Everyday Cricut Hostess Set with Thanksgiving Seasonal Cartridge

It's the third Saturday of the month and that means it is my day as the Saturday designer at Everyday Cricut!  Melanie and Joy have returned to Christmas holiday projects, but I wanted to share one last Thanksgiving project.  Besides I am doing a week of Thanksgiving projects here at Busy with the Cricky and I did not want to change my theme!

My featured project at Everyday Cricut is a four part Thanksgiving hostess set:  place cards, wine glass tags, decorative plate pumpkins, and Yudu printed napkins (previously featured here). 

Please head over to Everyday Cricut for more information and additional photos.   Thanks for stopping by and have a great weekend!

YuDu Fall Napkin Set

 

I had so much fun with my YuDu over the weekend - I created a set of fall themed dinner napkins.  I chose a design from the new Thanksgiving seasonal cartridge, which I modified slightly in Cricut Design Studio.  The pumpkin in the center is supposed to be solid, but by manipulating the top layer of pumpkin a bit smaller in CDS and placing the smaller pumpkin in the middle of the larger design I was able to create an outline effect. In the photo below you can see that I placed the base cut on the CDS mat and then using the "hide select contour feature" to removed the leaves and inside cuts, I placed the slightly reduced top pumpkin cut inside the background cut to create the outline. I chose this particular design because I wanted something that could be used for longer than Thanksgiving weekend or for Halloween.  So I went with a generic fall theme to expand the usefulness of the napkins.

I found these great pumpkin colored napkins at Tuesday Morning several weeks ago.  I thought they were perfect for fall. I actually set up two YuDu screens, but ended up not liking the effect.  I had planned to fill the pumpkins in with a second color, but instead I just went with a single color. The second color distracted from the simple elegance of the design.

I cut the pumpkin design in black vinyl and affixed it to the transparent overlay provided with the Yudu. After preparing the emulsion, I exposed the image onto the screen.  The Yudu is soooo easy to use; I am so glad that I took the plunge and added it to my Provo Craft line up!

I used gold paint on the pumpkins, but it looks a bit greenish in the photos.  I had planned to fill in the the pumpkins in an orange, but as I stated above it just did not look good.   I am excited to use my napkins, but I need to heat set the paint first.

Theater Napkin Project with Yudu

This weekend was wonderful.  My husband, Duncan the wonder dog, and I had a relaxing yet productive weekend.  One of my more interesting tasks was this dinner napkin project using my Yudu.  I have to give a shout out to Jeannie from A Place for my Cards because she made some amazing wedding napkins.  Her wedding napkins inspired me on so many levels - fall and holiday decor, as well as holiday gifts.

My son's girlfriend teaches high school drama so I took the tragedy & comedy masks art and created a screen to print these napkins.  I tried to video the process to give you the basic idea.  I plan to do more napkins in the near future... I purchased lovely pumpkin colored napkins for a fall/Thanksgiving themed napkins.  I may even work my way up to using two colors!!!

And here is one last look at the finished napkins.  I also made some screen print note cards using the same screen.  I think Crissie will really like the personalized feel of both the napkins and the note cards.

My first YUDU project

While at CHA earlier this summer one of the products I used which excited me the most was Provo Craft's YUDU, their screen print machine.  One of the make and takes during the vendor show used the YUDU so I got a bit of hands on experience.  I loved all of the projects they had made using the YUDU and came to realize that this could be a nice machine to own.

Well.... My YUDU arrived last week!  I went on line and watched the videos at Provo Craft's What do YUDO site and was both excited and scared to begin using the YUDU.  I wanted to make something that I would actually use, but not anything too difficult for my first project.  Finally, using PowerPoint, I created a design that I thought would look fine printed in a single color.  I spent Labor Day afternoon/evening working on the project.

I had to create my screen twice.  The first time one area was too light and the screen did not expose well.  I went back and darkened my art images and made a second screen (and making the screen is the time consuming part). Once the second screen was ready, everything worked perfectly.  I did a test print on a scrap piece of fabric, then I printed my sleep shirt.

I think that for a first try the shirt turned out great ... and it will be great for going to Sally's and Beth's family's lake house.  The other laker-girls will need laker-girl t-shirt/night shirts too.