13 Days of Cricut Halloween – Boike

When I was doing my initial research before getting a Cricut, I ended up with a long list of tutorials I wanted to follow. One of which was the one by Jennifer Maker where she showed how to make cardstock cut outs that are bigger than the size of the mat.

So when I was compiling this series, I included doing something bigger than the mat. Originally I was going to do a Halloween themed character, then I settled on something better.

Instead of making a big piece of cardstock that would sit in my house and be out of season within a few weeks, I’d make something that could change with the seasons. I was going to make a large cardstock cut out of one of my monsters, and I’d also make things to add on to it for Halloween, and Christmas and so on.

First I designed a new monster, because I love designing monsters. I settled on rainbow, because rainbows are awesome.

Then I uploaded it into Design Space ready to use a tutorial by Kayla’s Cricut Creations on how to turn a single layer image into multiple layers.

Except that I’d remembered the tutorial wrong and forgot that she’d used an outline.

No problem. I went back in to my tablet and saved a file of just the outline.

I split it into layers using the Contour feature, and moved on to the next step.

Time to work out how big this thing was going to be. I didn’t wanna be too ridiculous, so I settled on one mat wide, and two mats tall. I also decided to cut the black background layer four times – to make it sturdier – with the join in different places so as not to have a weak space.

All of the other bits and pieces would fit on one mat, so that wasn’t a problem.

Cutting wasn’t really a problem. Time consuming though. There were 17 mats. I used the six light- and standard- stick mats that I have, so there was some time saved with prep, but it still took some time. Eventually though I had what I needed.

The first step was to assemble the black body. I used cellotape. On both sides for three of them, then not on one side for the final piece so the tape wouldn’t show when he was finished. Then I used a standard glue stick to glue the four pieces together.

I glued on the grey body and antenna parts, and then moved on to the colour. I’d done these bits with vinyl to save saturating the piece with glue and making a mess.

I had a small mishap when cutting the different sections apart, but eventually I had a nice layout of rainbow bits and pieces.

I started with his face – which I got all wonky because the teeth came off the transfer tape, and because Fatty was helping.

I kept things attached in Design Space, and when I cut them I left the corresponding pieces on the same piece of backing paper. But for whatever reason, they didn’t align nicely, so each piece was added individually.

I ended up with a nearly-complete monster. He was missing a couple of his stripes – one was cut in half during my mishap, and one just wouldn’t line up right. And I didn’t glue on his eyes because his entire face looked off. It needed an outline.

So I went back to Design Space. I sorted out the contours to create the outline for his face, and got ready to re-cut the face and his missing stripes. Instead of using four mats, I went with this technique instead.

It worked really well. I mean, walk about cutting it close.

I did mess up on the sizing for a couple of parts of his eyes, though. So I had to re-re-cut those.

But I finally ended up with a completed figure.

Before I moved on to his accessories, I figured this guy needed a name. I asked for suggestions on my social media but didn’t get any responses. So I took to Google. I found a website called FantasyNameGenerators.com and was completely smitten instantly.

There are HUNDREDS of different types of generators – fantasy names, real names, place names, mutant species names, forest names, instrument names, alchemy ingredients, Power Ranger teams, pain descriptions, dungeon creators, and so on. I used a few to come up with some ideas – these are from the Lord of the Rings Dwarf name generator, the Harry Potter House Elf name generator, the fairy name generator, and the unicorn name generator.

Seriously, this website is awesome. It even has a random generator generator! I see lots of use of this website in the future.

Now, for the name. I settled on Boike. Because it’s fun to say.

Time to dress Boike up for Halloween. I selected some parts of some free Halloween SVGs from HelloSVG and cut them from more cardstock.

I did measure the brim of the hat before cutting, but I didn’t factor in his antenna.

So I remade the hat, and then attached it (and the spider) to Boike with washi tape.

I may have already made him some Christmas accessories too – also from HelloSVG.