St. Patrick's Day Decor Using Vinyl

Hi friends and fellow crafters! Today I am a guest designer at the Cricut FANatics blog. I thought I would share the post with you too. If you haven't visited the FANactics blog yet, I hope you take a moment of your time to stop by and see all the amazing projects featured there. There are also fun challenges to enter too.

Now that St. Valentine's Day has come and gone, it's time for the wearing o' the green in our home. I finally got around to one of my bucket list projects, a St. Patrick's Day Subway Art Frame.

This was my first time attempting to use Word Collage and vinyl. Up until today, I had only used it a couple of times with my Imagine. This is a very versatile cartridge and upon closer inspection of it, I was thrilled to see the Irish inspired subway art.

I set my Expression 2 to the kiss cut (speed 3, depth 3 and blade 4) and loaded the mat. I cut a small shamrock just to make sure that it would cut. It cut nicely, so I felt safe to cut my word collage. It cut most of the words smoothly, but the smaller phrases were ripping. I changed my setting to a speed of 2 instead of  3 and set the blade at 3. I found that worked much better. It was a new blade, so I think that was why I needed to lower the setting for it. I also found that no matter what I did, I couldn't get the "Top Of The Morning" phrase to cut without tearing some letters. To fix that, I used my Gypsy to add a row of shamrocks where that phrase would have been. They are from Paper Doll Dress Up. At this point, I used the hide contour function on the Gypsy so I could change the colors of the words and phrases that I needed to re-cut. Below is an example of some hidden contours and a different color vinyl.

I weeded out all the small pieces before transferring the letters to the glass. The picture below shows the transfer paper on the letters. It really makes working with the vinyl easy.

In an effort to keep the phrases straight on my frame as I transferred them, I used a piece of scrap paper and created a grid to put under the glass while I was working. I cut the word collage at 7.5 inches wide, so I drew a line at .5 an inch in from the edge of my scrap paper. I didn't draw any lines across the paper, but I will the next time I create one of these frames. I also think I will reverse the letters the next time so that they will be inside the frame and not on the outside as they are on this one. I'm such a vinyl newbie! I used a piece of green paper from my stash as a backing for my word art.

Here's a close up of the frame. I really am happy with how it turned out.

With my vinyl scraps, I made a candle that would compliment the frame. I used a Martha Stewart Punch to make a doily border and I cut some shamrocks in varying sizes from A Child's Year. I can light this candle if I choose to because it melts into itself and the outside stays the same. If you are unsure how a candle might burn, I would suggest removing the vinyl before lighting.

If you have been wondering about trying out vinyl, I say give it a try! I really enjoyed creating this project and I know I will be digging into my stash of vinyl again very soon!

St. Patrick's Day is a double the fun holiday in our home. We love celebrating our Irish heritage and it's my birthday too! It's a great day for a birthday, everyone celebrates with me and I get a parade to boot!

Thanks fro stopping by my blog today!

Happy Crafting!
Colleen

Designed By: Colleen McCauley

Machines Used: Cricut Anniversary Expression and Gypsy

Cartridges Used: Word Collage, A Child's Year, Paper Doll Dress Up

Materials: Vinyl, Martha Stewart Punch, paper, frame and candle from my stash. The paper is is from Penny Black and is called Green Sponged.