Studio Chirps

Uses Paper Dolls for the bra and DoodleCharms to round out the bottom of the "shell" top from Paper Dolls...so if you don't have DoodleCharms you can just use a Circle/Oval from another cart. However, the two hearts for the panties are also from DoodleCharms...since I don't know of another cart w/ scalloped hearts you may need at least these two carts.

Lisa has the Cuttlebug hearts embossing folder in stock, the whole bra will not fit in there at once so I turned the folder sideways and did one side at a time.

The ribbon I used was just the right touch, Lisa also has it in stock! It is the third spool from the left. There was just exactly enough to do the card, so measure first!



WIMG is used to create the lacy effect...just use commas from another cart. And ZooBalloo is used for the inside saying, it was also what I used for "Be Mine" but that is in my "25 Valentines" .cut file.



This would also make a great birthday card for dh!

Here is the .cut file.

I wanted to make something that would be quick and easy to assemble. I'm not sure how quick it turned out for me, but for anyone who wants to download my file it sure will be quick for you! There are 8 mats ready and waiting to be cut. You just need paper!



I used three sheets of pink paper, three sheets of brown paper, and one sheet each of red and white. The Monkey was on Zoobaloo and the Puppy can be found on the Paper Pups cartridge.

I also used Copper and Diamond Stickles. The copper was used to create the dog's eyes and accent his nose and ears. Plus it was used for the monkey's face and tail. For those that have time the Lime Ice Stickles looked good on the vines, but I didn't take the time and thought it already looked cute enough for a bunch of 4 and 5 year olds!

Be Mine was applied w/ glue dots. The rest is assembled with a red brad. I used the Crop-A-Dile.

Have fun!

Neal wanted a brand new Mossberg gun that is not even in the stores. So, I made a puzzle card to let him know I'd help him buy it when it is available.

Here is the Cricut .cut file.

Here is the outside:



I thought I'd be able to use CDS to weld each piece together. But, I couldn't figure out how to get it to ignore parts that protruded beyond each puzzle piece. Seems like another good option for Cricut to consider in a future release. Sort of a "masking" feature.

The puzzle pieces are from My Community and the "gun" is from Paper Dolls. I used Base Camp for the lettering. And a CM sticker for "Happy Birthday" because the one I cut out got torn to shreds and it was already 1:00 am! I still thought it turned out ok.

This is what it looked like when he opened it:

Here is a card that Lisa made, she mastered welding elements inside a window!

You can get the .cut file here.

This is my sister Lisa's design. She welded "Happy Birthday" inside and out, and welded the tree to the grass, the animals are individual cuts with overlays.

Here is the Cricut file and a photo of how she laid out the detailed cuts. This is a great way to use up scrap paper! Just save your scraps in uniform sizes like 4x6, 6x6, etc and file them by color!

Ok, this kerning thing had me pulling my hair out. I learned to kern on Adobe and Quark products. I won't confuse you by telling you how they are different. I'll just show you what I went through to try and figure out how it works.

The reason you want to know how to kern AND nudge is that once you learn how it will be a time saver over nudging every letter. Instead of ten or so nudges per letter in a word you typed in one value to get your word mostly kerned, then evaluate and look for inconsistent spacing where some letters are still too loose. Then nudge the remaining letters with just a few clicks on the nudge arrow. This will be a huge time saver if you are welding a phrase AND a shadow. You won't need to remember how many clicks per letter, you just remember your overarching kerning value and what you did to the remaining letters. It will make it easier to get the shadow to line up.

Typing & Cursor Control
First, type your word. For this example I used the word "We." (The cursor control is a whole other story. I learned in another MB post that the keyboard arrows worked better for moving the cursor from one place to another....I've found this to be TRUE.)You might want to use the arrows to move your word to the upper left corner so you have room to type the whole thing.

Kerning

I'm going to insert an example of "We" kerned from the largest number (widest spacing) to the smallest number (tightest spacing)and I'm going to include a graphic of that number on the numberline so you can see visually that it is a bigger/smaller number without getting a headache.

