Saturday, February 20, 2016

For Someone Special

Ever since I received the new CTMH Artistry cartridge, I've been wanting to play with the "weld" feature on my Cricut Explore to create a panel overlay.  For this card, I welded a rectangular frame from the Art Philosophy cartridge with a floral overlay from Artistry to create this card:


In order to get the overlay and rectangle to weld like I wanted, I had to "unlock" the images so I could stretch them.  I began with the rectangle and edited it to be 4.25" W x 5.5" H.  The border ended up being too thick, so I copied and pasted the frame, sized it down, then used the "slice" feature to cut the two images. I then unlocked the flower image and manually stretched it enough to get a few places on the top and bottom to touch the inside of the rectangle.  Once everything fit, I hit "Select All" then right clicked and chose "Weld" from the drop down menu.  If you own both Art Philosophy and Artistry, here's the file so you can download everything you need to recreate this (including the accent flower).

If you aren't familiar with the "slice" and "weld" feature on your machine, I encourage you to go to the Cricut tutorials on their website.  Once you've know how to use them, these features give you incredible artistic freedom.

I sponged the background in colors for this week's Color My Heart dare: Honey, Pear, and Cranberry, glued my welded flower and rectangle piece over top, and added a banner stamped with the line and a sentiment from a stamp set called "Packages, Boxes, & Tags."  It felt like it needed something more, so I cut a double layer flower from Artistry both in white, sponged the background flower, and added them to the banner.  Again, something felt off, so I sponged a leftover bit of paper with more Cranberry, punched it out, and added a center to the flower.  That grounded it so it wasn't "floating" and made the card feel finished.

I'm pretty excited about how this turned out.  I can see myself using this overlay for all kinds of cards and get a different look by varying the colors and intensity of the background sponging.

Until next time,
Becca

16 comments:

  1. Thank you for sharing this great card and the file to boot! Can't wait to give it a try! Still learning to use my Explore and will try the technique myself! Thanks again

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  2. What a beauty, Becca! You did a great job of creating a new overlay--the well blended sponging looks almost like watercolors. Thanks for sharing this gorgeous card with the Color Dare and thanks for sharing the cutting file--I look forward to trying this soon. I look forward to your next creation for the Color Dare.
    :) Marie

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  3. Beck this is beautiful! I love all the color and details. Thank you for the directions on the welding feature. Thanks for sharing with us at Color My Heart!

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  4. What a beautiful card and love your design for the background and what I thought was water coloring. Thank you for sharing your cricut file. I have tried slicing with no success, I'll have to go back to the tutorial and refresh. There are so many times I want to use the slice. Thanks for joining us at Color Dare, and please join us again next week...love your artwork.

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  5. Becca this is a BEAUTIFUL card. I think you're card was the push I needed to look into getting an explore. I'm almost embarrassed to have my card post right next to yours.

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  6. While your card front is very nice, the file you shared can only be cut by those who personally own and have linked both CTMH cartridges that you used. I only own the Artistry cartridge and do not own the Philosophy cartridge. So I am not able to cut the file as it requires the ownership of the Philosophy cartridge content of the frame you sliced and welded to the content from the Artistry cartridge. But I can now use the content of the Artistry cartridge that I own and simply insert a free rectangle shape and slice my own opening and weld the Floral images from the Artistry cartridge to achieve the same cutting image. Thank you for the Inspiration. Your card creation is beautiful.

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    1. You are absolutely right about needing to personally own both cartridges AND about slicing a free rectangle shape into a larger one to recreate the same thing. Where there's a will, there's a way! :)

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  7. Thank you so much for sharing this beautiful creation of yours!

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  8. Impressive..thank you for sharing

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  9. WOW! This is gorgeous! Love the overlay and then that flower by the sentiment is such a great touch. Thank you for inspiring us at Color My Heart Challenge Blog.

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  10. This is beautiful! Thanks for sharing the DS file too.

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  11. I love your card and the way you colored in the background to make the overlay really stand out and the details you added to finish the card make it a full total package!

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  12. This is GORGEOUS!!!! Thank you for playing along with the Color Dare Challenge Blog! Jen - DT

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  13. I just love this card, it is fabulous! Thank you so much for sharing the file too!! Thanks for joining us this past week for Color My Heart.

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  14. What a fun feature! Now that you've figured it out, I'm sure you'll make a ton of great projects. The colorful background is so vibrant and beautiful.

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Thanks so much for taking the time to comment. You bless me!