Be Mine Valentine Card with Make The Cut!

This card was inspired by Jin's tutorial at Under A Cherry Tree.  She is doing an entire series on how to use Make The Cut!(MTC) software and Lettering Delights images with your Cricut.  If you're new to this, you should check out her blog.  Since I don't have the SVGs and font from Lettering Delights that Jin used, my card looks a little different.  The heart is from the shape library in this amazing program, and the font, Monotype Corsiva, was already on my computer. The Martha Stewart border punch is called Doily Lace.  I also used an i Rock gem for the dot on the i.  One of the wonderful features of this software program is that you can print directly from it.  That's what I did with the "Be Mine".  I typed it into MTC and put it exactly where I wanted it to print.

This is so convenient and it's one of the things I've gleaned from Jin's tutorial.  I've had MTC for a few months now and I'd not tried doing this before.  I like the way it works, it seems much easier than using Word.  Another fabulous thing which can be done with MTC is importing textures or patterned paper!  Then you can print them and cut them- sounds like a more economical version of the Cricut Imagine to me!!  Here's a picture of my preview page in MTC with the papers I used applied to the shapes.

This is so helpful when you want to visualize how something will look before you cut (and possibly waste) anything!  One thing that is absolutely necessary when doing this is to make sure the paper image is under 512KB.  I found out this little tidbit at the MTC Forum.  When I just brought in digital papers as they were, it caused my computer to lag. In order to make them smaller I used Photoshop Elements (PSE) and resized them.  Once I did that everything worked fine.  Since I didn't actually print these papers I don't know what that will do to print quality- it's something I plan to test out.  I used the actual papers on my card and then just scanned them into my computer.  I really enjoyed making this card, it's so much fun to learn something new!  One note I should mention is Provocraft for some odd reason does not approve of third party software and using it with your Cricut will void your warranty.  My Cricut is out of warranty, so this poses no issue for me, but even if it was still under warranty I would use MTC with it.  I've never experienced any problems using MTC.  This is just my personal take on it, you have to decide for yourself.  I think this software was money well spent!  I know I haven't even tapped into all the things MTC can do!  See you next time............