This pair is too widely spaced, and about where a lot of the letters fall naturally when you type them with Design Studio. I typed .33 in the kerning box and clicked "Apply"




Next pair, a little tighter, type .03 in the kerning box and click "apply":




Next pair, even tighter, type .01 in the kerning box and click "Apply":




Next pair, possibly just right? Type -.06 in the kerning box and click "apply":




Next pair, also looks good, type -.1 in the kerning box and click "apply":




Next pair probably too tight, click -.16 in the kerning box and click "apply":




And, if you go even tighter you will see your word start to wrap around itself going backwards!

Nudging
After kerning a word for the average overall spacing you will want to use "nudging" to fine tune. I would have thought that using nudging on an already kerned word would show you the impact to your kern value for that letter pair. Not so, oh well. We can work with this....as long as we know how!

Start nudging with the second letter from the left. Your objective is to get the letters all evenly overlapping with consistency. So, you will only adjust a few w/ nudging, if any. Click on the letter and you will see it turn into a dotted line. Adjust it to the left or right with the arrows. Move to the next letter that is either too loose or too tight for your preference and click on the appropriate arrow. And so, on.

(You can also not use the Kerning field and make all your adjustments with the nudging arrows, but this way should be faster once you get the hang of it.)

I hope this has proved helpful to someone, I know for others it will be a "duh." Again, don't assume these numbers will look the same on every letter pair and every font. Some letter pairs naturally fall closer together or farther apart and require more/less kerning than the average letter pairs in a sentence. And some fonts are more widely kerned than others from the outset. But, this example should make the logic of kerning a little more straigtforward.

Now make sure "welding" is checked and you are good to cut.

Happy chirping!

Holly

P.S. If anyone else gets confused if the kerning seems to be going the opposite way you thought then you might want to use this numberline to remind yourself if the decimal number is getting bigger or smaller (especially once you start going into negative numbers.) mathsonline

Joyce's birthday isn't until mid February, so don't tell her you saw her card!

Here is an eSnips link to the Cricut ".cut" softcut file.
Kitty: Smile It's Your Day

Step-By-Step Tutorial

First you will place all the elements of your design on the first "page". Name that page by right clicking anywhere on the mat. You'll see here I'm naming the page "The Design." This design only has 5 elements on it. In this close up you are seeing 3 of the 5...the streamer from the balloon, the cat, and the word smile.


Welding
Once you get the hang of what "welding" is meant to do it is pretty easy. Basically all you do is overlap the edges of your design elements and make sure each element has "welding" checked in the bottom left corner of the "Shape Properties" box. It is a little tricky getting the hang of inserting elements individually so that the program doesn't insert them side by side as with letters in a word. If this happens just click "control z" to "undo" or hit backspace while the handles are visible to delete the last shape added. I've found it is easier to work with if each design element is separate. (Letters in a word excluded.) Click your mouse outside the element somewhere else on the mat to place the cursor. Then insert your next element again.

Here is an example from the shadow mat where "its your day" is selected. You can see by the handles it is its own element. And, you can see "welding" checked. Just make sure each element has that box checked.


Creating a Shadow
Once your design is done you can start on the shadow. In my design the shadow is the only item welded and I didn't actually cut the "my design" page. Those elements were to be cut in all different colors. So, I copied and pasted them on new mats later.

1)Create a new page by selecting the "View" menu and clicking "new page".
2)Right click on it and label it "shadow".
3)Go back to your design tab and select "include page in preview."
4)Then go up to the View menu and select "Keep preview as mat background.

Now you are ready to create your shadow.

5) Go to your empty shadow tab and you'll see the design is there as a preview. Use this outline to place shadow or blackout images of your design element by clicking the appropriate buttons in your cartridge "overlay."

When you finish it will look something like this:


Note the two cut lines. Now you'll want to zoom to 100% or even 200% in order to make sure your cut lines are welding correctly. Look at the close up below. I've unchecked the "Keep Preview as Mat Background" option under the View menu. So, we are just looking at the completed shadow cut lines. Notice how some lines are bold and others are not? Only the bold lines will cut.

