Adding Layers to an Image - Angel ATCs

 

When I started to think about the angel Artist Trading Cards (ATCS) I decided that I wanted to use a Cricut cartridge that I hadn't used before.  Quite a few of you answered correctly yesterday that the cartridge I used was "Once Upon a Princess".  I purchased this cartridge during the great sales around Black Friday last year.  I had resisted buying it because I thought the princesses were odd looking with their large heads and legs that ended in stumps instead of feet!

There is so much more to this cartridge than funny princesses - you always have to remember to look through the entire handbook before you judge a cartridge.  (You can find the cartridge handbooks on the Cricut.com site under "Information" and then "Cartridge Library" - here is a LINK).

There is a font (upper case only) and another font with the letters inside crowns.  There is an elaborate 3D castle to build and fabulous shapes for card toppers in the Tag feature.  There is a 3d wand, cute party invitations and envelopes, favor bags and cute layered images (including, of course, cupcakes, but you can leave the faces off!).  There are a lot of outfits for the princesses and many of them can be used on a regular paper doll from one of the paper doll cartridges if you prefer princesses with feet.

There is a gem feature with a nice hexagon and a true 60 degree diamond (something I had been searching for!).  The final "gem" of this cartridge is the phrase feature with cute "girly" sayings and it was in this feature that I found my angel.  I needed to adapt the shape to fit a standard ATC so I placed the base shape on the mat at 2 inches and used the right center handle to change the width to fit the card.

I wanted to use vellum to make the wings on the angel word  so I cut two of the base layers, one in light pink cardstock and one in vellum.  The vellum I was using had a very hard finish and I needed to use multi-cut (3 times) to get a clean cut.  I also wanted the halo on the word angel to be gold so I cut the top layer twice, once in a patterned pink paper and once from metallic gold cardstock (DCWV).

I set up a mat with the top layer repeated 12 times - more than I needed for my cards but I like to have a few "spares" in case something goes wrong with the cut.

 When I cut the top layer in the patterned pink cartridge I hand-trimmed the halo from the word so the gold layer would show when everything was assembled.

 I used a chopstick to help curl up the vellum layer of the wings.  The final image had four layers - twice as many as it was designed to cut (I omitted the shadow layer due to the small space I had in which to work).

To add more interest and help the angel to stand out, I added a strip of white cardstock cut at 1 1/2 x 2 1//2 inches and embossed it with the Japanese Scales Cuttlebug folder from the Asian bundle.  I thought this looked like clouds (as JANLYNN mentioned in her comment yesterday).

I used foam squares to raise the angel up to "fly" on the front of my card.

 When everything was assembled the card still lacked something - I decided it needed just a touch of bling.

So I added a tiny "diamond" to the "a" for a nice finishing touch.

My original intention had been to make a much more traditional and "arty" card - maybe even involving inking and glimmer mist(!).  Since that didn't happen I gave a nod to tradition by using this angel rubber stamp on the back and handwriting in my details.

There were only eight of us in the swap for February which made it easy to cut all of my pieces from single sheets of cardstock.

To save time in cutting the base cards (2 1/2 x 3 1/2 inches), I used this rounded corner square and changed the size in the Shape Properties box.

I hope these cards make my swap partners smile - I think they are cheerful and cute.  Next time I'll go for the "arty" look...

The latest reports say that the snowstorm might miss us - keep your fingers crossed for me please!

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