Tuesday, December 2, 2008

Wall Art with Cricut Expression



I couldn't wait to play with my new Cricut Expression the other day. I have dreamed about making wall art with it since it came out. Now that I finally had an Expression, I bought some Vinyl from Walmart. It comes in an array of colors. However, Walmart only had black. I also bought some transfer paper. The transfer paper allows you to manage your vinyl once you cut it so that you can place it on your wall or wherever you choose. It makes applying your vinyl to your wall as easy as rubbing a rub on. The vinyl comes in 3 sheets to a package and each sheet is 12X24. The transfer tape comes 2 sheets to a package and each sheet is 12x24. I know, I know, I thought the same thing. Why not give the same quantity of both since they go hand and hand? Sorta like hot dogs and hot dog buns, they don't come in same quantities. I'm convinced it is a conspiracy to make us buy more of each. :)

I used my SCAL and used three different fonts. I used the font Curlz MT for the word "My"at 2 inches, the font Pristina for "Reservations", at 4 inches, and for the rest of the quote was done in the font Angelina at 2 inches. You should have these fonts on your computer already. If you don't then you can go to dafont and download pretty much any font your heart desires. Remember, SCAL, the program I used to create my word art, only can read True Type Font, dingbats and SVG files. The majority of fonts are TTF so you shouldn't have any problems. However, think outside the box. When you get to dafont.com you will notice that some of the fonts don't print letters but rather symbols or silhouettes. For example if you go to Christmas Fonts you will notice that some fonts are snowflakes, Santa Claus or reindeer. So you can prett much cut anything! I can't see enough about SCAL. I'll do a formal training on it sometime soon. But once you download your font, you need to install it to your PC. The easiest way to do this is to go to your support and help and type in "add font" or "install font" and it will take you step by step on how to install a new font. Trust me you won't regret it.

However, the flourish came from my new cartridge Home Decor that is a new exclusive cartridge for the Walmart Bundle for Black Friday. Some Walmarts may have some Cricut Expressions left from Black Friday so if you want to buy a CE and you like this swirl, then check your local Walmart or wait for someone to put it up on Ebay. I am keeping mine. I used the "fit to page" feature for the flourish.

My husband laughed as I started to place the Vinyl letters on the transfer tape as I explained what I wanted him to do with it. His originally thought the texture on our walls would prohibit the Vinyl from sticking. But it didn't. He was so impressed that he wanted me to create more wall art for the living room, the dining room, the foyer, the breakfast room, the bathroom and stairwell. My house will become one big novel.

8 comments:

  1. Rozette,
    How were you able to use your cricut to cut those fonts? I thought you could only cut what comes on a cartridge.

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  2. LOVE it! It is so cool and that is one of my motto's too!

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  3. Nancy W, I just figured it out! You can connect your computer to the CE! How awesome is that...

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  4. I agree with Rozette. How do you use fonts from the computer with Cricut Expression? I have the Design Studio which only uses the cartridges.

    Secondly, what is SCAL?

    Karen P

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  5. Can the transfer paper be re-used?

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  6. Can the transfer paper be re-used?

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  7. I agree with Rozette. How do you use fonts from the computer with Cricut Expression? I have the Design Studio which only uses the cartridges.

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  8. Alas, it is true. Since early last year, you can no longer use a third party software to use fonts on your computer.

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