"MAKE-IT-SNAPPY-MONDAY" AND THE WINNER OF A FREE SUBSCRIPTION TO CRAFT PROJECT CENTRAL

I chose this particular project for MISM because--if everything had gone according to plan--it would have been one of the snappiest gifts I've ever made, and it still could be a snappy, snappy project.  The biggest problem that I had was that some of my vinyl (most of it, really) ended up as a wadded heap in the trash for one reason . . . none of the die-cut vinyl designs wanted to stick to the transfer tape and, if you have ever worked with vinyl letters/words, then you know that transfer tape is a MUST.  Even though I have a LOT of vinyl in my stash, I finally purchased a brand new roll of Silhouette vinyl, and it worked like a dream!  I am thinking that some of my vinyl may have been stored so tightly in page protectors which, over time, has made it highly resistant to letting go of its liner.  It's still useable--but not especially suited for this type of project.  But let me tell you about this project.  I began by designing the image (the quote) using Silhouette Studio Designer Edition software and then cut it with the Silhouette Cameo using black vinyl.  Once cut, I trimmed the vinyl so that there was a narrow border around the die-cut quote and then peeled off the excess vinyl.  All that was left on the liner was the quote, and all that was left to do was "weed" it.  Weeding is the process of removing parts of the letters that aren't needed, such as the solid space in o's, e's, a's, p's, etc.  Once the weeding is complete, transfer tape is placed on top of the die-cut image to pull it off of the liner (from the roll of vinyl) while keeping the letters completely intact and, at the same time, exposing the adhesive on the backside of the vinyl.  The last step was to place the transfer tape onto the frame's glass to apply the letters (the die-cut quote) to the glass.  Easy peasy!!!!  Having finally arrived on a successful course of making this gift, I proudly held up the glass and was reading the quote when . . . [gasp] . . . I noticed that the "w" was missing.  After the initial panic wore off, it was an easy fix--I just copied, pasted, and cut another "w" and used the same transfer tape method to apply it to the glass.  Inside the frame, I placed an old-world map (cut from an old calendar), topped with vellum to mute the image.  I then applied the large colored rhinestones to the four corners of the frame and a small one above the "i" in the word is because that little dot also went missing.  Don't you love this quote???  I saw it a few months ago and knew that I would somehow put it to use and, over the weekend, decided that this would be one of my sister's birthday gifts.

And now . . . the winner of the FREE one-month subscription to Craft Project Central, a name drawn from those who left a comment on my project HERE, is . . . (drum roll) . . . SherryBee in AZ who wrote:  "L.O.V.E.!!! This is beautiful and such a great idea! Love your stuff!"  Sherry, just send me an email with "CPC Free Subscription" as the subject, and we'll get your subscription set up!