Day 4 MTC Blog Hop (and some Blog Candy!)

If you are on the Make-The-Cut! Blog Hop, you should have come from Every Day Little Things.  This is the fourth day of the hop and I am the hostess for May 4.

A big welcome to all my friends from the MTC forum and also to any newbies that may have found out about the Blog Hop! MTC is one of the easiest programs to use for designing files to be cut on an electronic cutter like the Gazelle, the Silhouette SD, the eCraft, the Pazzles, the Lynx and Cougar - and now the KnK!. Hop on board the Blog Hop - by the end of the month you will be convinced of this as well (if you are not already!)

Today I have a cute card project for the little boy (or maybe the "big boy") in your life! This card could be used in many ways (get well, missing you, thinking of you, etc.) but I chose to make it a birthday card.

I used the Lettering Delights Fast Car graphic set to make this shaped card. (image is linked). I will provide the MTC file for the card and envelope, you will need to head over to Lettering Delights for the graphic file. (Hopefully you picked it up during the Lettering Delights sale that they had. If not, run right over to get it now. This one is a keeper!)

This is a wonderfully colorful set that inspires the vrooom, vroooom from me! Can't you just see all those little cars racing around a track? Maybe it has something to do with the Indy 500 and the fact that I live in Indianapolis? Or that Race Day is coming up on May 29? Uhhh, maybe!


I used Make The Cut! to design the card, exported the file to png, and imported it into Silhouette Studio for cutting as a Print-n-Cut project.  Why did I use the Silhouette Studio instead of MTC? Well, because I am waiting for Andy to finish the plug-in for the Silhouette. MTC will cut currently from the print driver to the Silhoette, not directly from the cutting button. But once he gets the plug-in completed, I will be using MTC for both printing and cutting. (I was hoping it would be ready by today and I was ready to edit this post but check back soon! It is coming.) Here is what my screen looked like in MTC:

The Silhouette - when used with the automatic three-point registration (in Silhouette Studio) - is hands-down the best cutter (to date IMHO) for PnC. According to Andy, the new plug-in "takes advantage of all the Silhouette's features..." To me that means three point registration for easy and accurate PnC!  Did I say that I can hardly wait to see it! On April 23 he promised it would be ready in 7-14 days, so it should be ready by May 7! (not that I am counting or anything, lol!)

Now for the nitty gritty details on making this card. The car is popped up with pop dots. The graphics and sentiment inside were adhered flat to the card. The font used inside was Chachie. I also designed an envelope for the card, since the smallest size acceptable for mailing is 3.5x5", this one is just a smidge bigger. (I will sheepishly admit to cutting the envie by hand! I was in too big of a hurry to put it together).  There is also a graphic on it, but that is optional. I added the little puff of smoke behind the cars by hand with a black gel pen, and filled it in with a white gel pen.

Today I have for you the shape for the card and instructions on how to add in the graphic after you purchase it. Import the file as a texture into MTC, then reduce to 25% (both the shape and the texture). It should fit into the silhouette of the car perfectly. The "Zoom" needs to be reduced to 20%.  The MTC file for the card and envie is here (it will download when clicked).

The envelope is my own design and my own texture. I have included in on page 2 of the above file.

Oh yeah - the Blog Candy! Can't forget that, now can I? A $5 Lettering Delights Gift card is up for grabs. All you need to do is:
1. Become a follower of my blog,
2. Leave a comment telling me what you would create with this graphic set if you had it, and
3. Leave a way for me to contact you (your MTC forum name is fine).

Open until 11:59 pm EST on May 4. I will use Random.org to choose a winner and will post the winner on here by 5 pm Thursday. Good luck! And stop back tomorrow for more goodies!

Have a blessed day!