PS: The mat on top is only cut off in the image not in real life.
 

BVCG Galleria Sept/09 "Black White"

Image: 6" w X 10.5"h 
Matted: 10"w X 14"h

Created: August 29, 2009
Modified:

I recently got a Cricut Personal Cutting machine and have been loving playing with it and this piece was done using it.

I drew my piece on white paper using a Zig bullet tip marker and coloring in everything that was supposed to be black. Scanned it, cleaned up the contrast and imperfections, manipulated and saved it under various formats (jpg, then bmp, then in Inkscapes "svg") until I got to the Cricut software extension and used my "Sure Cuts a Lot" software. I cut it out on both white cardstock and black cardstock and then glossy black paper, which is what I ended up using. I really wanted a texture and a semi shiny background, and thought my Echizen white paper was perfect for it.

 Now the theme was "Black, White, Grey and a touch of color", so that's exactly what I wrote. Used a piece of dark grey linen textured cardstock and then wrote the rest of my words with a Quickie Glue pen and used Red Variegated metal gold leaf for the color.

You can see the texture coming through the metal leaf.