New Patriotic Word Book made using Cricut Design Studio

If you've wondered why I haven't posted much this week, I've been working on this!

I wanted to make a chipboard book using Stand & Salute! It is fast becoming one of my favorite cartridges because the images are so FUN! So, I created this book using the Cricut Design Studio software. It is done in the typical "word book" fashion and uses Stand & Salute and George cartridges. You can download the link to the free cut file I made by looking below.

A couple of tips when cutting this may help things go smoothly. First of all, tape down all the edges of your chipboard (see below) before cutting it. I love Star Trek so I put that side up on the mat but it really doesn't matter ;-).



I used Design Studio software "preferences" to set my "multi-cut" to 3 times. I also used cereal box chipboard, taking care to use thinner, rather than thicker chipboard. My blade was on 5, speed on LOW, and pressure maximum. Thanks for Scrapping Grandma from the Cricut board, I knew these were the right settings. I also cut all my papers (adjusting the blade depth, speed and pressure as needed) by reloading the mat and then using double sided-cardstock weight paper from Reminisce. This is their new patriotic line that I picked up at the Great American Scrapbook Convention a few weeks ago.

I used many cuts from the cartridge such as all the book edgings, the firecrackers, the "stars and stripes forever", the USA frame, the America the Beautiful cut with shadow, the tag function, the "Liberty" word art, a circle coaster with USA that I created in Design Studio, also in the cut file, and the hat borders.

Download the cut file HERE!

Enjoy!!

Cricut Design Studio - How to Make Word Books

Ok, Cricut Design Studio software is on sale at Michaels this week for $60.  And, it is one of the easier ways to create those word books that everyone loves (see photo above).  So, I have been doing some research on exactly how to make those word books and as usual, the internet tells me everything I need to know.  (I love people who are willing to share their knowledge!)

For starters, I found these sites with tutorials on exactly how to make word books.  The end result is a little different amongst the different tutorials, so make sure to look at the photos on the site and see if that is what you want.

Tutorials on Creating Word Books Using Cricut Design Studio:

Susan Blue Robot blog

Jack Russ

A Cherry on Top Tutorial

Now, the blog Everything Cricut and Brandi Gore make a good point of saying, "Hey, as long as you give credit, why not use all the free cut files everyone posts on the internet?  Why reinvent the wheel every time you want to cut something out?"  So, I wondered not only where to find these already designed cut files but also how to download them and get them into the design studio.  Here are some links to help you:

How to download cut files into Cricut Design Studio and Use them - by Brandi Gore

List of sites that have free files

That list of sites with free files is very comprehensive.  It may take me the next week to really look through all those sites.  I'll let you know if I find more goodies.