Some Thanksgiving Deals - direct from Cricut.com

 Well - the day was far busier than I thought it would be so there was no time to make a video.  I did get a lot of preparations finished for tomorrow - including five pies!

I want to make sure you know that there is a great deal on cartridges available directly from Provo Craft on the Cricut.com site.  I just ordered three cartridges (Designer's Calendar, When It's Cold Outside and Stamping Solutions) for a total of $75.98 with free shipping!  Full cartridges are $36 and solutions and mini cartridges are $19.99.  Most cartridges are available (but not the exclusive or bundled cartridges).  Pagoda, Dinosaur Tracks and Old West are some of the most recent cartridges listed that are available now.

Just go to the Products section of the Circut.com site (here is a LINK) and do some easy Black Friday shopping - starting right now (the offer is good from November 26 - December 1, 2009).  The Jukebox and Design Studio were both listed at $20 but are showing out of stock right now - with luck they may be replenished before the sale is over....

I hope you have a wonderful holiday and much to be thankful for.

The file for the Happy Thanksgiving with the detailed welded turkey is available to download

Turkey Happy Thanksgiving (with details)

Happy Thanksgiving!

Many of us will be very busy with Thanksgiving preparations tomorrow.  I had a long drive home today and I am too tired to make a lengthy post tonight.  The visit with my Dad was great and I am so thankful that our family was together to celebrate his birthday - as he told me when I left, he is now in his 86th year!

The Thanksgiving image above was made by welding the turkey from My Community to the "Happy Thanksgiving" phrase from Wild Card. If you look closely you will see that the "webbing" or detail lines are cut on the turkey.  Normally these lines disappear when items are welded but you can get them to cut by using "hide selected contour."  I have explained this before on my blog (here is a LINK to an old post and a LINK to the follow up post).

In between baking and last minute food shopping tomorrow, I will try to get a video showing this method of preserving the details in welded cuts posted.  Many people have told me that they find these videos very helpful and easier to understand than a long words and pictures post.

Good Luck with all of your last minute preparations (and with planning your purchases for the Thanksgiving sales!)

Another way to cut the details.....

OK - it's time for a little more monkey business! I have had some questions about the detail cutting and I will try to answer them today (don't worry - I will get those medallions I promised posted tomorrow!).

Some readers who are new to Design Studio did not realize that the image detail cuts ("webbing" is the term used by Provo Craft in the FAQs) were lost when welding shapes together so I think my excitement with this discovery was a bit hard for them to understand. If you are just getting started with Design Studio it will be easier for you to begin doing projects because solutions to many common problems have been found. I actually enjoy trying to find "workarounds" for the problems and limitations I find in the program. I do wish that as the software updates are released there would be more information provided about the changes to the program so users would not have to figure out all of the implications of the updates on their own.

About the mat.... Several people asked about the two stage cutting with concerns over the mat loading. You do not do anything to the mat after you load it the first time to begin the cutting process. Simply cut one page and then the other - the order does not matter and the machine will make the cuts placed on each mat in the correct locations. When you have finished both cuts you can unload the mat.

How to get the "hide selected contour" back.... There was also confusion about the copying and pasting which results in the loss of the "hide selected contour" option and the need to close the file. I do not know why the option is lost after pasting but it is quick and simple to close the file and then reopen it. You do not have to shut down the entire program and wait the minute or so it takes to reload - just close the file and open it again - an odd quirk but it seems to "reset" the option.

Can it all be on one page? Some people wondered if by doing various combinations of operations you could have the entire design on one mat - yes, you can, but it is a bit easier to see what you are doing and to remember where you are in the process if you use multiple mats - one feature I particularly like about Design Studio is the ability to have many pages in the file - this makes designing easier in many cases.



Just for fun I redid the file all on one page and took some screen shots to explain the steps - I also added in a few of the more basic things I was mentioning for those who are really new to Design Studio (such as copying, pasting and flipping). Some of these I have previously explained in my blog (here is a LINK to an old post about the Castle Card pictured above) but there are lots of newcomers who may appreciate a bit more of a step by step explanation.



Begin your new project and use "save as"in the file menu to save the file for the first time with whatever name you choose.




Start by placing a monkey on the mat then, click "welding", and then, while the monkey is selected, click "copy"



Then click "paste" - the new monkey is pasted directly on top of the first monkey (notice how the outline of the monkey is darker - this is because there are two monkeys in the same position).


Next, be sure that you check flip (welding should be checked if you checked it before copying and pasting)



You monkeys will look like this....



Use the handle on the center left side of the selection box to slide the flipped monkey to the right and align the monkeys so their hands are joined.



