Sweet Treats cupcake holder

I got the Sweet Treats cartridge at Michael's recently (here is a LINK to my review including photos of the handbook pages).  Sweet Treats is full of cute cupcakes, ice cream, flowers and other treats.  As I mentioned in my review, one of the disappointing things about the cartridge is that the 50 cupcake holders are identical with different decorations to cut from the shift of each key.  It seems like a missed opportunity to create more interesting cuts.

Now that Sweet Treats has been added to Design Studio you can make your own alterations.  I did a quick experiment just to try one possibility.

This is the basic cupcake holder.  On a 6 x 12 mat, the largest size you can cut is 5 1/2 inches.  This is a bit too small for the average cupcake, let alone the large cupcakes that are popular now.  It will make a cute holder for other treats or a mini cupcake.

For my experiment, I used a heart from the cartridge and made a row of five hearts, adjusting the size to fit on the side.  I copied and pasted the row of hearts and rotated it to fit on each side, taking care to keep the distance from the top consistent.  I also added a large heart to the center of each side.

I do not like the "tick marks" that tell you where to score.  They tend to make the edges look sloppy after you fold the item - particularly if you use a white core cardstock.  I nearly always use "hide selected contour" to eliminate these marks.  It is usually very simple to figure out where to score and fold an item.  The lines are visible but very pale blue in this screen shot.  Right now, simply checking weld on the item will also eliminate the tick marks but I usually hide them in case a future update preserves the lines in a welded object.

This screen shot of the preview on a blank page shows the adapted cut.  Since there will be the row of cut out hearts along the top of each side, I added a small rectangle to cut off part of the tabs.  The part that remains is perfectly adequate to hold the shape together and will not block the cut out design.  I checked weld on the holder for these previews to eliminate the color and make it easier to see the shapes that will be cut out.

After removing the extra paper, the holder looks like this on the mat.  The tabs have been adjusted by the small rectangle cuts.  I discovered that my rectangles were a bit too small and had to trim a tiny sliver by hand so be sure to pay attention to the angles to see how the tabs will fold in if you try this.

After lifting the holder from the mat, I had all of these cute hearts to save for other projects.

Here is the adapted holder ready to score and fold.  You can do all sorts of cut outs for different holidays or to personalize the holder with initials or names.

I did the scoring on my Scor-Pal.  It is easy to line up the base line folds and the scores for the flap folds just have to be turned at a bit of an angle to produce the flared shape of the design.

Here is the straight side view of the holder.  a cellophane bag of candy tied with a ribbon would look cute in this holder - maybe the candy conversation hearts for Valentine's Day!

I have other ideas for ways to use Design Studio to make these holders more interesting.  I'd love to see any ways you have changed the basic design for your projects.