A little rushed, but they all worked out!

Original Post: December 6 & 7, 2008

So my coworker called me up yesterday and requested two birthday cards, one for a pastor and the other to a friend and he needs it today. He gave me the following criteria:

For the two cards:

1. Cards must be big for a big group of people to sign
2. Cards must have some Christian theme/content

For the pastor, it can have either guitar or video games content, and for the friend, guitar or music content.

Since I had only 24 hours, I have to say I did quite well!

For the pastor:
Outside/Inside:

First of all, I went on the Internet and looked for a Mario face. It was actually quite difficult because most of them were side view, or not the right look. So, I found one from someone's blog:

http://jimboscoloringpages.blogspot.com/2008/04/more-super-mario-coloring-pages.html

Note: This head comes out to be about 2.5" wide and 3" high.

The first step is to print out two copies: one on skin colored card stock and the other on scrap. The skinned colored one will be the 'template' and the other one will be used for tracers. Since I was going for a "God" look, I had to omit the hat, and put some "Mario hair" on him. This was where the Cricut came in. I used "Paper Dolls Dress Up" Clown hair. I had a few trial and error attempts using Design Studio to get the hair to look right on the head. (For those who just want a Mario look, just keep the hat). However, the hair didn't quite cover all the black outlines, so I modified the picture a bit:

Mario has brown hair, and therefore, I cut out his sideburns, eyebrows, and mustache. They were then traced onto brown card stock. However, I think if you have a moon crescent shape on some cartridge, they will make good eyebrows... now that I think of it, I might have one on the Don Juan cartridge! (DOH!) These pieces were glued on first. Note: before gluing the mustache on, I colored in the mouth with a black marker.

Next were the eyes. My Cricut cartridges are limited, and I don't have any skewed oval shapes for the eyes. Thus, I had to trace and cut them out as well: the whites and the blue. I was lazy, and just drew in the black pupils with a nice black marker! These were glued on next.

Last is the nose. I also traced and cut.

I do suggest the trace and cut method. It's nice to get the perfect circles and ovals with the Cricut, but it takes forever to get the right proportions (i.e. hair).

Hope this helped a bit. If you find any improvements on the method, please inform me! I would like to make it a more user friendly paper craft.

For the friend: