Just a little inspiration...

I don't always have enough time to do a lot of browsing and reading of other blogs, however, when I do, I am always inspired and amazed at all the creative talent out there!  You may remember that in August I wrote about my first order from Papertrey Ink (here is a LINK to that post).  I signed up for their newsletters and today I received an email that led me to the blog of Michelle Wooderson who is a  member of the Papertrey Ink Senior Design Team.  She was writing about her color inspiration for the upcoming holiday season - red and cream and, in her words, "that total Nordic look."  Here is a link to her blog Mish Mash  so you can read what she posted - just beautiful! 

Later today, I had a request from a reader for some help with figuring out how to weld something on the Gypsy.  I pulled out the Gypsy and started making a trial design so I could describe the steps needed in writing my answer and realized after I was done that I must have had Michelle's post in my mind - I even used red paper to test the cut!

I used four of these tree or branch images from Gypsy Wanderings - three were rotated so I could put them all together to form a central motif that looks rather Nordic to me(!)

I added four flowers and fit them into the quadrants formed by the branches.

Here is a screen shot showing the motifs at a size you can see.

 Some of the keypads in Design Studio have teeny tiny icons but when you hover with your mouse over the key the icon appears much larger.  There is also a feature that highlights the exact key that corresponds to the image on the mat.

To check on the source of any image in Design Studio you can select the image by left clicking on a line of the image and then right click.  Then in the pop up box click on the "Show Cartridge XXX" and the exact combination of keys needed for that shape or letter will be highlighted in green on the virtual keypad.  I hope that a feature like this is added to the Gypsy - it is very handy.

I had to fight my instincts to flip and weld to make the design more symmetrical,  Right now, if you try to weld a flipped shape with a shape that isn't flipped, the weld will not work on the Gypsy.  My temporary fix is to simply rotate the components of the design.  When the item is close to symmetrical (as in the tree branches) the effect is nearly the same as flipping.  The flowers are not symmetrical so the resulting design is also asymmetrical - but I still like it!

I will make something (probably a card) with this design.  One advantage on making it on the Gypsy is that I can now cut more of these designs in different sizes by duplicating the grouped image and then resizing - this is a feature that I have been very eagerly awaiting to be added to Design Studio.

I am very happy to know that Provo Craft is working towards "design parity" between the two software tools they have made available to use in working with the Cricut.  To have the same basic features available to use with my computer or on the go with the Gypsy will be great!

(I realized after I took the photos and uploaded them that I hadn't popped the tiny centers out of three of the flowers - they are out now and look even cuter!)