Hi everyone!
Today I am showing you a project that is very dear to my heart. 
I love houseplants... and I have a LOT of them. For a long time now, I have wanted to create a photo album where I can document my favorite plants, and most importantly, create sections with information about their care. Some of them are"prima donnas" and have very specific watering and humidity requirements and now I will have somewhere to check who likes what! (Cause I might be a little bit forgetful!)
For this album, Pam Bray's Watercolor collection was the one I chose to go with. I made a diecut for the front of the album, using my Cricut Maker and the Floral cut file available on Whild Whisper's online store. I have mentioned before how I love Wild Whisper's paper to create mixed media on... well I love using it in the Cricut as well... it cuts like butter and releases easily.
When you first get your file, the images are all grouped together like above. I use the Microsoft snipping tool to separate them, save them as individual JPEG photo files, and then upload them all to my Cricut Design Space account.
The picture above is what they look like in Design Space. I can now resize each image as I choose, duplicate them and group them... the possiblities are endless.
There are a lot of intricate cuts in the original Wild Whisper file, and I wanted a few solid leaves, so I used the contour tool to block the cuts that I didn't want made. It's as simple as placing your mouse on the spot you don't want and "clicking".
As you're working with the contour tool, you can watch the changes that your making on the image in the bottom right of the photo above. You can see that the lower leaf image is now a solid image. This is very helpful because if you don't like how it looks, you can change it back.
Here you can see the original image on the bottom, and the changes I made on the top. They are subtle, but I was really happy with the results.
I knew that the piece of patterned paper that the die cut would be sitting on was 6.5"x8.75", so I created a blue rectangle that size in Design Space and then I was able to resize my image to fit it.
Fresh off the Cricut!
Don't be intimidated by the thought of gluing down that delicate die cut. I find PPA Matte adhesive works wonderfully. You brush it on the back, smooth down the die cut and then give it another coat all over. The PPA gives a nice smooth finish and you hardly know it is on the paper. I also used this glue to glue all the Watercolor pages to the binder.
What difference pretty paper makes!
For the first page of my album, I used two different Wild Whisper stamp sets... Floral and Lake Life.
One category of plants that I have a lot of is Succulents, so I used some of the beautiful succulent die cuts from the Floral Ephemera pack to decorate this page. For the Succulents title, I used the Road Trip License Plate stamp set.
Finally... I get to start adding photos!
I love that this album is so pretty that I can just leave it sitting out, where it's handy to grab when I have a question about my plants.
I hope I've inspired you to give the cut files a try!
Linda
