Everything's Better with Friends! Card using Print and Cut with MTC

Hello.  Thanks for stopping by.  I'm going to be trying to add some "new" stuff as I continue to also bring over some of my "older" stuff from my old blog.  So some days you will see multiple posts (I hope!) This is one of those days! No file to share (just a site to get it from) but some ideas as to how to make them your "own".

Our weather finally turned to winter weather (well winter COLD weather - no snow!) the past couple of days which made me think of some cute snowmen files I purchased from Scrappydew.com's website back in November. I used one of the snowmen from Scrappy's Snowman Set II found in the Christmas Palz I collection.  You get 3 different snowmen with all their parts and pieces for a whopping $1.99 (US funds).  PLUS, you get them in a variety of different formats too! (This particular set comes in MTC-SVG-PDF-DXF formats). This card is only using 1 snowman from that set. (I hope to use some more soon!)

Well, I wanted to make a card BUT I didn't want to do a lot of paper piecing right then.  So I figured I would do the snowman as a "print and cut" instead of paper piecing him together.

Now, one of the neat things about ScrappyDew's MTC files is that they make it really easy to use the files as either paper piecings or as a "print and cut" as they have all the "pieces" layed out on their own layers PLUS they have a "cut layer" or "shadow layer" already made and ready for making one cut just around the outside edge of the image!

But, if you look carefully at the snowmen on my card you will notice that the snowmen all have different color scarves and hat bands AND the snowman in the middle has his scarf and hat going the opposite direction from the other two snowmen!  The first snowman, the one with the blue scarf and hat, is the original snowman as received from ScrappyDew (reduced in size though to fit 3 on the card front).  However, I thought I'd like to make each snowmen have different colors hats and scarves.  Make the Cut (MTC) makes that really easy to do. I simply selected the items that I wanted to change the color on and changed it to a new color!  (There are several ways to do this - you can change on the layer, you can do ctrl, shift, U and it will take you to the color selection area or you can select the item so that it has the selection box around it, then right click and go to the change, color, texture, line and go to change color.)  I coud have also added a "texture" (like a stripe or star pattern) if I wanted and had them on my computer (say from a Lettering Delights texture file!) or wanted to take the time to create them. This would be done by going to the change -->texture choice.

Now, the other thing you should notice is that the scarf and hat on the snowman in the middle is also going in the opposite direction then those on the other two snowman!  His scarf is blowing to the left while the other two's are going to the right. His hat is leaning towards the right while the other two's are leaning to the left. This is also very simple to do in MTC!  I simply selected all the layers of that snowman, right clicked, Shape Magic and mirrored him.  Quite easy!  The reason I selected all of his layers is because I was doing a print and cut and wanted to make sure that all the parts flipped  and matched up including the solid outline for cutting purposes.  If I had been doing a paper piecing, I could have just mirrored the hat and scarf themselves if I was not using the outline piece as a base to piece it all on.  YOU can decided to do what ever works for you - there is no limits or being locked into what someone else "envisioned"!

Now, I'm trying to decide how to finish off this card.  Can't decide if I want to add any wording to the front or leave it as is and just put inside the card.  Thinking about "Warm Winter Wishes", "Good Friends are often Flakes", Some of my Best Friends are Flakes", or "Let it Snow, Let it Snow, Let it Snow".  Anybody got any good ideas?

The background is a stamp from Hero Arts that I got on sale before the holidays at Michael's.  It's title is "Stunning Snowflakes".  I used a Tsukineko Brillance Moonlight White inkpad to stamp it with.  I used some Martha Stewart fine crystal white glitter on the snowmounds (doesn't show up well in the picture) and some minor inking/doodling on the snowmen.  I then pop dotted the two front snowmen.

Thanks for stopping by.  I hope this helps you to see how you can take those purchased and/or free files that you have and make them your "own" simply by changing their colors and/or direction!  Please feel free to leave me a comment below.  Be sure to stop by ScrappyDew's to find lots of winter friends to work with.  I hope to show you some more of them soon as I bought quite a few back in November and one of my New Year's resolution was to start using some of those files and ideas I have laying around!