the mat - I made my sample four inches but I will try doing some smaller versions soon.



On the first page of the file - the RED page - I hid everything but the circles you can see in this screen shot.



For the second page - the BLUE page - I hid the items that I would draw in red as well as others that I was saving for...



the third page - the GREEN page where I hid all of the red and blue circles leaving these to draw in green ink.



Finally, I put the shadow of the element on the fourth page - the CUT page - and my file was ready to test. I changed the pen color and "cut" each page in turn - then I put in the blade housing and actually cut the final circle.



I really like this efffect and I have all sorts of ideas for various combinations of colors and cuts to create many new designs.



If you want to try this, you will need the gelly pens and the holder. These are from Scrappy-Go-Lucky - here is a LINK to the US site of this Australian company. These are made in the US and shipped directly from the manufacturer in Utah to US customers so they arrive quickly. The precision holder is finely crafted and the pens work with a magnet system which makes it so simple to use. There are no moving parts in the holder that might need to be replaced and it is easy to slide in the pen - it "clicks" as it connects with the magnet in the holder. Then you just insert the holder in place of the usual blade housing. The holder places the pens at just the right height every time.

I like the holder and the pens so much that I have agreed to be on the design team for Scrappy-Go-Lucky and I will be creating a few projects each month that will be featuring the use of these pens on Cricut designs. I have a new blinkie in the side column which will take you to the Scrappy-Go-Lucky US site.

If you want to take a look at the file and try it out you can download it here.

Multi Color Circles Medallion

Gelly pen Card (& a link to the "Mystery Project")

Here is a simple card I made using the gelly pens I reviewed yesterday (here is a LINK to the review). I used one of the frame designs on the Lyrical Letters cartridge.



This screen shot shows the location of this image. It was such an nice surprise to find all the extras on this cartridge when I first bought it. Here is a LINK to a post from last April showing some of the cuts available on this cartridge. You can click on the label for Lyrical Letters in the side column to see other uses of this cartridge.



I did several trials with the gelly pens - at three, four and five inches. I chose the red pen to get the effect of stitched "red work" - a type of embroidery often seen in quilts. I used Bristol vellum art paper - here is a LINK to an older post where I explained in detail about this paper. I like using this paper for embossing and I thought it would accept the gelly ink very well. All three images were perfectly drawn with no skipping at all.



I had been using my machine to cut and for the first drawing I forgot to change the pressure setting back to medium (the recommended settings for the gelly pens are speed 2 and pressure 3). In the photo above you can see the difference - the design on the left has thicker lines (but still far thinner than the Cricut Markers). As you can see, the lines are very smooth, straight and even.

I trimmed the paper around the four inch image to 3 1/4 x 4 1/4 inches. Then I cut a red mat at 3 1/2 x 5 inches and used my Martha Stewart Arch Lattice border punch on the lower edge.



I centered the paper in the punch, paying attention to the edges of the paper to see where the lattice would cut. After you punch the center, slide the paper to the right or left using the printed image on the punch to align the design perfectly.



On my first try, the third punch to finish the border was a bit off - it is important to hold the edge level and it is harder to do this after several punches have been made. I could probably get away with using this but it would bother me ... so I will trim this piece down to use on another project.



I was a little more careful the second time and ended up with a nice even border (on the right in the photo above).



This card is simple but the intricate drawing and the punched border make it interesting.


If you haven't already gone to see the Mystery Challenge projects on the Custom Crops site, please take a few minutes to check them out - here is a LINK to the page that explains the challenge and the seven projects are linked in a list at the bottom of the page



I used all of my "ingredients" to make this cropping apron - Here is a LINK to the page where you can read more about my project. Please be sure to leave a review on the Custom Crops site - this is the first time they have tried a challenge like this and they are really interested in hearing what people think. For the next challenge a lucky customer will get to "play along" with the design team!