Happy Fourth of July!

It looks like we will have a hot day to celebrate the Fourth of July - our fingers are crossed that the rain stays away so we can enjoy the Picnic in the Park.  This photo is from last year's bike and stroller parade - it's always fun to see the decorations and watch the kids go by!

Saturday we had a nice time with our nephew Scott.  He spent the day with us (Aunt Diane Camp) while his parents took his older brother and sister to their summer camp.  They all have grown a lot since last year.  We took a photo in the front yard (in the same spot as last year) to help keep track of how the twins are growing up.  They are now at camp in Maine for a couple of weeks.

 We had all sorts of plans for the day - at the top of the list was making a  Harry Potter "Hogwarts" castle.  There is no Harry Potter Cricut cartridge (I bet that would be popular!) but there is a great 3D castle on the "Once Upon a Princess" cartridge.  I set up a file on the Gypsy to cut the castle as large as possible on 12 x 12 cardstock (without separating sections that are already on the same key).   The height of 8 1/2 inches worked perfectly for this castle.  You could make it even larger by hiding lines and moving sections around on the mat.

Scott very quickly caught on to the process of loading, controlling the cut with the Gypsy and taking the pieces off the mat.  It took seven pieces of 12 x 12 cardstock (three light gray, three dark gray and one green) to cut all of the pieces we needed.

 

We used the 12 x 24 inch mat so we could cut more pieces at the same time.   All of the pieces fit on 12 x 12 cardstock but the roof key was a tight fit.  It looked like we would run into the "uncuttable" area of the mat so I shifted the paper to the one inch mark on the 12 x 24 mat and had no problems with the cut.  (This is a handy trick for things that almost fit.  I also could have turned the set of images on the diagonal but by simply shifting the paper and keeping the image straight I ended up with a more useful "scrap" piece).

There is a lot of scoring and folding to do but the directions in the handbook are easy to follow.  I thought the construction was very clever and well thought out - you couldn't really make a mistake if you looked carefully at the images in the book and had everything lined up the same way.  This is the interior section of the castle.

The tabs that hold the sections together are made to look like shields and fit into the design nicely.  The last stage is a little tricky and having two pairs of hands was helpful.  We started out using the Martha Stewart Score Board but switched to the Scor-Pal because it was easier to see the lines that we needed to follow.

Here is the bird's eye view of the castle.  We used 1/4 inch and 1/8 inch Scor-Tape for all of the seams and it worked out very well.  The only place that was a little tricky was attaching each green roof to the turrets.  It helped to keep the flaps almost straight so they could connect to the inside of the roof when it was lowered over the top - the space is too small to reach in from below to line up the tabs.

Scott tells me that there is no drawbridge at Hogwarts - you could use "hide contour" and change the doors if you wanted to.

Here is a view of the side and back of the castle.  We were both pleased with the way it turned out.  I thought we might do a second version that Scott could decorate by drawing on it while the pieces were still flat but we ended up going to see Cars 2 in 3D - lots of 3D in our day!  (The movie was great - Scott said it was a "5 star" and it "exceeded my expectations" so I think he really liked it!)

The castle can be decorated after it is assembled but it will be trickier to do any writing or drawing - maybe some stickers will work to personalize the final result.

Once Upon a Princess is an older cartridge and one that I resisted buying for a long time since I have no little girls at home and I really don't like those little people with the upturned arms and pointy feet!  I did get it on sale last Black Friday and now I am very glad to have it.  The castle is great fun to make and can be made (as we did) in different colors to look less girly.  There are lots of the elements for a Princess Party (3D wands, tiaras and crowns, invitations, cute word art, treat bags) in addition to the inevitable cupcakes with smiling faces.  There is also a wonderful teapot shape and the "tag" feature key is full of interesting shapes that layer nicely and are perfect for journaling boxes, as a card front or (cut smaller) for sentiments.

I hope you have a lovely holiday.  If you have a chance to leave comment and a "hi" for Scott that would be great - I think he will be checking the blog to see the photos of our castle.

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