Cricut Circle Weekly Challenge #52: Things We Love Challenge!

I rarely participate in the Cricut Circle Weekly Challenges, but I have had this home décor project in my head for some time, and the challenge rules helped me put my idea into focus.  Clay has a very nice apartment in San Antonio while he’s in law school, but nothing whatsoever hangs on the walls.  I had the idea to use the Cricut Word Collage cartridge to create some art work for his walls, but never quite pulled it together.  When I read this challenge, “Voila!”  The project just appeared in my head.  Thankfully, it also turned out beautifully.

The Challenge: Scrap what you love! Include a tag and use the negative space of a Cricut cut

Now, my love here is twofold:  1) I love Clay, and 2) we love traveling, so the use of the Word Collage “Welcome” sign was perfect.  We both studied German in high school, and he was stationed in Germany during his years in the Army.  Once I had the collage picked out, it was a matter of how to make it all come together.

I used the negative space of the Word Collage, rather than the letters themselves, as the base of the project.  Since I did not know what all of the languages, I researched each word that I was not familiar with and jotted down all of the languages used in the collage to say “Welcome.”  The following languages, in order of appearance, are:  Spanish, English, German, Norwegian, Japanese, Portuguese, Dutch or Afrikaan (from when the Dutch settled in that part of Africa and influenced the language), French, Swedish, Hawaiian, and Italian.

I have always loved the Cricut Destinations cartridge, but have never had occasion to use it.  This was the perfect project for it.  I tried to match a destination to each of the languages, but there three languages whose countries were not represented on the Destinations cartridge:  Portuguese, Norwegian and Swedish.  In order to have 12 destinations to complete the look, I decided to use San Antonio for the USA, since Clay is in San Antonio for law school and Houston because that’s where I live.  I also used both Amsterdam and Tanzania to cover the two countries which use the Dutch/Afrikaan translation of “welcome.”  That left me with one more needed, so I chose Sydney because they also speak English, and it’s the one place on earth I have always wanted to see.

In order to meet the tag requirement of the project, I also used the Cricut Fabulous Finds cartridge to cut out 12 luggage tags.  I tucked the tag portion behind each of the images, so that all you see is the loop that would fit over the handle of a suitcase.

I had wanted to match the place with the language, but that just wasn’t doable, so I laid them out in a manner that seemed to balance one another.

I know Clay will love it, and it will look great in his apartment.

Now, I have to come up with a project using the letters from the image for the house! 

Hope you enjoy the project. 

Have a wonderfully crafty day!

Shari