River Ride

Hello everyone! This is Michele aka dancingarden from scrap-n-dance.blogspot.com.

This month I decided to use another shape trend that's been popular lately. I haven't been so fond of the chevron patterned papers... they are often too "busy" for my eyes.

Well I was looking through my cartridges for something to cut to represent water on my layout and I could not find anything to blew my skirt up. lol... all the waves I saw were just not working for me really as they reminded me of the ocean, not the river we were on that day.  However, chevrons are stylized enough that the image is water-like yet doesn't scream "ocean" to me. Plus, they are trendy. LOL

I discovered there really aren't just chevrons to cut on the 250 some cartridges I own... I found a couple but they weren't sharp or clean chevrons... more like zig zags. However, I was paging through Letter Envy and found a square shapeish thing that was made of chevrons, though they were deeper than I wanted.

So I took that shape from Letter Envy (key 14 shift crest) and stretched it out on my gypsy to width 16.25" and height 6.25" over a 12x24 mat on the gypsy (though I cut them out on a 12x12 mat).  This made the chevrons less deep and long enough to cover 12x12 pages.  We know that cutting on a 12x12 mat, the cricut does not cut all the way to the edge of the paper.  So I had to carefully snip at the edges of the chevrons to make them fully 12 inches wide. Not a big deal, but wanted to be clear.  There were more than enough chevrons to use across 2 pages, and I had some chevrons left over.

I like to look in my cartridges for shapes I can use to fit with trends yet not have to buy anything! A little adjustment on my gypsy (or use CCR!) and I have exactly what I need.

Happy crafting!

Cricut Info and Supplies used:
Designed by Michele Donner-Ramsey
Machines used:  Expression, Gypsy
Cartridges used:  Letter Envy
Other Supplies:  KaiserCraft papers, Thickers, brads