Fabulous Friend Card

The shine of the cardstock, the metallic printed sentiment and the addition of a bit of bling make this a pretty card to send to a friend - a fabulous friend!

 I used a simple leaf design from the basic shapes included in the Silhouette Studio software to make the medallion of the front of the card.  The shapes are listed in alphabetical order, so you'll need to scroll down a bit to find it in your library.  If you can't find it, try going into Preferences under the File menu and choose "advanced" from the list on the left.  Then click on the bar that says "Restore the initial 51 designs" and click OK.  You may need to restart to have all of the shapes show up in the library.

After I added the shape to my mat, I used the "mirror right" command under the replicate menu to create a mirror image and then moved the second image over a bit to overlap the lowest leaf and wleded the two shapes together.  Then I selected the new shape and chose "mirror below" from the replicate menu, moved the image up to overlap the leaves and welded the two sets of leaves to create the shape on the right.  I released the compound path and eliminated the central opening - then grouped all of the pieces and made a compound path.

The Offset command in the software makes it very quick and easy to create a shadow or mat for the new shape.  You can set the width of the offset, making it narrower or wider to suit your project.

Next I used the dimension boxes to set the height and width in the scale menu.  I sized the grouped shapes and then ungrouped them for cutting.  To get a good visual idea of the way the card will look, I added two rectangles to the mat - one sized at 5 1/2 x 4 1/4 inches to represent and A2 card and one sized at 5 1/4 x 4 inches to represent a mat layer on the card.  (I didn't end up using a mat for this card).  I moved these shapes off the virtual mat before cutting the two medallion pieces.

I used one of the My Mind's Eye card bases with a very subtle yellow stripe.  The shadow of the leaf medallion is cut from blue Core'dinations cardstock and the branches are cut from Core'dinations Gemstone cardstock.  The sentiment oval is from Craftwork Cards and the gems are from Creative Charms.

The mat layer is actually a medium dark blue - not as dark as it looks in the photos.  The texture and the sheen of the Core'dinations Gemstone cardstock always make a card look special. 

You can see the subtle yellow stripe in the card base a bit better in this photo. 

 I could have cut a small sentiment (I originally was going to make this a "thanks" card), but I realized the the oval shape in the center was a near perfect match for these oval card sentiments from Craftwork Cards so I added the sentiment, raised with foam dots.

Once again, if you can't find these sentiment cuts, you could make an assortment with stamps and embossing to have ready for cards.  The metallic gold printing adds another level of sparkle to the card.

For the finishing touch, I added some light blue gem stickers in three graduated sizes to accent the leaf design.  The end result is a fast but elegant card.

If you have any questions about making the design, please leave a comment and I'll try to explain more clearly.  The same principles can be used with a Cricut design - I have made many new shapes over the years by welding Cricut images together.  The "mirror" function is not included in the Cricut software so you will need to flip and rotate the design to create a similar shape.  

If you want your image to have a shadow layer, you will have to choose a shape on a Cricut cartridge that has a shadow function.  From the very first version of Design Studio and through the updates, the Gypsy and the Craftroom, crafters have been asking for a variable width one click shadow option but it has not been added to any of the programs.

We are expected to start a new heat wave this weekend -but it isn't as hot here as it is in some parts of the country.  I hope that none of you have been affected by the terrible fires in Colorado.  We have family in the area and so far they are fine but the conditions are so dry that things can change very quickly.


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