FCCB Heat Wave Challenge using Summer Celebrations Cricut Cartridge

This week's challenge at Fantabulous Cricut Challenge Blog is "Heat Wave," which left me with a lot of wiggle room to create a project.  I decided to do something from the Summer Celebrations Cricut cartridge since I had not had an opportunity to use it yet. 

After a lot of page flipping, I decided to do the Pool Party card but instead of doing the single color silhouette layer presented with the card, I elected to use the full primary images from pages 33 and 34 and adhere them on top of the the card cutouts.

 

I used Design Studio to size the boy and girl images to fit perfectly on the card silhouettes.  Since their sizes were customized to fit on the card, I was unable to use the "relative" feature.  This meant that I had to I re-size each of the layers so that the clothes and other elements fit perfectly on the boy and girl base images. This was a little tedious but necessary to make everything line up perfectly.

I had a lot of fun building the color palette for the two figures.  I wanted to give the two characters some personality so I dug deep into my scraps and brought out a few of those 6 x 6" pads that I can't seem to use because they are too pretty. After some hunting, I got the look I was after.  In several cases I cut the same layer multiple times with different paper so I could introduce additional color into the design. 

For example, the little girl's skirt, bathing suit top and glasses came from one layer which I cut twice with both pink and pink polka dotted paper.  This gave her outfit a little variety.

The boy's towel and a portion of his ball were also a single layer which I cut twice with both yellow and blue cardstock.

I don't know why I chose that color for the card - I guess it just spoke to me - but once I had the card cut out I thought "wow, that is a lot of green" so I cut the card + shift in white to offset it a little.  Then, once I had the primary images of both the girl and boy assembled, I adhered them on top of the white trim so that a tiny part of the white was visible. I was still uncomfortable with the amount of green and considered re-cutting the card in a different color altogether, but then I added the sun from the Pack Your Bags Cricut cartridge and it all came together.

So there you have it.  I just love the interest created by the shadows in these images.  The designers did a great job with the Summer celebrations cartridge.

Now I need to find some time and money for a trip to Paris so I can use the Arc de Triomphe de l'Étoile image on page 31.

FCCB Challenge with CRI-Kits pens!

This week's challenge over at the Fantabulous Cricut Challenge Blog is to make a project featuring "Cool Treats." Our sponsor for this week is CRI-Kits and they are providing a Pen Kit and Holder for this weeks winner!  That is a pretty amazing prize -I know this from personal experience.  I used the Regular and Neon Pen Kit to make my project this week and it was super easy and a lot of fun!

I used the Cricut Imagine cartridge, Better Together for this layout. I combined graphics from page 18 and 22 and used a small hole punch to make the scoops of ice cream.  The talk bubbles came from Graphically Speaking. 

The photos were modified in Instagram using the "Rise" filter. I wanted to capture the feelings I had about summer when I was a kid.  We used to pile into my dad's station wagon and drive down to Thrifty to get their cylinder shaped ice cream scoops on a sugar cone.  As I recall, a single was $.75, a double was a $1.15 and a triple was $1.50.  Maybe even less, but definitely not more.  I thought the "Rise" filter made the photos look like the pictures my mom took with her old Kodak when I was little.  It was the kind of camera that you wound in between each picture.

I loved using the CRI-Kit pens to write the dialogue for this layout.  They were easy to install and I didn't have any trouble with smears and smudges. 

The rule of thumb is always do your cutting first and writing second.  Also, when switching out your blade for a pen and vice versa, always slip a piece of scratch paper under the carriage so you don't accidentally draw on your project.  Give them a try - they make a really nice addition to your Cricut arsenal!