New Year! New Design Team! New Inspiration!
There are some very exciting changes coming this term of the eCraft Design Team!! Be sure to not miss a minute of the fun! We will have posts Monday-Friday every week and then there will be a super special post on Saturdays!
This month, we have two amazing sponsors. First off, we have Die Cuts With A View paper! They have some gorgeous paper packs! Take a look at the paper pack that I am using!
We also have Mr. Cricut Crazy Stamps! They have some really cute stamps, as well as some other crafting necessities! This month, I am going to be using the stamp set called “Gus”. So cute!
Now, I have a confession to make…we don’t have a dog. In fact, I have never had a dog. I have nothing against dogs, love them, just never had the opportunity to have one! We have talked about getting a dog for our sons, but we want to wait until they are old enough to assume the responsibility of taking care of a dog. Since, I don’t have a dog, I admit that I was feeling a little daunted at the thought of pairing up this paper with a dog stamp set. Once I had both products in hand, I took some time to brainstorm, and then the ideas started coming. It just goes to show you that even something that you think don’t pair well together can be used together!
The first thought that I had was that I just had to use my Copics to color in this cute little dog! Come on, isn’t he adorable? I used a flicking technique that was demonstrated in the Copic Coloring Guide. (Note: I got this book from Cutters Creek, and it is not currently offered in the store, but Kim said that she can special order them, so if you are interested you can e-mail her at kimberlyjbush@gmail.com. She also sells everything eCraft and has eBossers available for pre-order!) Now since this was my first time doing this technique, I made some mistakes, but even in spite of them, I think it turned out pretty well. Oh and that sentiment is from the Gus stamp set too! The original sentiment says “Wipe Your Paws Or Else!”. I just cut that sentiment to take off the “Or Else” so that it would fit on my doggie door mat. Since I still have the “Or Else”, I can easily butt the two together to use them again as was originally intended. Easy Peasy!
I made a die cut of the stamp using a technique that I demonstrated in THIS video. That gorgeous background paper is from Die Cuts With A View Collage Musing stack of course! That plant and butterflies are glittered and they add just the perfect amount of shimmer!
I just love that shine to this paper! The dog house is a modified version of the one from the Feliz Navi-Dog SVG set from Lettering Delights. The SVG was clearly designed for Christmas, but with a few quick modifications in Make the Cut, I was able to change the entire look of the doghouse! Want to see how I did it? Here is a quick little picture tutorial for you!
First, bring in the SVG onto your mat.
On your layers panel, do a right mouse click on the main layer and then select "To Each It’s Own”. You should end up with something like what we see above.
Next, delete all the unnecessary layers. In my case, this includes all the light colors and the entire white layer. Don’t worry about the name on the plaque, we will get to that soon!
Select the shapes in the black layers that has the roof and the plaque and do a Split. This will separate the roof and the plaque so that you can select only the plaque. Select the plaque and then go to the Edit menu and select Copy. Then go back to the Edit menu and select Paste in Place. Then go back to your layers panel, and select the “Selection to New Layer” button. It is the one at the bottom of the layer panel that has the small green plus sign inside a dashed line square. In the picture above, I recolored this new layer to white so that you can see what your layers panel should look like.
Then go your Text and Fonts tab (top right hand side) and select the font that you want to use from the drop down menu. I selected Bodoni MT Black, and then click on the Add a group of characters button (Ctrl I) and type in the name of the dog. I chose to use Gus in honor of the stamp set from Mr. Cricut Crazy! I then sized the text and rotated it to fit on the plaque.
Now, at this point, we have three layers for the plaque. There are two options to cut this down. The first is to remove the plain black plaque. That would leave you with a white plaque and your black letters layered on top. The only issue with this is that then you have to glue down those letters onto the plaque and be extra careful about placement. I prefer to avoid that so I am going to show you what I do when faced with this.
Hide all of your layers except for the white plaque and the black letters. Select all the visible shapes by hitting Ctrl A. Then go to this icon on your bottom tool bar (also known as Boolean Join) 
When you select this button, you will get a window with a drop down menu that gives you several options. For this situation, I used the B-A Difference. This will give us one layer that has the letters cut out of it as shown in the picture above.
From there, all I had to do was change the color of that layer to white and then I am all set to get cutting! It is really that easy!!
That is it for me today, but make sure you go to the eCraft by Craftwell blog everyday this week to see what my fellow Design Team members have created, and don’t forget about that special Saturday post too! Have a great day!!
