Macabre Monday Inner Workings and a Mini Cricut Tut

Morning, my pretties! I'm running a little late today, so If you were expecting my BBTB2 project, be sure to come back. I DO have a Cricut creation, however, so I hope that will do until I get my act together. LOL This week our Macabre Monday challenge is Inner Workings. Create a dark,Gothic, or Halloween based project that is either quite literal (clockwork or guts) or just simply decorate the inside of your project as well as the outside. My first inclination was to find something really EEEEWWWW!!!! on the net, but then I remembered my heart stamp from the Quoth the Raven set from Smeared Ink.

I decided to create a gate fold rib cage card to hold my heart, using my Cricut. There's a bit of a lesson here, so if you're not interested, skip this part. (I'm feeling a bit chatty today, though so here goes.) I sized the skelton torso from the Oct 31st cartridge quite large in DS. In order to make a gate fold, the maximum my torso could be is 6 inches at the widest point because my card stock for the base is only 12 inches wide. The base, which measured 12"x7" (yeah, it's a BIG card!) was scored at 3" and 9" and folded towards the center. The skeleton torso was partially off the mat in DS, but since I only wanted the rib cage, it didn't really matter. Remember when doing this, however, that although the cutting will look complete on your screen, your Cricut will think there's still more to cut (because actually, there is, but you've run out of mat). You will have to delete that little cutting progress screen and unload your mat, but when you go to re cut, the program will be confused. It won't cut. You'll have to not only exit your file, but actually close out and restart DS in order for you to be able to continue. A GIANT PITA, but it was worth it to get the size I needed.

Next problem, there are no shadows on the Oct. 31st cart, so after cutting and trimming my rib cage, I sliced it down the center and used removable tape to secure it to my gate fold and traced around it. Make sure you leave plenty of area at the the folds so your base is stable and cut carefully through both thicknesses. Et voila! a shaped gate fold.

For the inside mat, I hid the contours of the rib cage and cut and trimmed it as previously mentioned. I used Copics and Distress ink for a bit of shading. My heart is also colored with Copics, but looked a bit lonesome without any other organs so I cut the zombie hand (also from October 31st) and positioned it to look like it was ripping it out (or at least squeezing the life out of it :D ) Who says Cricut has to be cutesy? (However, if this doesn't float your boat, come back later today to see a REALLY cute Halloween project for BBTB2. Please ignore that, Minions!) Anyway, the sentiment is computer generated and the front closure thingy was cut with the Cuttlebug Embossing Plus Fanciful Labels folder. Now, after all that for a mediocre project, I hope you still have the strength and inclination to visit HDH to see what the rest of the Minions have been up to, and don't forget Wretched Wednesday when Creepy Glo posts. We love it when you participate too, and it is October, after all. Time to get your creep on. I'm also entering this in the Forever Night Anything Goes challenge.