Last-Minute Handlettered Gift Idea with my Cricut Maker
I get my best ideas at the last minute.
For some reason, my brain doesn’t kick into high gear until the eleventh hour. I’ll just see something and suddenly the stars align, lightning hits me with a surge of energy, and I take off with a new idea.
The downside to that is…it’s usually so close to a deadline, I give myself a panic attack trying to get it done…and I refuse to miss a deadline.
My son’s wedding is this weekend. I already had a wedding gift for him and his soon-to-be bride. But, I wanted something with more sentimental impact. Fortunately, this project was well within reach…Sort of.
I saw these aluminum plates while in Michael’s during their recent sale on Cricut supplies.
I knew the Maker could engrave. But, couldn’t believe it could also engrave aluminum plates. Immediately the widescreen in my mind flashed a handlettered wedding plaque in aluminum, mounted on a white board (specifically, the extra one they gave me with the one they wanted me to letter earlier this month)!
Nevermind that I needed to…
buy the very not cheap engraver tool…
to learn how to engrave on the Cricut…
to design a handlettered announcement…
and to get it drilled to a plaque.
Meh. Those were just minor details in the grand picture of my mind.
After contemplating selling a lung to get the supplies, I took them home and spent the rest of that evening looking up tutorials on how to engrave on the Cricut. I landed on this tutorial by NeliDesign. She mentioned she had some free downloadable hatch files and it was a wrap! Her tutorial was great and I recommend her resources if you’re ever interested in engraving with the Cricut.
Once that was over, I had to design something that I thought they’d like. So, I searched up some wedding plaques. They were all gorgeous. They were all so pretty and delicate. But, I wanted something a little more distinctive than the majority of what I was seeing online. I mean…I’m currently only the mother of the groom. I didn’t want it looking like it wasn’t for him too.
I was up last night working on it…
In the end, I wound up sketching a mashup of some bolder lettering styles…A little Victorian, a little tattoo-style embellishments for the name. For the other text, I added a couple other styles I thought would complement and soften it a little bit. For the illustration, I added a floral. Then, I traced it all with a mono line brush in the Procreate app and finished it with Image Trace in Illustrator.
I loved how this came out and I couldn’t wait to tackle the next part. Design Space. Design Space isn’t the easiest software to get along with, but the instructions in the tutorial by NeliDesign were so easy to follow for this…I felt it was pretty fool-proof.
For this part of the process, I had an up-close-and-personal look at the Splice function since I had to use it to combine the hatch files and the design. I just followed the directions in the video by NeliDesign.
Here’s a detail view of the design with the hatch image by NeliDesign. I love the hatch marks!!
Once I had the file prepared, I sent it to the Maker. Then, I waited…and waited…and waited. If there’s anything difficult about engraving with the Cricut Maker and hatch files like these, it’s the waiting. Engraving takes FOR-EVER! This took about 5 to 5.5 hours even on the Cricut Maker 3. So, while it’s a last minute gift idea, I wouldn’t suggest waiting until the last minute to cut it.
But I think with results like this, it’s worth it!
Engraving on shiny aluminum can be difficult to see head on. As NeliDesign suggested, I used some ink to darken the inside of the engraving…and it made it pop a bit more. I probably could have dulled the shine a little more by washing it first. But I think it came out nicely!
Now, all I need to do is add the mounting of it to the board to my husband’s already extensive“Honey Please Do List”…with a day to spare!
Wish me luck!
