Svgcuts Tennis Shoe Made with Cricut Explore

Time is running out...Just 2 more days to submit your "Celebrate Mom" project to the Fantabulous Cricut Challenge Blog for a chance to win a $50 gift card from Svgcuts.com.

Speaking of Svgcuts, today's project comes from their "Back to the Books" collection.

Before I get started, I want to preface by saying this shoe was my first attempt at this project thus it had quite a few "learning opportunities" and I am posting it as a reference/ learning tool rather than a "Ta-Dah!!." 

I had wanted the shoe to be sturdy so I used very thin chipboard (actually the back page of a DCWV paper stack) for all of the white pieces of the design.  This was a mistake because the shoe requires malleable paper to hug the curves of the project.  As you can see in the photo above, the white areas around the bottom of the shoe are far to rigid to hug the sole like a real rubber would.

Surprisingly, I used scrapbook paper rather than cardstock on the exterior panels of the shoe and it laid down perfectly.  I had worried that the wet glue would cause dimples. My suggestion would be to use cardstock for the part labeled "shoe" (see below) and all other elements, but scrapbooking paper for the "shoe panels."

Manipulating the fold lines to create the unique shape of this shoe was very cool.  The designer of this project did an amazing job of creating fold lines in just the right way to get each curved angle.  Every time I matched up two tabs and the paper rounded perfectly, I was exhilarated... like I found a missing piece to a puzzle.

This is a such a fabulous project; you really have to buy this svg set!  I have it out on the desk and guests go right to it and say "did you make this?" Those 4 little words every crafter wants to hear!