I almost forgot my fur baby! This Bronx Fur Baby Scrapbook page is about him. Bronx is a white lab and although he is almost 100 lbs., he still thinks he is a lap dog. I got him from a no kill shelter a few years ago. He is a member of the family too.
I made these embellishments myself using silhouettes from Access and different swirls. Then, I cut from the silhouettes with the SLICE tool. I will teach you how and give you some tips below. They make the page look so fancy.
What You Need:
- Download File
- 1 sheet of 12 X 12 cardstock
- liquid glue
- various scraps of cardstock
- picture
Paper Selection for the Fur Baby Scrapbook Page
Since Bronx is white, that sorta dictated the colors of this page. I created my own embellishments from black and white and will explain how in a section below. The bottom carrier sheet can be patterned paper. The embellishments can be any color but the bottom one shouldn’t be patterned. It just won’t be seen.
Cutting the Paper for the Fur Baby Scrapbook Page
A little bit of prep work is needed, like selecting your picture and if it isn’t in electronic form, either scan it or take a digital picture of it. I did not put Bronx’s picture in the download file because you will want your own. Size it to a little bigger than 4 X 5.
The electronic picture can be uploaded and saved as a Print/Cut image is Design Space. If you need help with uploading pictures, I will add a section at the end of this tutorial on how to do that. If you need to know how to do Print/Cut, there is a tutorial included in Design Space- There is Nothing to be scared of videos here. While you are there check out my other beginner tutorials there.
Making the Embellishments
The embellishments are made quite easily. Choose a silhouette that you like and that matches your theme (dogs in this case). Then make a copy of it and change the color of one. Now search Flourish. There is quite a list.
Pick out something you like but there are a few rules. First of all. It should have no closed circles. in letters for example an O would not work, but a K would work. This eliminates what I call orphan circles. That is a circle or cut out that drops out because you cut around it completely.
Next, It can’t be too big or complex. You have to fit it inside the silhouette without touching an edge. You can shrink it of course but if it is too complex, cutting will be difficult. Also if it is too big it will remove the uniqueness of the silhouette. You still want it to look like a dog, in this case.
Once you find the right flourish, put it on top of one copy and move it around and size it until you are happy. Then slice it from one copy. I used several flourishes on the dogs. If using more than one, you may want to weld them. It makes slicing easier because you can only slice two layers or images at a time. Save the cut outs if you are making several embellishments.
Now put the one with cutouts on top of the other copy. Center them. And there you have your embellishment. Group them to keep them lined up in your design.
You can also do this with text (the bone for example). For the best results, you should use a stencil font. This eliminates gaps and holes because all of the text is connected with no holes. Just search stencil when selecting your font. Cricut has several good choices or you can find nice stencil fonts at Dafont for free.
Assembling the Fur Baby Scrapbook Page
And Your Fur Baby Scrapbook Page is done!. And you now know how to make your own fancy embellishments.
Uploading a Picture to Design Space
I didn’t included Bronx’s picture in the Design Space file. It is not in the SVG file either. Inkscape doesn’t work well transferring that many color layers into Design Space. If you want to upload your own picture, that can easily be done.
First, start Cricut Design Space. Then, start a new project. Click the Upload button (the little cloud bottom left). Then, click Upload Image in the center of the page and navigate to where your picture file is on your computer and select it.
Click Open. If it is not an SVG image (most wont be) then click complex. Remove anything that you don’t need. Your picture, in this case. should be a rectangle and there wont be anything to remove. Now, click continue. Save the image as a print/cut image and it will be placed in the list of recent uploads. Now open this project and click upload. Select the image and insert it into your project. Finally, size it appropriately for this project (a little bigger than 3 X 5).
Fun Facts About Dogs
- Their sense of smell is at least 40x better than ours. Some dogs can even smell medical problems.
- Dogs don’t sweat like we do.
- Dogs have 18 muscles controlling their ears.
- A dog’s nose print is unique, much like a person’s fingerprint.
- Human blood pressure goes down when petting a dog. And so does the dog’s.
- When dogs kick backward after they go to the bathroom, it’s not to cover it up, but to mark their territory, using the scent glands in their feet.
- There are over 75 million pet dogs in the U.S.—more than in any other country.
- The average dog can understand around 185 words.