Quick Tip Tuesday

Hello again everyone! It's Angie with another Quick Tip!

Since this weeks challenge theme is shaped cards, I thought I'd leave you a few tips on making these.

• First, you can create a shaped card from almost any image on a Cricut cartridge. 
• You don't need to start with a pre-made card on a cart - just pick an image and as long as it can stand up by itself as a card, then go for it! 
• You will need to use either your Gypsy or Cricut Craft Room to create a shaped card since you have to do some welding!
• Start with the shadow of an image to create the card base. If an image doesn't have a shadow feature this is how I make a card base with that image anyway.

 I took this simple layered image from Artiste and made it in to a shaped card:

 
(Sorry this is not a good photo - this is taken directly from the handbook at cricut.com). As you can see there is no shadow, so after placing the image on your 'mat' in CCR (or Gypsy) use the Hide Contour feature to hide everything from the base layer:

Now you have a base layer that's perfect for a card! Copy and paste so you'll have two of these base images and weld the two images together. 

Important: you need to flip one of the images to make them symmetrical when your card is folded & closed because some images that look symmetrical on both sides really aren't!!!

Here's a great example - the teddy bear on Teddy Bear Parade. The bear looks symmetrical but if you don't flip one of them horizontally, your card will be uneven like in this screen shot:

Notice that the red bear and the white bear do not line up! So make sure you flip one of your images! 

For the carousel card, I flipped one vertically because I wanted it to open from the bottom, not from the side. When the two images touch, you'll see the Weld/Don't Weld box - just check the Weld!

And here are the teddy bears being welded together after one was flipped horizontally.

Now just cut this layer along with the other layers for the image, fold your card, adhere the layers, and embellish as you wish. Simple! Here's my finished Carousel Card:

Now try your hand at making a shaped card! It really is simple and fun to do!

You can go back to yesterday's post to see all of the shaped cards that the Design Team has created.

And don't forget to come back tomorrow to see the Wednesday's Winners for last week's challenge!

Thanks for visiting!

Until next time, Happy Crafting!