Birthday wishes from a clown

Here is a simple idea for a birthday card. First, I cut out the clown from the Carousel cartridge. Then the letters were made with the Robotz font in Design Studio with George and Basic Shapes for the circles.

The clown was adhered to the card front with mounting tape and Stickles (frosted lace) was applied to the circles.

The idea is simple but versatile. The clown can be used with a variety of greetings to create cards for different occasions. I suppose you can even just put "HELLO" in the circles and leave the greeting at the bottom out. Now, how's that for a "just because" card? ;)

 

Happy-Go-Round

Isn't it funny how happy children get when they are put on a pretend horse, that goes up and down a pole, that goes all around a circular platform while some ridiculously happy music is being played non-stop? Nothing brings out the happy like a carousel and it is no wonder that when I first saw the Cricut Lite Carousel cartridge, my eyes were drawn to that merry-go-round image. It even has three horses (for my 3 kids)!

When I bought my cartridge last Friday, I knew that the carousel has to be the first image that I will cut. I also knew that I have to make the horses move. It is a simple mechanism. First, I cut the 1st layer of the carousel image and then trim off the poles (and horses). Using Cricut Design Studio, I cut a narrow rectangle inside each pole on the 2nd layer. I trim off the horses on the 2nd layer too. 

  

To make the three horses, I actually used the image of the single horse.

I cut out the horses and again snipped off the poles. To make the horses slide up and down the poles that are on the 2nd layer of the carousel cutout, I attached a brad to the horse and fix it into the narrow rectangular gap.

With that done, I can now make the horses go up...

....or down....

.... or stay in the center!

I think I like it best when they are in different stages of going up or down. 

Something like this:

While I had a lot of fun putting this card together, I have to say that I was a little miffed that there was a flaw in this image. Unless you are cutting this image out at a fairly large size,  the top left part of the roof will break from the tip. I had cut my carousel out at 6" and the left strip still tore when the image was being cut on the mat. I managed to cover up that separation with a large rhinestone but I thought you all should know about the design flaw.

  

You can probably also tell from CDS how narrow that cut on the tip is.
 

Anyway, despite that boo-boo, I still do like this cartridge a lot. The images on it are quite different from Provo Craft's past offerings and even though I did not use the font cuts, I'm glad that the cart came with it.