Several months ago my friend Nina retweeted someone who had shared an internet tool that might be of interest to artists.
A new way to select a palette? Count me in! So I went to the website. Here’s the number that my birthdate produced:
29ae962cbd00eab3a1729edd8eb4a316416de8e503a87b0d10ea5ecdebb5f05d
And here’s that split into 6 digits sections:
29ae96
2cbd00
eab3a1
729edd
8eb4a3
16416d
e8e503
a87b0d
10ea5e
cdebb5
F05d
I took to Google and searched for those. A couple of them, like 16416d didn’t translate to a hex code, but Google kindly found the nearest one. In this case it was 16426d.
Here are the colours I ended up with.
Now, what to do with it. Given that I’m posting this during my 13 Days of Cricut Halloween series, I’m sure you have suspected that it has something to do with my Cricut, and something to do with Halloween. You’d be right on both counts!
Step one though, is drawing.
In a Figure Friday (which I haven’t blogged yet) I ended up with a figure I was really proud of, so I’d set it aside to turn into a character at some point. This was that point!
I sketched, and sketched some more, until I had something I was happy with. Ignore the fact that her hat is currently off-kilter.
Eventually I had a drawing I was happy with. Sort of. Her face is a little… off. And don’t look too closely at her hands.
Time to colour.
This palette was quite a tough challenge for me. They weren’t colours I’d normally pick, and certainly not in that configuration. I’m glad I had a skin colour though. And a colour that could be hair.
I added the yellow pops, and the blues for the accessories. After that the rest of them just seemed to fall into place.
And even though I still think her face is a little off and her hands are weird, I’m happy with her.
“Hey, Colette,” I hear you cry. “What about the Cricut?”
For this project I decided to use the Print and Cut feature on the Cricut. I planned to find a background pattern to draw onto paper, then use that feature to print the witch onto some sticker vinyl and when it was cut out I’d set it on the background.
I found a background I liked on Cricut Access. Given that my character is tall and thin I didn’t want to stick her in the middle of a 12 x 12” page and look completely lost. I was going with A4.
I tried to slice the background into shape but it did something weird.
Instead of struggling with it for ages, I hacked it. I put my A4 card in the middle of the mat and surrounded it with scrap paper.
The Print and Cut worked perfectly. Although when I peeled the mat away I realised that because I’d used a transparent PNG it had cut out the eyes and teeth – leaving her face looking even more off.
I wasn’t bothered though, because she was going to be place on white paper, which would bring back her eyes and teeth.
Once I had the witch in place, I decided that there was way too much white space. The urge to colour in some of those spaces was strong.
I grabbed some scrap card of the same type, and swatched my alcohol markers to find ones that matched.
I started with one or two shapes for each colour, and that wasn’t enough. I kept adding more a few at a time, but this was actually really hard. It’s one of those situations where it’s hard to know where to stop.
I think I reached a nice point though. I’m really happy with the final piece.
Colouring in that background was so much fun though. I may have printed off a 12 x 12” version to colour in my own time.
—
PS: I picked today to publish this post because today is my birthday! And I’m currently running a sale on my store. Until 11:59pm GMT tomorrow, everything in my Etsy store is 38% off. Can you guess how old I am?
Crafted By Colette 
One thought on “13 Days of Cricut Halloween – Print & Cut Witch”