Saturday, August 21, 2010

It's a Cricut Card, REALLY!


So of course you all know I've been enjoying a bit of a diversion with stamping and the like but look again here. This is a Cricut card. At CHA I spent alot of time with fellow Custom Crops Design Team sister Amy Chomas of Chomas Creations. Amy makes those fabulous mini gel pen, mini sharpie, and micro mini sharpie holders that work in the Cricut like the Cricut markers but SO MUCH BETTER! (Over a martini or two, hee hee) we got to talking about Copics and she said "Well you know you can use my pens with Copics too." What? Are you kidding me? Sure enough. (Okay, so I'm a little surprised I remember the conversation...)

Although I LOVE the images on the Tinker Bell and Friends cartridge, the chances of me cutting those teeny little pieces are slim to none. Instead, using Design Studio, I placed both the shadow and regular cuts of Fawn and that gorgeous floral corner on my screen for placement. Then I copy and pasted the shadow images to another screen and welded them and went back to the original screen and deleted them. Now I have one mat for drawing and one mat for cutting. I replaced my blade with the mini gel pen holder and first drew the images. (I used pressure 3, speed 3 but in DS the speed has a mind of it's own) NOW, DO NOT UNLOAD THE MAT, PRESS LOAD MAT (not load last) and replace the pen holder with your blade again. (ADJUST YOUR PRESSURE to cut, VERY IMPORTANT) Go to your second page (with the shadows for cutting) click cut and voila! Now you don't have to use DS for this if you're just cutting single images and it works the same way. If this is clear as mud, check out Amy's video HERE.

WOW! Now I could color to my heart's content and didn't have to fussy cut around the image to pop it! I have the freedom to resize like a digi, WOOHOO!!! I don't know about you, but those Disney carts drive me up the wall and I can see getting SO much more use out of them with my pen holder! Not all that much more needed for the card either. The gorgeous paper is K&Co Que Sera Sera, a bit of that sort of weird sparkly fuzzy $1 bin ribbon from M's and "imagine" in wire attached with my Tim Holtz Tiny Attacher. Guess you still can't really see it, but it's there and looks pretty cool in person.
Not a whole lot of dimension here, but this was a first attempt. It will be interesting to try drawing and cutting the layers for even more dimension. Thanks Amy for cluing me in to this fabulous application for your mini holders. I'm SURE to be using them a whole lot more now, not to mention all of those nearly unused Cricut carts I thought I just HAD to have. Be sure to check out Chomas Creations for more great ways to use these FABULOUS holders (including the embossing kit which I'm anxious to try after seeing Amy's super cool layouts). They can be purchased right on her blog (as well as Custom Crops) and I have to mention that they are manufactured in the USA which is always a big deal to me (especially in this economy) by Amy and her family members. (Tell me that's not cool and deserves support!) Luv ya, girl!
I'm also linking this up to Scraptastic Saturday which is a great new feature on Hannah's blog where you can view a wide variety of fun creations all in one place.

33 comments:

  1. What a pretty card!

    I'd love to have you link up to Scraptastic Saturday!

    Hannah
    http://youngancrafty.blogspot.com/2010/08/scaptastic-saturday.html

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  2. This is wonderful!!! Fawn is my favorite of Tink's friends, and you made her look sooo pretty. Amy was a hoot and I loved meeting her AND YOU!! Her products rock and you are the PERFECT person to showcase her products!!!

    xx Susan

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  3. This is wonderful. I have never been impressed with the pens and makers or saw a need for them. Now I totally get it and want them. Thanks for this great idea. Hubby's wallet says.....blah...lol

    Emily C

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  4. Hi Donna,
    This card is beautiful. I love the cut shapes and the colours. The image is gorgeous. Brilliant work.
    Hugs,
    Fiona x

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  5. OMG!!! WOO HOO! When I first saw this image - I thought HOW the heck does Donna cut things out so PERFECT!? What a great idea - now, if we could only upload our TI images into the cricut and have them cut out perfect! LOL...BEAUTIFUL card Donna - now I wish I had this cute cart!
    Melissa

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  6. omg !!! donna how cool is that?!!!! i love the way she came out!! i have never bought those carts after seeing how frustrated people get with the eyes and stuff but ooooooh she looks so cute!!!! big hugs lou xxx

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  7. That turned out awesome! Those are on my wishilist Thanks for sharing :D.

