Category: Christmas Cheer
Welcome to Cricut This! Lesson1: shaped cards
Published on December 19th, 2009 @ 11:05:41 am , using 790 words, 4147 views
Lately I had a lot of fun making shaped cards using Design Studio and different carts. Like these cute snowmen from Winter Woodland
Instead of wildly sending out .cut files for you to store and forget on your computer. I would rather like to show you how to make your own. It really isn't all that hard!
For the base cards, I like to start with the shadow function of the shape.
The snowmen are approximately 9 inches high, you can change the height in DS by pulling on the lower right corner crossed arrow. Watch your Shape Properties Height while you pull. Note that the Function Keys (for shadow) have different icons in this example in DS than in your cricut overlay that came with the cartridge (at least mine is different).
Now that you have your snowman shadow shape, we need to copy it once, flip it and move the two together: Select your snowman shape (arrows around the box are showing), now press Ctrl C which copies the shape onto your computer virtual clipboard. Next press Ctrl V which pastes the copied shape onto your DS workspace. Next check the flip shapes box in your Shape Properties setting in DS:
Use the LEFT center arrow button to move the flipped shape across to the right until the snowman bodies are just touching. Look closely at the left and right arrow buttons. If the two arrow heads are the same size, this means moving this button will move the entire selection. If the arrow buttons are different sizes, you will change the size of the selection! Using the center side arrow button to move, will keep the shape on the same horizontal axis!!
Now if you look at your snowmen, you see that while the bodies touch, the hats are very far apart. If you were to move them towards each other like this to make the hats touch, the bodies would overlap too far.
We need to rotate the shapes a bit towards each other now: Click anywhere on the shape outline of the left snowman to select it (the line will turn red). Now go up to your Shape Properties and put 4 into the box rotate, then click apply . You will see how the snowman rotates a bit towards the other one:
Now select the right snowman, enter -4 into the shape properties rotate box, click apply to rotate the second one. Entering a positive value into "rotate" will move the shape clockwise, entering a negative value, moves the shape counterclockwise. We could also rotate a shape with the curved arrow on the selection box. But in this case we need the rotations to be the exact same value so that the card front and back will meet properly, so it is better to enter the numbers by hand.
After rotating both shapes, select one and use the center side move button again to move them towards each other. Move such that the top of the hat, the hat rim and the bodies just overlap a bit. Click WELD in your shape properties box. Select the other shape and click weld again. Now if you hit preview it should show you the two snowmen welded together at their center line.
The heavy lines in preview are the lines that will be cut. If your preview shows a solid colored snowman, select it and see if you have "welding" checked.
Once you are happy with your results, cut your shape. If you are lucky enough to have a scoring board, align your shaped card over a score line at the center, score and fold.
To cut the snowman front and accessories, use your cricut without design studio at 9 inch dial size for cutting.
Have fun and please show me if you have tried this with your own shapes, I'd love to see!! Different shapes may need different rotation values, just experiment a bit to find the right numbers.
Card assembly: Most rotated shapes will not be straight on the bottom, so your card would fall over but this is easily fixed! Assemble your card front without adhering it to the bard base. Cut off the bottom so that it is straight. Now glue front onto your card base and cut folded card on the bottom in parallel with your front, leaving a bit of a rim to make it fit with the rest of your "shadow width". Here is another sample that was done with the house shape from the Christmas Cheer Cartrige:
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