Putting the Face on the Moon

Happy Saturday!  One of the best things about the Thanksgiving holiday is the extra long weekend.  It's nice to know there is still one more day before normal schedules must resume.  I promised to explain how I made the face for the moon on the Wynken, Blynken & Nod wreath (original post HERE), so today I have a quick explanation.

The moon in the book has a very expressive face.  The features blend in with the mottled colors in the illustrations.  I first thought of cutting a stencil and inking the features in a gray tone but I decided to use vinyl in a coordinating shade of blue.  I knew that I would need to make the face bolder for it to show up well for the exhibit.

The styrofoam ball that I used for the moon is six inches in diameter.  I drew a circle in the Silhouette Studio software and sized it to six inches.  I found a page of the book that had a very clear illustration of the moon and took a screen shot of the image.  Then I dragged the image into the work area and resized it so the moon fit behind the six inch circle (a sort of virtual eclipse!).

Once the image was sized correctly, I lined up the circle and the image and selected them both (to do this, drag a box around the two images or click on each image while holding down the shift key).  With both images highlighted, I went to the Modify menu and choose "Intersect."  This will keep only the parts of the two images that are common to both.

Once I did this, I had an image of the moon at the correct size to represent the moon on the wreath. 

Next, I used the drawing tool for creating a curved shape and clicked on points around each of the face features.  I tried to be fairly careful but the line does not have to be perfect - it will be adjusted in the next step.

After the shapes were drawn, I double clicked on each shape to enter the point editing mode.  Then I moved the points to fit the shape of the features more precisely.  You can move the points, add points and also adjust the amount of curve between points to get a very close fit.

It didn't take very long to trace these small features by hand.  There is also an automatic tracing tool in the program but for this image that type of trace did not work well because there wasn't enough contrast between the features and the moon surface.

Once I thought the shape were correct, I filled them with a solid color to get an idea of what the final vinyl face would look like.

I moved the image of the moon of the mat and positioned the face section to cut in the upper left corner of the mat.  I only needed a four by four inch piece of vinyl to make the cut.

This is the "leftover" cut in the vinyl after the face pieces were removed.  I used the recommended settings on the machine and did a test cut (upper left corner) to be sure that my cuts would be "kiss" cuts (cutting the vinyl but not the vinyl backing).

The moon is made of a styrofoam ball covered with old stockings that were dyed to represent the shadows and craters.  The vinyl stuck to the surface easily and I rubbed it down to keep it well adhered until it is time to take the exhibit down.

Please let me know if you have questions about the method I used to create the face for the moon.

I hope you had successful shopping adventures - or a peaceful day at home yesterday!
Today is "Small Business Saturday" - a day to shop locally and support the merchants in your town.

Many of the sales I mentioned yesterday are continuing...check yesterday's post HERE to find out how to get more information.



Blitsy has so many items on offer this week - there were 22 new sets of items yesterday instead of the usual four or five categories.  I was able to get the new distress stains in seasonal colors, some dies, some Scor-Tape, and lots of other things - I can't wait for them to arrive!

There were some issues with slowness on the Silhouette sites yesterday but the sale does continue until the 30th so everyone should be able to place their orders.  There is a possibility that things will run out on the regular site (fortunately that is not an issue on the digital downloads for the Studio program).

Today's Cricut.com deal - you can get the Cricut Expression 2 and Teddy Bear Parade for $219!

Have a wonderful day!

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