New Cricut Cards!

This week I purchased the Cricut November Mystery Digital Box.  The offer includes five digital cartridges:  

1. J Goode Holiday Designs
2. Natalie Malan Christmas Florals
3. Anna's Christmas Greetings
4. Kim Byer's Oh What Fun
5. Kim Byer's Pie Oh My

I have been playing around with what I can do with these images in terms of productive practical application.  Here are a couple of cards I made and some observations on these new "cartridges".  I use the term "cartridge" loosely because they are simply digital sets.  No physical product is involved.

The first card I made, pictured above, is an example of a one-layer image attached to a separate folded card.  I wanted to make some quick Christmas cards that do not take a ton of cutting and assembling.  The digital sets I purchased are ideal for this application.

The one layer consists of a series of images that I attached in turn to my basic white rectangle used for the card front (5 1/4" x  4").  The first image is a rectangle tag that I changed to a "print" option from the default "cut" option in the Christmas Florals cartridge.  I changed the color of the tag to a blush pink to match the blush pink banner offered in the cartridge.  By the way, I had to call Cricut to learn how to use the banner images.  The way the cartridge is designed, you print a whole sheet of various pink banners.  In order to use just one of the banners, you have to change the default "print" option to a "cut".  Then the "contour" button lights up and you can delete all but the banner you want and add it to your card.  You can then add text.  I was only able to get a "write" option for my text but that was no problem.  I used a Precise V5 black Extra Fine pen to allow the Cricut to write the text when it cut the project.  BTW a big shout out Thank You to Julie at Cricut for helping me figure this out!

I also added one of the Christmas Florals scalloped squares images to the center of the pink square, and attached.  I then added the darling Christmas Santa-hatted bear from the Kim Byer's Oh What Fun cartridge to the center of the floral square and attached.  I thought the reds of the Santa hat and banner closely matched the Christmas Florals red flowers.

After cutting out my project with the Cricut I added a white eyelet and a bit of ribbon to the hole in the pink tag image and placed my project onto a pre-made A2 size folded blush card.

If I do this project again, I may add some text to the banner on the center bear first.  It seems a little empty there.

Here is the second card I made:

This time I made a 5 1/4" x 4" rectangle and filled it with one of the 6 pretty patterns that come with the Christmas Florals cartridge.  I also inserted the plain tag image from Christmas Florals, sized it to fit the card front, and filled it with another pattern (hard to see in the photo above--it's a very light pink text pattern).  Remember, I have to attach each step of the project to make it one layer overall.  I added one of the Christmas Floral banners this time, and instead of using one of the default cartridge colors (grey, pink, dark pink, light green, or white) I changed the color of the banner to a maroon.

 Remember I had to change the banner option to cut anyway to manipulate it, so now all the color options of Design Space are available. (The Christmas Florals cartridge has a tag already designed with this saying, but I wanted to be able to manipulate the image so I could vary my text if I wanted to.  Practicing designing my own tag using the cartridge elements allowed me to learn how to do this.)

Since my banner was so dark I wanted to use a white text.  I chose a Watercolor Brush Font I purchased separately from the Mystery Box.  After attaching all and making sure I had a print option chosen I added the cute penguin from the Kim Byer's Oh What Fun cartridge.

Hard to see, but after the Cricut printed and cut the rectangle, I added a ribbon and a jingle bell to the tag and pasted it to a pre-folded A2 white card.  Next time, I am going to add some fuzzy felt or other material to the penguin's muffler.

Thanks for looking!  If there is interest, I will post my Design Space files for these cards so maybe you could make them too!