I am the host for the current challenge at Bitten by the Bug 2 and I chose the theme “Fun and Games”.  I love playing board and card games, so I had started a tradition of hosting a family Euchre tournament around Christmas time.  While we haven’t had it the last couple of years due to other obligations and then COVID, This year we are having it again and I have some items that I will use for it, including this crown.

When we do this tournament, I make a game schedule so that after everyone at a table deals, partners switch and start a new game.  We keep track of things like total points earned for each player, loners made, Euchres made, etc.   Then I give prizes for various things including the least points so that everyone has a chance to win something.  One of the most coveted is the “Loner Crown”  If you make a loner, you get to wear the crown, but as soon as someone else makes a loner, they take the crown from you.  The person who is wearing the crown at the end of the tournament wins a prize.  People tend to make a big production out of taking the crown away.

I had a crown that we had used for several years, but it was layered and some of the layers had started slipping, so I decided to make one that incorporated  more of a card theme.  I was just going to redo the old one on Design Space and add the different suits to the design.  I searched and searched, but couldn’t find the design I had used or the project itself.  I finally took off the filter that limited me to images I owned and found the crown, but it wasn’t a part of a cartridge I owned, so I was confused.  Then I thought about just how long it had been since I made and then I remembered.

If you have been working with Cricut for a long time, you might recognize this.  It is called a Gypsy.  Before Design Space, was Cricut Craft Room, and before that was the Gypsy.  You loaded your cartridges unto the Gypsy and then you could design with it and do such things as weld, slice, etc.  When Cricut first announced they were going to an online software, I purchased a used Gypsy as a backup to my own Gypsy, because I couldn’t imagine that I would be using the internet for my Cricut.  We did not have reliable internet at home at the time.  The used Gypsy had some cartridges loaded on it, that were different than what I owned, and voila- the missing crown.  I actually charged it up and brought up the project just to see if I could.  My brother has my old Expression machine, or I might have even tried to make it using this Gypsy.

Design Space does have a lot of advantages over this Gypsy, but it meant I had to make my own crown, since I couldn’t find something that would work.  I was able to kind of use elements of the old crown including the fact that it is in two parts that hook together to make the crown.  Putting several slits in the back piece means it is adjustable so that it can fit several different people.  I started by looking at borders to see if there was a shape that would work. I came up with image #M429AZ from “The First Few Years” as a start, then looked for shapes that would work for the larger points of the crown and there were two ornaments from Anna’s Winter Wonderland that looked pretty good.  Finally I need some sort of hook to put on the ends to work with the slots on the back shape.  Since I thought that was the way the cupcake wrappers worked, I looked at various ones of those and found what I wanted as part of the Close to My Heart cartridge called Artiste.  Below is a gallery of the various steps I took to make the design, including welding and slicing off the hook from the cupcake wrapper to weld on the crown.

I forgot to take a screen shot of the final weld.

The suits of Clubs, Spades, Hearts, and Diamonds were from the CTMH Artiste cartridge. I used the offset feature to cut in gold and make the black show up on the black crown. The letters are also gold vinyl and use Blackletter and Circut Sans text.  Bling added that something special.

To make the back of the crown, I used basic shapes for a rectangle and lines (changed from score to cut).  The alignment and distribution tools helped make it uniform.  Below is a a closeup of the ends that hook together to make the crown along with the two pieces.  Each piece is 14.5 inches long and I used some 11 x 15 cardstock that I had picked up at a paper store that is a few hours from home, but has some amazing things at very reasonable prices

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I also made some score keepers with chipboard, vinyl and game spinners I had from Tim Holtz.

Make your own project that incorporates a Fun and Games theme with your Circut and link it up at Bitten by the Bug 2 . The designers have some wonderful inspiration. – Denise