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Frame Feature
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Trying to find the right words to relay a message might be frustrating at times. To quote the cartridge box, Beyond Birthdays has “inspirational phrases and icons to create personalized handcrafted cards for every occasion”. There are so many more applications for this shape set than using it only for cards!
Here’s a personal example: A few months ago, our son flew home after spending two years in northern Italy. As we wanted the airport experience to be as photo-worthy as it could possibly be, we made several posters to wave as he came down the escalator. We cut the words “Bravo”, “you did it”, and “The Big Day” from cardstock. Then, we applied glitter to the words using the colors of the Italian flag. We glued the now-sparkly sentiments to the posters and drove to the airport. Finally, the long-awaited day was here. With family welcoming him home, tears flowing, and cameras flashing, we had our ‘Kodak moment’! As I look back at those photos, the emotion of that time is still powerful, but it’s those eye-popping posters that actually tell the story without having to journal a thing.
Getting back on topic, one of the things I love about this set is the Frame Feature. Did you know you can cut a frame for each of the words? All the frames can be cut in either a squared or circular shape and are sized to fit the words perfectly. Be sure to flip through your Beyond Birthdays handbook, (pages 90-137) to see how they work together…you will love it, too!
Creating cards, layouts, and posters from scratch can be a daunting experience, but Beyond Birthdays by Cecelia Harris gives us a great start to our projects. It’s worth exploring.
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Cartridge Overview
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All of the cartridges have two Creative Features in common. They are Shadow and Blackout. The function of these two keys are exactly the same in all circumstances: Shadow perfectly mats the original graphic and Blackout gives you a general shadow of the original but with no interior cuts (such as the two holes in a capital letter B).
Discovering the rest of the individual cartridges Creative Features is like embarking on a scavenger hunt where you shriek "ah ha" every time you try out a new one. Doesn't it make you excited to find out what new ones the Cricut team will come up with next?
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Tricky
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Beyond Birthdays can be a little tricky but always remember that one of the core purposes of the set is to build a card. All of the features and images work together to do so. We know manuals may not be very appealing to read, but the samples for this week's exploration are best illustrated on page 18 and 19 of the Beyond Birthdays handbook. We encourage you to take a few minutes and carefully review them.
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Shaping Up
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Now that we have a plethora of shape cartridges to sort through, it's time to find a way to organize them. It takes precious crafting time to flip through each handbook, looking for the perfect piece to finish a project when we can have that information right at our fingertips, in a single binder, box, or maybe even a cd.
I love simple organization ideas, and for me, that starts with big, black binders. With each shape set, I looked through the handbook to find a single page that shows the Creative Features for that cartridge in full use, such as page 102 (elephant) in Animal Kingdom. Online, under the products tab at Cricut.com, I found the corresponding page from that handbook and printed it out. This gave me a brief overview of the artistic style and content from the cartridge, as well as an example of the Creative Features. On the bottom of the page, I wrote the title and artist name as a reference for that page. In my binder is at least one printed page (8½ x 11") for each shape set.
The next step in my quest for simplification included cutting out samples of specific shapes, using Linda Scott's Cheat Sheet by Alpha. She and others have posted about this list often on the MB and I find it a valuable organizational tool. Using the list, I chose items that I would be using a lot, such as bookplates, butterflies, cards, hearts, and "I love you". Setting the size at 3", I cut samples of each one, some with shadows or other Features. On a single page, I glued all of the bookplates, referencing the cartridges used, the Feature, and the size (3"). Then, I inserted it into a page protector and added it to my binder. Repeating these steps for the other items previously cut, I ended up with over 20 pages of frequently used shapes. When I have a couple of free hours, I'll add pages that show shapes that I think are particularly awesome, such as the 'hydrangea' in Walk in My Garden to this section in my binder.
There have been several posts on the Cricut Message Board about alphabetizing precut shapes, keeping a running list of all the Cricut shapes, and even cutting out ALL the shapes a cartridge has available, gluing them onto paper and filing them away. Find what works for you, then adapt and streamline as your library grows with each new cartridge. Feel free to share your ideas and pictures with us - we'd love to see what you do for craft spring cleaning!
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Imitating Stamps
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Stamped Cartridge is a font cartridge designed to imitate the look of letters or shapes that have been stamped onto a piece of paper. Do not be alarmed if the lines of your letters or shapes are not completely straight or if they have little divots or squiggly-looking lines here and there. These lines create the look of ink as it absorbs into paper.
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Features in Common
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Many Cricut users have purchased all of the cartridges currently on the market. Using coupons, sales, the internet, LSS’, and TV shopping shows, the country’s going buggy in a big way!
Not including the special cartridge available through QVC or George and Basic Shapes, there are six font cartridges and six shape cartridges. The fonts include: All Mixed Up, Base Camp, Jasmine, Mini Monograms, Stamped, and Teardrop. The shape cartridges are Animal Kingdom, Beyond Birthdays, Celebrations, Christmas Cheer, Doodlecharms, and Tags, Bags, Boxes & More.
All of the cartridges have two Creative Features in common. They are Shadow and Blackout. The function of these two keys are exactly the same in all circumstances: Shadow perfectly mats the original graphic and Blackout gives you a general shadow of the original but with no interior cuts (such as the two holes in a capital letter B).
Discovering the rest of the individual cartridges’ Creative Features is like embarking on a scavenger hunt where you shriek “ah ha” every time you try out a new one. Doesn’t it make you excited to find out what new ones the Cricut team will come up with next?
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