A few Home Decor samples (and a chance to use Design Studio!)

After several days of using my Cricut the "old fashioned way" in order to preview the new cartridges, I needed to get back to the computer and do some designing. Fortunately, one of the four cartridges, Home Decor, is already available in the Design Studio program. This is a Solutions cartridge so there is not a booklet for me to photograph for you. However, you can preview the entire cartridge contents in Design Studio. You only need to have the trial version (which you can download from Cricut.com) in order to view the cartridges. Once you see how helpful it is to precisely place and size your cuts, weld your words together and make new designs from existing cuts you will "need" Design Studio too!



I cut the ladybug on the right as it is designed on the cartridge - it has a nice round shape. Then I wanted to make a standard A2 sized card using the ladybug so I did a bit of design studio magic to create a ladybug aperture card - I just needed to "stretch" the ladybug a bit.



Next, I played around with one of the decorative frames. On the cartridge the center of this design is a scalloped circle.



I stretched it a bit so I could size the frame to work on a 5 x 7 card. Then I added an initial in the vertical frame and a monogram in the frame that I turned sideways. I used the Storybook font for the letters and welded them in the frame.



To add some spark and contrast to highlight the letters I cut ovals in the correct size using the Storybook cartridge again for the basic shape.



Above you can see the vertical card with the horizontal monogram. This is just to show sizing - I haven't finished this as a card yet.



Here is the horizontal version of the card with the vertical initial. These will make lovely formal cards with a little detailing and embellishing.



Finally, I took the fancy arrow shape and welded four together into a frame. I did a solid shadow layer and then the ornate top cut.



Here is the "leftover" bit from the center of the shadow frame - I put this aside to use on another layout.



Above you can see the top layer of the cut on a plain pink background page. I looked at this photo as I was writing this post and I realized that a small section that completes the design was missing.



When I went back to look at the file, I discovered that this section will not cut in the blackout version and apparently I used the blackout version for my design.



I'll have to experiment with this a bit more. It may just be one of those "happy accidents" where I got a result that was not what I expected but I end up liking the "mistake" version better than the original design!



I think the remainder of the 12 x 12 paper I used to cut the fancy arrow frame also makes a lovely frame design, as you can see above.

I am planning to do a few more samples using the Jubilee cartridge tomorrow. I hope you are enjoying these sneak peeks - let me know if there are certain things you'd like me to test out and display for you to see.

(After having some sort of medical procedure 4 out of 5 days this week, I am really ready for the weekend! I hope you have lovely weather wherever you are. I am planning to go on a garden tour tomorrow and may have some photos to share).

Aperture Cards - the easy way!

Quite some time ago (before the August update of the Design Studio software) I figured out a way to weld letters or an image in the center of a oval opening on a card. The old posts can be found HERE, HERE and HERE and involve using a sequence of steps to produce the opening. These older files were done with George and Plantin Schoolbook and the font of your choice. You can still use this method, but there is an easier way with many more options available to you now.

With the August update there was a change which allowed us to weld inside an existing frame and this opened up a new world of possibilities! Many of the cartridges have some predesigned cards with cutouts - most notably the Beyond Birthdays cartridge with a huge variety of shapes and positions of the cutouts available. Quite a while ago Drew from the Cricut message board suggested that I do a blog entry about the Beyond Birthdays options and recently several people have been asking about the monogram cards so here are some tips on making these cards.

Here is a screen shot of the Beyond Birthdays keypad - you can see that there are many choices to work with - the one I used is highlighted here.



After choosing this shape I altered it a bit to fit the standard A2 dimensions by entering the correct values in the Shape Properties box.

In order to be efficient in the use of your paper, here are a few tips I have worked out. If you want to cut A2 notecards (4.25 x 5.5 inches or one half of a standard 8 and 1/2 x 11 inch piece of paper folded) you can do two at a time on the Expression. Place the paper on the mat aligned to the top left corner. Below is a screen shot showing the paper positioning.



I set this up this way so that this file can be easily used for just one card as well - using a piece of 6 x 12 inch paper on any of the machines. You will need to trim the extra 1/2 inch from the left side of the card since the file welds the two card bases together, or start with a piece of paper 5 1/2 x 11, or you can adjust the file to a 8 1/2 x 5 1/2 card size placed at the top left corner (0 for the X and Y values in the Shape Properties box).

I also made the card forms a bit larger than the desired size to prevent any cuts on the edges of the paper due to inaccurate paper placement on the mat- I find it is simpler to just cut the sheet in half after removing it from the mat. In the screen shots below you can see that the black cutting line is outside the limits of the piece of paper


The card blanks also overlap in the center of the sheet of paper as you can see here - since they are welded these lines will not cut. They are positioned to center the ovals in the individual cards.



If you want to avoid having to rotate your center word or image and you have the Expression you can set up a new file with the paper centered at the top of the mat between the 1/2 inch and 11 and 1/2 inch marks as shown below.



I included a working page for designing the word or image to be place in the center of the opening - this one has the card oriented vertically so you can work with the letters more easily in the horizontal format and then rotate them when you are ready to build the card.

NOTE: If you are placing a single image or letter in the opening, it does not matter if you add the letter first or the card shape with the opening. The weld will work correctly either way. If you are placing several letters or images in the opening you need to place the letters first and then put the card shape "on top" of the letters - it seems that way the software works the first thing on the mat is welded first and you will get garbled letters like this if you put the card down and then add the letters.



This would produce a cut like this - not the effect you wanted!



Here is a screen shot of the correctly welded design - done by first adding the letters and then the card form. You can see by the dark lines that this will cut correctly.



After cutting you will have a full sheet of paper with the two cards - simply cut this in half and score to fold the note cards.



When folded they look like this...



You can add backing paper to highlight the cut and make it easier to write a note inside(!) Patterned paper gives a nice effect, vellum accentuates the cut even more and embossing the backing also looks lovely.



(These are not finished cards - just photos for illustration).

I am posting the file I used to do my cards with some notes on the tabs about how to use the file. Just delete my name and initials - they were left to help you see how to place the center images (unless of course your name is Diane or you share my initials!).

You can try lots of various shapes and sizes - some other carts with possible cards to use are Alphalicious, Don Juan, Going Places, Joys of the Season, Locker Talk, My Community, New Arrival, Paper Pups, and Zoo Balloo. (These vary in how useful they are - some have many and some only one or two cards shapes to try).

Easy Oval Aperture Cards