My Valentine

This is the gift that I made to give to my sweet and wonderful husband for Valentine's Day. I found the quote online. It is by Karen Sande. I couldn't figure out where to put the author's name without detracting, so I'm probably going to put it on a small sticker on the back where it will be hidden by the vinyl, but still there to give credit. The glass plaque was a photo frame from a dollar store somewhere, and I bought it over two years ago. It's hard to find the curved glass frames anymore, at least without some unwanted additional decoration that might not come off. I soaked the photo frame part off. Adding the vinyl cuts to a curved glass surface is a little tricky. I didn't get it perfectly centered, but once it's down, it's down. I bought the black and metallic brass vinyl from a sign shop while visiting Salt Lake City, also a few years ago, so I don't remember the name of the shop.

I used a variety of Cricut cartridges to make this, but were it not for my Gypsy, I would have no clue as to which ones. The design work was a two day or more process, so now my brain is numb. According to my Gypsy, they were:

Botanicals Lite
Calligraphy Collection
Home Decor
Lacy Labels Lite
Plantin Schoolbook
Wall Decor and More

Botanicals, Home Decor, Calligraphy Collection, and Plantin Schoolbook were used for the words (I think).

Lacy Labels was what I used to make the frame for the words. I had to get a little sneaky to get the black heart outlines to go inside the hearts of the frame. The label comes with hearts to layer on top of the frame. However, I wanted an outline of the heart(s), not a solid heart. I copied and pasted the heart overlays so I had four sets (you can't separate the hearts within the set). One set I reduced in size till it fit within the other heart set(s) to suit me. Then I made two more copies of the smaller set. I had to separate each set onto different sections on the mat. I used the Gypsy to hide the hearts I wanted to exclude from the cut, then overlaid each set of smaller hearts onto the regular sized hearts (which I had also reduced in size a little). That allowed me to cut a heart outline. I'm sorry if it isn't clear enough, but if you open the file and try to make a smaller heart overlay using the Gypsy, you'll see why I had to get sneaky. Hopefully these directions will be clear if you want to do something like this.

Wall Decor and More was where I got the additional flourishes. They were from the compass/font option. The smaller flourish was cut down by hand. It hadn't cut properly for some reason, and it worked well as an additional small flourish for the small heart.

I have it waiting in the entry way with my card, so my husband will see it when he comes home.