Groot Birthday Card

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I am having fun learning to use the Cricut Design Space™ software. I have to admit, I was nervous about learning this tool . . . I was not sure if I was going to be able to figure it out. I am in no way an expert, but I am starting to learn a few tricks and I am happy to share them with all of you who might also be nervous about trying to learn something new.

With the new Guardians of the Galaxy movie coming out, we are starting to see the little baby Groot showing up in ads and commercials.  Well why not in a birthday card too!

I made this little guy by finding an image online, cleaning it up in Photoshop, uploading it to Design Space to turn it into a cutting file (click HERE for a post about that process) and then creating layers for each of the different colors in the image (click HERE for a post about that process)

Since I wanted Groot to be the main focus of the card, I kept the background pretty simple.  I used a kraft paper card base, and then layered a blue dot patterned paper and a soft grid patterned paper over the top of that.

Next I figured out how big I was going to cut Groot, and then separated all of his layers in Cricut Design Space™     One tip I learned, while you are still in Design Space, after you separate the layers and space them out around the mat, select ALL of them at once and go to the lower right hand corner of the Design Space screen and click on the Attach button.  This attaches the layers to the location that you have them placed on the mat.  All of the images might change to the same color, but don't let that worry you . . . you will see why this is helpful in the next step.

Then I placed pieces of paper for the colors I wanted to use for each layer in the same manner that I had separated the layers in Design Space.  This allows me to just load my mat one time and cut ALL of the layers out.  If I did not do this, I would have had to load/unload the mat 6 times for this one image.  

See . . . THIS is why you wanted to use the Attach button!  If you would not have done that the Cricut would have asked you to load and unload the mat for each and every color, and it would have always started that cut in the top left corner of your mat.

Once all of the layers are cut out I can just take what I need off the mat and place it direction on the base cut to start to build Groot.  This is really nice because sometimes when you take those little pieces off the mat, if you go back to cut another piece somehow a little piece will get lost . . . it falls off the table or sticks to the bottom of your mat . . . you don't know how many times I have lost an eyeball piece over the years!  Now I just leave it on the mat until I am ready to stick it on the base.

I also like to add little touches with marker or ink.  For Groot I went around the edges of his face, and then placed some random lines on his face to make his face look more like tree bark.

I have to admit, all of those small pieces on his arms and body were kind of a pain to place correctly.  If I make him again, I might make the tree bark colored paper one large cut, and the layer the black outline over the top of that.  That way I would not have to place all of those individual pieces!

Another tip for those little pieces, like the eyes . . . I use a straight pin to help pick them up and place them.  I slightly "poke" the piece with the pin to lift it, move it and position it more easily.

So, for this card my ORIGINAL plan was to cut the words "I AM GROOT" out and place those letters inside the card.  Well, as I was placing them I found it really had to keep them in a straight line and due to the font that I used you can see in the image below that for some letters (the G, O and T) there are two parts to the letter . . . so that made it even HARDER to line things up.

To save this, what I ended up doing was using the negative space instead of the letters that were cut out.  I just backed the piece with the same blue dot paper that I used on the front of the card.

So the inside did not turn out like I planned, but I think that unless you KNEW I was planning to use the individual letters you would never know that the inside was born from a mistake.

Overall, for still feeling like a newbie to the Cricut Design Space™ software and tool, I think this card turned out pretty cute.