How to make the "Stained Glass" card

Several of you thought I had used one of the Creative Memories cartridges to make this design - but I have a surprise for you - it was the new Cricut Lite cartridge "Twinkle Toes" that I just bought from Walmart online over the Thanksgiving weekend.

The main image used for the design is this tiara I have highlighted on the keypad.  The size of 2 1/2 inches worked out perfectly for an A2 card.  If you don't have this cartridge I am sure there are other tiaras or similar shapes that could work nicely - just take a look through your cartridges.   (Remember, you can click on any of these images to enlarge them so you can see the details more clearly).

Here is the tiara exactly as it appears on the cartridge.

I used "hide selected contour" to eliminate the outer line of the cut and create the inset pattern.

I also hide these two lines at the top of the tiara.  By doing this, I eliminated the problem of having the one hidden line reappear when the file is closed and reopened in Design Studio.  I could have used another workaround for this problem, but the latest version of Design Studio makes it more difficult to layer designs precisely and then move them apart.

I wanted to have a full shape cutout at the top of the tiara so I used the layer shown on the keypad above.  I kept the size at 2 1/2 inches to make the layer match the original tiara.

I placed the layered element in position to create a larger cutout in the area where I had hidden the two lines from the original design.

I added a second tiara and made the same changes to it, rotated it 180 degrees and aligned it with the first tiara and added the extra element to create the cutout at the base.  If you copy and paste the element instead of adding a new one to the mat, you will need to close and reopen the file to make it possible to hide the lines in the copied image (the option to hide contour will be grayed out until you do this).

I needed a shape to cut the card base.  I always challenge myself to use a few cartridges as possible to create a design and I found this shape with rounded corners on the Twinkle Toes cartridge.  This worked perfectly for my card - I liked the effect of rounding the corners.  I adjusted the size to 8 1/2 inches wide by 5 1/2 inches tall in the Shape Properties box.

Here is the preview of the card.  I checked weld on the card base just to make it easier to see the detail of the design cutout.  By checking weld I eliminated color from the preview of the card and only the dark cutting line shows.

In order to create a liner, I used the same shape that I used for the card but changed the size to 8.3 wide x 5.3 inches tall in the Shape Properties box.  I needed to create a blackout shape of the tiara image since there is not one on the Lite cartridge.  I did this by hiding all of the interior lines in the design.  I aligned the two images for the liner cutout to match the placement of the filigree image on my card front.  I did make a few minor adjustments using the handles to get a perfect fit.

By previewing both mats at once I could make sure that everything was lined up properly before I cut the file.  I was confident enough in the preview that I cut my "good" cardstock for the first cut (sometimes I use "ugly" paper if I want to tweak the design a little or need to do a few prototypes to get a design to work).

There are lots of photographs of the card assembly in yesterday's post HERE but I thought I'd show you the liner again in this post so you could see how it works a little better.

The tissue paper is sandwiched between the card and the liner and the opening in the liner allows the light to shine through the card front.  The liner is adhered only to the front of the card to make it easier to open and shut the card (and to give a little extra space to add an additional message).

Please leave a comment or send me a note if you have any questions about the way I designed this card.  You can apply the same basic concept to many images and have a lot of fun experimenting with the various effects.

If you want me to post the file for this card, please leave a comment.  I think I have explained it clearly enough for you to try your own, however, I know how busy everyone is this time of year and if you want to try this card my file could save you some time.  I want to convert and test it as a Gypsy file before I share a download link and I hope to do that later today.


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