Asian Love

Being that it's the week before Valentines Day, I figured this might be an appropriate card to share, since it has the Chinese character for "Love" on it. This is actually a wedding card made for a good friend and his bride. I knew I wanted to do an Asian flavored card when we received their absolutely gorgeous wedding invitation...it was made of pearlized copper paper, tied with sheer copper ribbon, with the Chinese character for "double happiness" embossed on the front of it. Very Chinese-y (lol!), but really elegant. I decided to continue the Asian theme and wanted my card to have a diecut of the Chinese character for "love" on it...but not surprisingly, I couldn't find a cutfile anywhere. I even tried doing a call out for one on my favorite Design Studio forum on the Cricut Message Board...and got zero responses. Obviously, I was the only person in the world who wanted such a cutfile! So I was left with having to create the cutfile myself...it took me a while to do, but I guess it was worth it. Worth it because, although creating original cut files always takes a lot of time and patience, I find I always learn something new every time. Interestingly. the image of the Chinese character I used as my guide for this cut came from a tatoo website. After the "Love" character was created (using the George cart), everything else was pretty easy. I used mirrored red cardstock to cut out the character and currency gold cardstock for its frame. The frame is Mulan's frame from the Happily Ever After cart. Base of the card is Bazzill Luster embossed with the Birds & Flowers Cuttlebug folder. The gold metal dragonfly charms were purchased from Creations Unlimited.

This might be a good a time as any to mention that after being undecided for a very long time, I finally recently agreed to do a class on the Design Studio at Photocraft Hawaii. I've been playing around with this program for about a year now, but I don't, by any means, come anywhere near to being an expert. But I am willing to share tips and techniques that I have learned so you can have as much fun as I do, creating with Cricut and the Design Studio. The class is scheduled to be on the first Sunday in March, and there will be laptops at the class so everyone can have hands on fun. If interested, please give Brian a call at Photocraft Hawaii.