Subway Art

Happy Thanksgiving!!

(In Canada, Thanksgiving is always celebrated on the second Monday of October.)

It's all about wall décor this week at Fantabulous Cricut. I've been wanting to try some subway art for some time now, so decided that this would be the perfect opportunity to give it a go!

I first purchased a white canvas and painted it with a light brown acrylic paint.  (It's got a lovely distressed look in person, but it doesn't show up in the photo.)  I then used my Gypsy to design the art. To do this, I added a rectangle to my Gypsy design which was an inch smaller than my canvas. (My canvas is 12x16, so I created a rectangle to be 11x15.) Then I designed the phrases using a variety of fonts, extending each expression to 11 inches in order to have both sides justified. I cut the art from a piece of brown Cricut vinyl. I learned the hard way that one should never cut vinyl on a new mat. It was quite a pain to get the white backing off the mat once I'd removed the vinyl!  I had to remind myself to give thanks in all things and to choose to be happy!!

(The "Choose to be happy" portion is a scaled down version of wall art in my office which I posted about HERE.)

There are some wonderful creations for view at Fantabulous Cricut.  Head over to see what the rest of the design team has been working on - and to link up your own wall décor project.

Cartridges used:
Cuttin' Up
Jubilee
Gypsy Font
Nursery Rhymes
Kate's ABCs
Opposites Attract
Printing 101
Plantin SchoolBook

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A Round of HIGH low ~ a layout

I am big on family dinners so each night we eat together at the table. We also have a game that we play as we eat: HIGH low. It’s a great way to share the events of the day and to regroup as a family each evening. We go around and list the high points of the day. We can list as many as we wish, but it’s mandatory to have at least one high. Even if we’ve had a bad day, there is something for which we can be thankful. We also have the option of giving a low. We are only permitted to share one low though as mealtimes are not to be grumbling sessions! We enjoy this time together and learn things about each other’s lives that we might have missed out on otherwise.

This week at Serenity Scrappers, the challenge was to create a round layout showcasing the family at mealtimes. All my other layouts are square so I just had to create my round layout on a square background. I incorporated a number of round elements into the layout. The papers are all from We R Memory Keepers. I found them on clearance at Michaels for just 20₵ a sheet – making this the most inexpensive layout I’ve ever created as I did the entire thing using only three sheets of paper. One page had 4 6x6 different coordinating patterns on the back so I was able to have a lot of colour and design choice. I thought the circles on the background paper would be perfect with the round theme and I loved the main round image with the circles at the end of each spoke, an image from Accent Essentials. Using Design Studio, I hid the contour for the inner circle and cut it separately on red. That way, I could shift it up to sit behind the photo, which I did not wish to have in the centre of the page. I also embossed the red circle with Swiss Dots. Most arrows were cut from Accent Essentials but the cornered arrow is from Home Decor. I embossed the inner arrows with my Cuttlebug. The date and HIGH were cut from Plantin SchoolBook and low from Printing 101. I added some white pen dots to the lettering. I printed the rules and just cut the paper with my trimmer and used an EK Success border punch on the left side. I used a Creative Memories corner rounder on the right-side corners. I cut a slightly larger bit of paper for behind the rules and also rounded the corners on the right. I ran the paper through my Cuttlebug with a dot border folder. The bottom centre of the page has paper and dots to represent our family at the table – a father, a mother, two boys and a girl. I punched the circles with a little circle punch.

I had fun with this layout. It came together so easily and I was never worried about messing up with the paper!! It’s bright and fun – just like our mealtimes.

I’ll submit this at Serenity Scrappers. The challenge is open until June 25 so you still have time to enter too! Kel provided a sketch if you need some more inspiration.

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