Little Yellow bird

The bird and branch from spring cottage is lovely but when I got a call to say Madge from Madge’s Creations found it difficult to cut the layer even at 4 inches I was intrigued and decided to give it a go. I was on a blog recently where someone had redone a card because they didn’t like the way it turned out and had commented that there was a decoration on the icon that they had cut in vinyl as it was so intricate. When I cut the layer to the bird at 3 inches I could see what was meant as the tail feathers are less than a millimetre in width. I found when using the Cricut cake machine if the line to be cut was narrower than the depth of the icing then it would not cut well. I also found that this applied to some extent with paper cuts as well on the Cricut’s hence if you are doing something very thin and intricate then by kiss cutting vinyl you will get a better cut. Now having some vinyl in my stash I decided to do just this and you can see that the yellow bird has a blue vinyl layer and if you look very closely you will see that the area between the tail feathers is about the width of a thin pencil line. Now the yellow bird with the brown head I cut the layer in brown cardstock. The layer cut s as 2 separate pieces so as the brown head cut fine I put this on to take the photo. Now having discovered that the vinyl cut well for the layer I decided to use a thin cardstock paper I have in my stash called “scrapbook Paper” by Grant Archival called Photguard which is a firm paper not a cardstock. This paper I layered on my mat and cut the layer with settings of speed 3, pressure 3, cut 1 and blade depth of 3 and it did cut the layer (as I held my breath) Setting on the Cricut or any of your die cutting machines are very important and so is size to get the best cut. Now if you want to do this bird at a 2inches then I would suggest you do it in vinyl. Another thing to remember is the way the Cricut sizes objects. When you put the icon  on your mat it could be sized at 3 inches but does this mean the bird is 3 inches long or 3 inches high. In the case of the bird it is 3 inches long not 3 inches high. If you do not have an e2, Gypsy or Imagine then you can download Cricut design studio free trial or go onto cricut.com and check out Cricut craft room and when you place your icon on the mat you can see how big it will turn out. Also Cricut Craft room is free so if you have the cartridge you can design on Cricut Craft Room and cut where you want to on your mat by hooking up your computer to the Cricut. The Cricut attaches to a usb port with a cable like a printer cable.

Now about the branch- I cut the branch at a height of 2 inches and this gave me a length of just over 3.5 inches as opposed to the bird at 3 inches which cut lengthwise 3 inches but the height was 1.75 inches. Now I know this can be very confusing but I do suggest you play a bit with Cricut Craft Room and see what it does for you after all it is a free program. Now with the branch I cut the flowers out and just glued them to the branch haphazardly and some of the smaller ones I layered onto the others which give the flowers some depth. Inking the edges of the flowers would give them more definition again, but I was just playing with these to try them.