Time for Cupcakes

This is the other tag I created for the second round of the Tags Plus Inchies (TPIs) swap hosted by Kopperhead. The theme for this one was "Time." My first inclination was to do something with clocks and dark "antique" colors but I just couldn't get motivated to make 20 tags that were "serious." I have been seeing lots of cupcake images everywhere - cupcakes are "in" these days - and I knew I could do something bright and pretty with cupcakes, so I changed my plans...




I wanted to cut phrase "time for cupcakes" into the top layer of the tag, so I chose the Alphalicious font which has a lighthearted feel and a stencil style letter format in the tag option. Above you can see an example of the letters I used. In order to use just the letters, you need to hide all of the other contours in the image. (To hide contours, left click on the line you want to hide and it will turn red - then right click and choose "hide selected contour" at the bottom of the drop down menu - the line will turn a very pale blue to show that it is hidden and will not cut).



This screen shot shows the letters in place on the tag with all of the unwanted contours hidden.



Since there were so many contours to hide, I did just two tags for the file. They are set up on a 6 x 12 mat and you can cut two tags, then unload the mat and reinsert it from the opposite direction to cut two more.



There are three inchies on each tag. The cupcakes were punched from a sheet of cardstock in the DCWV "Sweet Stack" with a grid of tiny cupcakes. I punched the center cupcake with a special Creative Memories decorative square punch. The two side inchies have cupcakes punched with a 3/4 inch circle punch. To add definition to the edges I decided that I needed a slightly larger circle.



I don't have a 7/8 inch circle punch, so I used my Cricut to cut lots of .875 inch circles. I did this using the Graphically Speaking cartridge using the method I shared in my post about "Lots of small circles in a hurry" - here is a LINK to that post.



Here is one more close view of the inchies - it was tricky to get them punched with the cupcake centered properly but I did my best....



Here are the 60 completed inchies before I assembled the tags.



I cut a slightly large version of the tag in dark pink to back the light pink tag and make the words "pop" and create a thin border around the tag. As an alternative, I also created a slightly smaller tag which could be used to back the tag to make the letters show without an outer border on the tag. Both options are in the file. I have noted on the file that you will need to rehide the holes at the tops of the tags for the backing tags (when you hide only one contour in a shape it will not stay hidden when the file is closed - if there are only two contours in the design it is not possible to use the workaround I figured out in the post linked HERE).

I chose to leave the tag hole unpunched with just the hole in the top light pink tag backed in bright pink, but you could punch through both layers and add a ribbon if you wanted a usable tag.



Here are the 20 TPIs just before I packed them up for mailing - lots of assembly on this group!



Both of the tags I created for this round were bright and cheery! If you'd like to see the other TPIs created for this theme, you can click HERE to see them posted on Kopperhead's blog.

I am sharing the file I used to make these in case you want a closer look at some of the techiniques I used to create it.

Time for Cupcakes Tags