While Christmas is over, Winter and snow are far from done.  Bitten by the Bug 2 has a new challenge for Magical Winter Snowflakes.  I opted to do a lever card using a layered snowflake.

Here is the front of the card.

Below are other views of the card open.

I have been really intrigued with layered mandela images that I find on DesignBundles.net.  I purchased this file during a special Black Friday sale they had.  The original design has six layers.  I decided that four of the layers would still be pretty and cut down on some of the work.  I did pull out my old 5″ Xyron machine to put adhesive on the really thin layers of the snowflake, but will try to find something better for future cuts. I do like the delicate cut option on my Explore to do those layers. I have been trying to figure out a way to do a lever card on the Cricut for a while now.  All of the directions are shown doing this method with a manual die machine because you have to do a half cut of the image for it to swing through the opening.  I finally found a You Tube video found here by Melody Lane that gave me a method to try.  It did work and while I wanted something that would just make a single cut, this cuts a very thin line and works well. Here is a picture of the inside with just the cut.

There is a fold at the top and bottom of the cut which I did manually.  I did put score lines for the other two folds in Design Space.  Now that I know how to put this together, I will be doing these lever or flip cards with other type of cuts.

Make your own snowflake project and link it up on Bitten by the Bug 2 by January 31.  You must use your Cricut machine, and there are lots of fun images out there.  The design team has some great inspiration for you, so check it out. – Denise

I am hosting the first challenge of this year for Bitten by the Bug 2.  I decided on the theme of Get Well Wishes because we always seem to be in need of these cards, especially now.  Ironically as I was trying to get my project done for this post, I became ill.  Even though the symptoms of low-grade fever, headache, muscle aches, and lack of energy were worrisome, it only lasted about 36 hours, so I think I dodged the COVID bullet and felt back to my old self.  Here is the box card I came up with.

I saw a box card on Pinterest and thought I could come up with something similar using a cat instead of the original bear of the inspiration card.  I love box cards and have made enough from places like SVG Cuts that I thought I could make my own pattern on Design Space.  Let’s just say that it is probably worth the money to buy those designs when you consider the time spent to make your own, lol.  Anyway I started with the crib image from Baby Steps to make the headboard and foot board. I only used one of the layers and made the width just under 5 inches thinking it would go in a 5 x 7 envelope.  Lesson one (learned after the card was assembled) was that you have to take into consideration the sides that fold for the final envelope measurements.  Next I duplicated that image and keeping the same width made the height just under 7 inches.  I copied the smaller one again and after getting rid of the cutouts in the middle using the hide contour feature used the slice feature with a basic box shape to cut off the top and make the inserts. I added rectangular shapes to the sides of the inserts as the tabs and welded them on.  I wanted to use the “feline” for feeling pun in my sentiment so I started looking for a cat image that would work.  The only one I found was Cat, Sleeping in Cricut Access which is a print, then cut image.  I sized it to fit in the bed and then made a copy of it, sliced off the bottom of the copy and welded it to one of the inserts.  I found that this really helps stabilize the inserts to have a backing to the image.  I also made a second copy of the cat to print.  Dr. Checkup is a great cartridge for Get Well cuts and I used it for the thermometer, tissues, and pill bottle.  I decided to flatten those images to print and cut since I was already doing that for the cat.  I also duplicated the cat so that I could add part of it to the first insert. I added larger tabs to the sides of the footboard and headboard using the weld feature and thought I was ready to cut. After all this work when I went to make it, it told me I needed to pay $4.99.  I had already paid for the cat image and owned every thing else, so I had no idea why it was doing that.  After trying several things, I ended up just starting a new project.  I get a little stubborn that way when I have something in mind, lol. It worked, but when I put it together, this is what it looked like.

While cute, you couldn’t see the tissues or pill bottle very well, so I took a deep breath and cut off the bottom rails with my scissors.

Here is the side view to give a better idea of the depth the layers give and also see how I followed the contour of the blanket when cutting the front layer.

I hope you will create a Get Well project with your Cricut and link it up at Bitten by the Bug 2  plus see all the great inspiration from the projects that the design team has created. – See you again in a couple of weeks. – Densie