Fun with Cars!

Never say never! I remember when the "Cars" cartridge first became available I thought, "I'll never use that." I was doing just fine with my "Cars"less collection of cartridges. Then, wouldn't you know it, Michaels had a great sale price ($29) and my sister mentioned that her grandson just loves the "Cars" characters and suddenly I needed it!

Today after doing some packing and moving with my son, I came back to my sister's house and we had some fun playing with this cartridge. I brought my baby bug with me on the trip so we could make some of the cars for her to take along when she goes to visit my niece and her family this weekend. I really do like the little bug for travel and still wish I had taken the plunge and purchased the Create when it was on sale for the Black Friday price of $149 (then I'd have the "Don Juan" cartridge which is at the top of my list right now!).



My sister put together Lightning McQueen at 5 1/2 inches. This was her first intricate layered cut and she did a great job! We also cut the names and made little signs to use with the pretend cars her grandson builds from blocks.



I put together Sally at 4 1/2 inches, smaller but there are fewer pieces involved so it was still relatively easy to do.



I used the same principles for setting up the mats and cutting that I have shown in several posts about the Disney Princesses (here is a LINK to the Princess posts) and other layered cuts like the leprechauns from the Paper Dolls cartridge (here is a LINK to that post).



Above is a photo of my mat set up for all the layers for Sally. The two blues are slightly different shades and we decided to make all the windows white.



Here is the mat set up for the top layers of Lightning McQueen - I couldn't fit the body on the baby bug mat with everything else so I needed two pages.

We added the shadows to the backs of the cars to make them more sturdy for playing - ideally we would have laminated them too (but I didn't bring that machine along...).



We used the more solid inner parts of the name cuts to label the characters on the back.

I think my great-nephew will be very excited to see these when Grandma arrives!

In looking over the extras on this cart, I came across something that can be used in a very interesting way and I'll have another "out-of-the-box" file once I have a chance to work out that design. I think every cartridge has so many possibilities when you really look through all the cuts and use your imagination!

(I didn't have time to "clean-up" and post the files tonight but I will share them when I can - it is a great time saver to keep the files for making more of these cuts after the first, rather labor intensive "set up" session!).