It’s time for another round of Letter Board Love – MightEMadeit Style. It’s safe to say that most people enjoy a good pun. I do. Also, I realize I hadn’t updated my letter board since October, so I took the plunge this month to re-do my letter board for December. I will also take this time to confess that we have not put up our Christmas tree. I am not feeling very festive. Making the letter board is a way that I could channel some energy into making something cute and festive (kinda) since I used gnomes.
I began this letter board with brush lettering in my Rhodia Pad with my Tombow Dual Tip markers (you know, some of my favorite tools).
Then I scanned the image to my laptop with my printer (an HP Envy 7855 All in One).
The image was uploaded into Adobe Illustrator and I was able to manipulate, add an offset and turn the file into an SVG. (tutorial coming on this in 2020)
Supplies:
- Printable Vinyl. I use this brand
- Preferred cutting Machine. For this project I used my Cricut Maker
- Cricut Design Space (here’s the link to this specific canvas)
- Kraft Board, I used the one manufactured by Cricut.
- 1 Sheet 12″ inch by 12″ inch Card Stock
- A Peace of Creativity, DIY Letter Board Pegs
- Hot Glue Gun
- A Letter Board. I have this one.
Design Space Tutorial:
Next, I uploaded the svg into Cricut design space.
While in design space, I clicked images and then searched for Gnomes.
Some of the designs were a little creepy but then I came across these cute ones! I selected the lady gnome, the gentleman gnome and the gnome mushroom house.
After I selected the image and placed it into the Cricut Design Space Canvas, I duplicated the lady gnome. I wanted these gnomies to reflect my family. After duplicating, I selected Layers and chose the faces and hands and changed them to brown. I also recolored the gnome mushroom house to be more “Christmas-y”.
Each item was resized as follows (please note that proportions were locked for each resizing):
Gnome House: 5″ inches
Gentleman Gnome: 5″ inches
Mama Gnome: 4.5″ inches
Gnome Kid: 3.5″ inches
I placed the shortest gnome in between the two “mama” & “daddad” gnomes. Select them all, Align Bottom and distribute them evenly.
Upon having everything distributed and aligned in the way you like select the gray component of each layer and select weld. This piece will be the Kraft Board foundation for your printable vinyl to adhere to.
This is where it gets fun! How did we get that gnome beauty?! Using one of my favorite Cricut features: Print & Cut.
This features allows you to print your images and after the machine reads the printed registration marks it will cut it out for you!
Now, prepare your mats!
1 mat for cardstock, 1 mat for kraftboard,1 mat for the cricut premium vinyl, 1 mat for the printable vinyl.
The first mat cut is the printable vinyl. Be sure to turn on bleeds and print using system dialog. This step ensures a clean cut AND that you use the correct printer and settings for your printer. follow the prompts that cricut gives you after your print is complete.
Craft Project, Assemble!! Adhere vinyl to cardstock and printable vinyl to Kraft board. (in the video you’ll see that I Had to trim a little bit of the Kraft board because I didn’t perfectly align them **facepalm emoji** and I’m calling it a ‘clean up on aisle 7’ after my favorite make-up youtube blogger: Irischel507
I used hot glue this time to adhere the icons to the letterboard backs by A Peace of Creativity
Here’s the full bedtime crafting video from December 10, 2019. During the video, I do a full project walkthrough and you get to hear me ramble while I craft lol.
It’s been smooth sailing ever since and now I can chill with my real and pretend gnomies everyday!
I hope you enjoyed this tutorial as much as I enjoyed making the letterboard!
Dassit,
Lina