You may have to waste some scrap paper in order to get the hang of this. In my card you'll see there is a triangle between the "y" and "d" that didn't cut right. I left it so you could see what happens. In the image below I've adjusted it so that the area will cut out correctly. Initially the middle whisker was invading the triangle and on my card the tiny cut area was the corner of the whisker. So, I merely clicked on "its your day" held the "ctrl" button down for fine tune incremental adjustments and clicked the right arrow 3 to 5 times. I checked the preview after each adjustment and kept moving it until the triangle had a bold cut line.



Preparing to Cut
When you are happy with the welding of your shadow you can start planning your cut. I noticed my shadow was only using 3/4 of the page and chose two items that would fit in the top of the mat. I went to my design page and clicked on "smile" then select "copy" from the "Edit" menu. I then went to my shadow page, and pasted it. In order to get it to fit in an empty area, maybe to fit a peice of scrap paper, you can rotate it by clicking "turn 90" in the shape properties box. If you need to fine tune it to get it to fit, use the "handle" in the lower left corner. Just be careful not to use the handle in the lower right corner which will re-size it...or your cuts won't line up!

Now you are ready to cut this mat. I used an old black sheet w/ white polka dots, but I've included a "Black Bling" paper link below that would also work. On the top of the mat I used a red paper from the Creative Memories Celebration kit.

I LOVE that with Design Studio you can plan out your layout and get the cuts done in less than 1/2 the time by cutting your items in groups. Here you can see the cutting mat with the "Smile" and "party hat" elements on top and the "Shadow" (which is all the elements' shadow layers welded together) on bottom.


And here is how you would place the paper for the cuts.



Here is my second cutting mat with the rest of the elements.



And here is how I positioned the paper. You can tell exactly where to put the paper! It can't get any easier. I used scrap paper to for the photo shoot as this was an after thought, and the grey piece is a little small, but you get the idea.



Assembly and Embellishments
Next I used the Cuttlebug to create the orange embossed background and the kitty's embossed nose. Doesn't it even look scratchy?!

For those that don't know what a Cuttlebug is I've included some pictures so you get the idea. Basically you put the paper in an embossing folder. Then between two layers of plastic on top of another plastic base. Stick it in the Cuttlebug and turn the handle to send it through. The orange sheet required two passes, and it leaves a seam but this design covers the seam.



For the Kitty's face I first embossed it, then applied Jim Holtz's "old paper" Distress Ink to the edges to try and add some dimension.


I just eyeballed the nose and cut the triangle.

Things start moving a little faster from here on. Your elements are all cut and you can start adhereing everything together. I use a Xyron for most of the adhesive. But the ribbon was a little trickier. I finally settled on using a glue gun. I'll have to search for something easier to work with though.

Wait to apply the stickles until the end because you'll have to wait for it to dry. I applied "Platinum" stickles for his "fur". His whiskers were rubbed more heavily w/ the Distress Ink before I assembled the card, then I applied "Frosted Lace" stickles. I just love the contrast in real life, though it is tough to appreciate in the picture.

I didn't like the way the holes in the "S" looked so I put "Candy Cane" red stickles in the holes for a stitched look then applied it to the middle of the other letters. I'd never worked with Stickles until recently and they are a breeze to work with. Just keep a sewing needle or pin handy because they clog occassionally.

The rest of the Stickles colors are listed in the shopping list. The eyes are rhinestones from some "Whispers" flowers because that is all I had on hand. So, they are not on the shopping list, but I think they'll be easy to find.

Hope you enjoyed the demonstration. Be sure and let me know if you are confused on anything and I'll fine tune it!

If you've found this tutorial helpful, and want to copy this card, paper and all I hope you will shop with my sister Lisa and I. I've provided easy links for your shopping pleasure!
Stickles
Ice Stickles
Ribbon
Cricut Cartridges
Cuttlebug Embossing Folders
Paper option for shadow
Creative Memories Celebration Paper Kit