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  8. Great card!!! Soooo cute! Good to know about the mini pens and Copics, Thanks

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  9. Thank you SOOO much for stopping by to link up!

    Hannah

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  10. Way COOL!!! D, it came out fabulous! I never bought Tinker, because everyone said to cut her out was a --tch, lol. I do cut out Mickey, as I'm use to him. Love the way you used your pens, might have to check them out soon.

    Hugz, xx

    ~L~

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  11. This card is just beautiful...and the technique is terrific! Those pens would be great for drawing the ferris wheel from Summer Vacation, the peacock from the exclusive Circle cart...the list goes on. TFS!!

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  12. Isn't awesome what you can do with your cricut and pens and markers, yay!

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  13. WOW...this is gorgeous! I'll have to check out how you did this but I don't even pretend that I'll be able to grasp it. Looks like a whole lot of work to me. You are so creative!

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  14. this is awesome, I understand about those tiny pieces...
    great job!
    Carol<><

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  15. Well...I was there during that martini conversation and I don't believe you remember it either, LOL!
    The card..no words. Incredible as always! Aren't the pens great! Love them and Amy!

    Maria

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  16. Wow, wow, wow! This card is just fabulous!!! I love the mini pens too but this all looks way tooooo complicated for me. I'll really have to check out that tutorial!!!

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  17. Donna this is soo cool! I love what you did..I'm gonna have to get some of those gel pens now...btw I just went over to Amy's blog and love everything I saw! tfs! :)

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  18. Donna great card and wonderful tech, thanks so much for sharing. You never know what a martini or 2 will lead to. Hugs

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  19. This is beautiful. My holder & both sets of pens literally arrived in my mailbox yesterday. I'm hoping to find just a little time today to play with them. tfs.

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  20. Hey Donna, My arm is feeling a bit better so I thought I better start playing catch up on my blogging! BEAUTIFUL work as always on ALL of your recent creations! Your work is always amazing and always inspirational - but you are making me want a cricut - my hubby may stop me popping in - LOL
    xXx

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  21. Wow Donna. This technique produces stunning results. I've actually eyed these gel pen and sharpie holders over at Custom Crops but have always decided to spend my $$ on something else. Maybe I'll be rethinking this...hugs, Kris

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  22. The card is beautiful. You have so much talent. Thanks for the tip. I will definitely will be trying this. Thanks.

    http://iwycd.blogspot.com/

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  23. Wowzer !! So glad you remembered the conversation :) Love the cut and coloring and Que Sera Sera is my all time fav paper ....great job !!
    xoxo Joy

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  24. FANTASTIC, Donna! OMG, I can't believe how cool this looks! The coloring is just perfect with that bg paper! If I ever find those damn gel pens I may be able to give this a go! (Tomorrow's moving day, so anything is possible... those elusive pens just may be uncovered!)

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  25. We are ALL in the same boat! Who knew this would look SO good! WoW!
    And its a great way to use those carts that almost NO one uses b/c they are such a pain to cut! LOL!!!! I did by Tink b/c I got it for $20 on Ebay but will I ever use it? LOL!!!!
    This is super cool and thank you for sharing this with everyone! And to Amy, of course!

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  26. Oh my, Donna, this is beautiful. Thanks so much for all the info on those markers...I'll have to give it a try.

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  27. Lovely!! I love the card and the coloring... though frankly I didn't really understand much about the markers and Cricut (never seen anything like it and I don't read up about the Cricut either) but whatever I understood sounds cool ;-)

    Hugs,
    Smita

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  28. This is so pretty - I love it! It's amazing how you created it too!

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  29. Fabulous card! (I love that you're mindful of "made in the U.S.A. stuff, too!)

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  30. Now how cool is this! You know I haven't made one single cut from that cartridge and that kind of stuff drives me batty! thanks for the inspiration!
    hugs
    Sharon

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  31. omg girl...I have so been thinking about playing with this too...thanks so much for doing all of the work and sharing the how to with all of us....you have just saved me so much time....thank you-- thank you-- thank you!!!! Your card turned out perfect....it's beautiful!!! Hugs...

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Thanks for making my day!