Beware Of The Ghosts!!!!

     Welcome to Would you Ever Guess Wednesday! Today Erica from My Cricut Craft Room asked us to use gel pens on our projects. When I signed up for this I didn't realize that my gel pens had dried up and I had used up a lot of the colors I had planned to use! What to do? I decided to use my Cricut markers instead. I really wanted to use my Chic and Scary cartridge and thought the phrase for Halloween would be perfect. I also had some adhesive velum and felt this was a great project to use this on. Before I continue I want to give you a heads up: this is not my best work but rather an exercise in what NOT to do, lol.

     I started by using my Cricut marker in black with speed @ 3 and pressure @ 2. I used the CCR and a rectangle shape from George and Basic Shapes @ 4.347"wide by 5.222" high on one layer. Next I used the phrase for Halloween @ 4.083" w by 4.75"h on a second layer. I set my Expression to Portrait mode so the image would be drawn/cut in the upper left hand corner. All I did was replace the blade carriage with a marker and pressed cut. This drew my image. I did not want to cut the phrase but I did want to cut the rectangle, so I replaced the marker with my blade, and cut the outside shape after I hit load last. All the phrase is now outlined in black.

     Lesson one when doing a project: make sure you have all the supplies you need AND that they are in working order, ie, markers that are not dried out. Oh I am not talking about my gel markers, no, that would be the least of it. Being the hoarder that I am, I have had these opaque markers for velum for a long time and finally found a project to use them on. The only trouble is that they must be old because some just wouldn't flow right. (Perhaps dried ink, grrr). I plugged away and thought I will be able to salvage this with some embellishments so not to worry. When I adhered this to some purple card stock it really didn't look too bad.

     The skull is colored with white opaque markers, but since it was a little dried up, it came out sort of grayish. It looked sort of cool especially when I added some green rhinestones for the eyes and some avocado Liquid Pearls for the nose.

     I added this Haunted House using Enjoy The Seasons image from page 15. I used all the layers combined @ 1.25". I added some Black Diamond Stickles to the spider web. So far so good until....

     I added Liquid Pearls and stickles to the spider. Once it was dry, I decided to add some green liquid pearls for eyes to the spider. Yikes what a mess! Lesson two: when using Liquid pearls or Stickles be sure to leave some room in case it spreads out.(It usually does!) Instead of having 2 eyes I wound up with a uni eye! also, if you look at the phrase next to "beware", my web really got mushed together. 

     in order to distract from this boo boo, I added a hanging spider from Happy Hauntings on page 102 and cut it at 2.5". I cut 2, one the adhere to the paper and the second with pop dots for dimension. I did the same thing with 3 ghosts (one I flipped) from page 37 cut @ .75". 

     I kept trying to salvage this by adding rhinestones to the corners and some yellow twine I received from Erica. Although I am less than pleased how this turned out, I'm sure the 2 year old grand son Charlie will love it! From now on I will make sure all my markers are in working order and also be all the more diligent on how I use my Liquid Pearls and stickles!!! I guess I need to replace some supplies over at Erica's Store.

     I hope you have learned from my mistakes (I have!!!). Now be sure to head back over to My Cricut Craft Room to see some spectacular projects my Design Team Sisters have made for you.

     What mistakes have you made? It would make me REALLY happy to hear what mistakes you have made, lol.