Tom Servo

It’s not that I avoid starting work on cards with plenty of time before they’re due — I start thinking about them a good couple of weeks in advance at least (I have an 80th card to make for the end of August that I am very aware of) — it’s just that I don’t settle on an idea that I’m happy with until a few days beforehand. And even that isn’t a problem if it’s just a case of finding the right digi stamp and spending an hour or two colouring. No, the problems start when I have an idea three days before the birthday (luckily this one didn’t need posting) and it involves a design idea I haven’t used before and some software that I am kind of comfortable with but haven’t used for this purpose before either.

And so it was that three days before my other half’s birthday I had the idea to create a layered cut design of one of the MST3K robots. Sensibly (for a change) I chose the simplest shaped bot: Tom Servo, who is based on a gumball machine. I based the image on the same source I used for the Twist-and-pop bots card three years ago.

First problem: work out the order of the layers and what needed to be visible on each and what holes would need to be cut where. I ended up with the white card base, then the red body layer, the blue background layer, the silver frame, and finally the black outlines.

Second problem: work out how to create the vector images in Affinity Designer so that it would export as the minimum number of layers and cuts for use in the Cricut Design Space app.

Third problem: discover I don’t have any black cardstock in the same weight as the other layers and end up having to use a scalpel to finish some of the cuts on the outline.

By the end of the second day I had all the pieces cut out and on the third I very carefully assembled it — the lines of the detail outline on the top layer could have been a little wider, there wasn’t a lot of room to glue it down around the edge. I was lucky and managed to find a “happy birthday” stamp that was just the right size to fit in the bubble.

Of course, now that I’ve done one of the bots, I will have to at the very least make a Crow T Robot to go with him. That promises to be a little trickier…