Now, copy and paste each monkey and slide each new monkey to the side so you can see the outlines.



If you try to select the hide contour option on the new monkeys the option will be grayed out and unavailable.



Close the file by selecting close in the file menu



This box will appear - click yes, then reopen the file



The option to hide contours on the pasted monkeys is now available.



Select the lines you wish to hide by left clicking on the exact line and then right clicking and choosing "hide selected contour" you also need to be sure that "welding" is now unchecked.



In order to position the detail monkey correctly, select the welded monkey and check the X and Y coordinates, then select the detail monkey and enter these values in the selection box (the Y value should be correct already).



Follow the same steps for the detail monkey on the left. Don't worry if you have "lost" the handles on the right side and can't slide the monkey back into position - when you enter the values into the Shape Properties box it will move into place (you can also use the keyboard arrow keys to move selected objects around on the screen).

You now have the welded monkeys and the unwelded monkeys directly on top of them on the same mat. When I tested the cut the details cut first and then the outline - all in one click of the scissors icon!

I hope that this helped you to understand the process a bit better. I will probably continue to use multiple mats which also gives me the option of cutting the welded shapes without the details if that suits my projects better.


One more tip - if you bend the cut a bit at the detail marks, the monkey has more of a three dimensional look (I pushed the ears up and the mouth open a bit!).

Another "Eureka" moment - how to get detail cuts on welded shapes

One of the frustrating things about welding shapes in Design Studio is that the "detail" cuts on the shapes are eliminated once you check "weld." In the past, I have tried to work around this by adding back details using the markers but I haven't been entirely happy with the results - the effect is not the same as having those defining cuts.

This morning I suddenly realized that there might be a way around this problem now that we can use the "hide contour" feature. I was so excited to test out my idea!

I welded two monkeys from the New Arrival cartridge together (I flipped the second one so they could hold hands). Then I copied and pasted the monkeys on to a second mat and unchecked the "weld" box on each of them. I closed the file and reopened it to make the "hide contour" feature active for the copied and pasted shapes - hide the outer line of the monkeys and, holding my breath, clicked "preview" - this is what I saw



A few discouraging words passed my lips as I let my frustration get the better of me! But I am nothing if not determined (some would say stubborn) and I decided to just give it a try - after all when you preview a regular unwelded shape the detail lines are not dark like the cutting lines - so what did I have to lose?

First, I cut the page with the welded monkeys - below you can see it in the machine after cutting - there are no detail lines.



I left the mat in place and went to the page where I had hidden the outer contours, pressed cut and the Cricut proceeded to cut only the detail lines! Here is what it looked like after cutting the second page.



And below is a photo of the welded monkeys with the detail cuts!



If you look at this cut you can see that the holes for the eyes and noses came off the mat - this is because they actually were cut twice - details of welded images that are actual full cuts (like these tiny circles) have always cut on a welded object.



So I went back to my detail page and hide those circles as well.



Above is the cut just after unloading the mat - the cuts are made but the paper hasn't been pulled up.



You may be able to see it a bit better in the second photo with the excess paper removed.
By following this procedure you can have a cut that looks like this...



instead of this....



I also tried it with another little monkey welded to a phrase from the cartridge. Even though the preview screen looks like this



After cutting, first the welded page and then the page with detail cuts only, it looks like this - there are detail lines! (The cut is on an A2 card).



These little monkeys are doing the Happy Dance with me!



In case you have trouble understanding exactly what I did, I took a few screen shots. First, set up your design with the welding check for each shape - in preview it will look like this.



Then select each shape and copy and paste it to a new page in your file. When you copy and paste the shape is placed in exactly the same place on the new page so everything will line up correctly. Since you copied and pasted to get the shapes in the right place - the hide contour feature will not be available. Close the file and then reopen it to make the feature active.



Then left click on each line you want to hide - in this case the outline of the shape of the monkeys and the four small circles for their eyes and noses. When the line turns red, right click and choose "hide selected contour" (as shown above).



Make sure that the weld box is not checked for the shapes on the detail page.



After hiding the contours your page will look like this - the hidden lines turn blue.



Above is a view of the single monkey detail page (it is a bit easier to see the hidden contours here). Remember, you should not unload your mat between cuts to insure that the details lines will be properly placed.



Are you excited about this? I know I am and I have all sorts of ideas about designs I can make using this idea! Experiment with it and have fun - and let me see what you are making!

(I know I promised more medallions for today but I was too excited to wait to share this! I won't be available most of the rest of the day so, if you have any questions, please be patient - I will answer emails and comments tomorrow).

This simple file is available here so you can use it for reference (or make some cards!).

Monkeys with Details