Cricut Crafting - Spiderweb Window Cling

Earlier this week, I decided I wanted to add a little friend to the windows of my front door to celebrate one of my favorite holidays.

Both the spider and the web were stock images from Cricut, but I thought I'd share how I put it all together in Design Space, and how I made sure it would fit the window.  I'm using Design Space on my iPad, so it may look a little different for those who primarily use the program on their laptops.


1.  Measure your window!  My diagram ended up on a tiny scrap of paper (see the paper clip for reference).  It's not super-detailed, but has enough information to work from.

Measurements don't need to be complex

 2. Build your window in Design Space.  To get my half circle, I started with a 4" circle (it's an easy size for positioning purposes) and a square, then used the Slice tool.

Slice your circle in half. My circle is 4" wide to make it easier to position.

Cutting out the bottom center edge

For the next step, I enlarged by half circle to full size, then added another circle with a 4.5" diameter to cut out that little half circle at the center bottom.  While I was able to use the "Align Center Vertical" tool, I used the gridlines to make sure that I lined up the horizontal center of my bottom circle with the bottom edge of my half circle.  Then used the Slice Tool again. 

Slicing the individual panes

I used three 1" wide rectangles to slice the individual window panes.  I rotated the side spokes 45 degrees.  And I had my window! 

One note about Design Space - all four shapes are considered a single shape in the program.  This is great when you're designing, but can be a pain if you're like me and like to reposition for printing to conserve materials.  It's also a little bit of problem in this case because it's too wide for a 24" mat.  To get around this, I made three additional copies of my window, then used the Hide Contour Tool, keeping only one pane in each copy. 

Both panels were a little large - folds give me the exact size

3.  Test your window design.  At this point, I tested my window shape, cutting the two leftmost panels out of regular typing paper.  (Since the design is a mirror image, I only needed to test two panels.  it turned out both panels were a little too 'fat'.  With the cutouts placed in the window, I folded them along the window panes to give me the exact size I needed.  Then it was simple enough to measure my fold and shave a little off each pane using rectangles of the exact width I needed, and the Slice tool.

Once I had my window, I saved the file as "Front Window Blank".  This way I won't have to recreate these steps when I want to create a new design.  Now it's time to make the Spiderweb window cling! 

4. First thing - Use Save As to change the name of your working file.  I named mine "Front Door Spiderweb Window Cling" - boring, but descriptive. 

Spiderweb Testing

Searching for 'spider' and 'web', I pulled down several images from Cricut Access, then enlarged them and tried them out on my window shapes, using the Slice tool again.  Turns out, not all spider webs translate well when cut into four separate panes.  And not all spiders look good on all webs. 

Final design images selected.

I ended up pulling the spider and web from two separate designs, as shown above.  The web is #M3F76E, Web Banner and the spider was from Spider Web Rosette, #M74C7E2B.


Before I moved on to window cling, I cut the full design out of copy paper, just to make sure it looked the way I thought it would.  Sometimes the translation from screen to paper doesn't work as well as I expect.  This time, it worked great, to it was time to cut the design out of window cling.

Here's where I do something maybe a little weird.  I have wasting material, especially plastics where both cost and environmental concerns come into play.  So I try to make as much use of the material as I can. 

Weeded Cutting mat

After rotating and fitting the webs onto my mat, I did a quick search to find some additional Halloween images that I thought would work well as window clings, and used them to fill in the extra space.  Even still, there was a fair bit of waste material after weeding.  But I love having the little 'bonus' clings. 

I shared the final cutting file on my Cricut Profile, but the software no longer has an easy way to share a direct URL.  If I can figure out how to do it, I'll add the URL in later. 

Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween Pumpkin Rings

Fall is my favorite season.  Halloween runs a close second to Christmas for my favorite holiday, and I absolutely adore the soundtrack to Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas.  Costumes, magic, a little spookiness, a chance to be someone else for a night?  I'm so there!   So the question wasn't 'do I want to work with a Halloween theme' for my Freeform Peyote Rings workshop at Fusion Beads earlier this month, but rather "what Halloween theme do I want to play with?"

My first thought was Disney villains - a ring for Maleficent or Cruella Deville perhaps? I could see a fiery crimson red jewel for Malificent, while Ms. Deville's would have to be in her iconic monochrome black and white.  Or maybe a witch's ring?  What would I do for that?  Instead, I opted to make myself a pumpkin patch ring.  Jack Skellington might be the Pumpkin King, but I could wear a Pumpkin Ring!  A magic pumpkin ring, wouldn't that be fun?  I'm sure I need a magic pumpkin ring. 

Ring #1 with a Carnelian focal

I ended up making two rings.  The first is a little more subdued, with a 15mm round carnelian stone that doesn't immediately scream 'pumpkin', but definitely plays to the autumnal theme with its muted color tones.  The little pressed-glass flower reminded me of pumpkin blossoms, so I decided to add it, but liked the violet color better than yellow.  So now I have a purple pumpkin blossom.  Let's hear it for creative license.

It also let me demonstrate the stages of work when adding the focal bead from the very beginning.

Perusing Fusion Bead's selections before class, I came across these fantastic orange and blackish-brown enameled beads.  I don't think they were originally designed as pumpkins, but aren't they perfect? 

I thought the apple-green & coppery-orange flowers might work as pumpkin blossoms and or a pumpkin cap.  While I was at it, I picked up a couple of different strands of daggers and spiky fringe beads, too.

Time for embellishments!

For this ring, I wanted the pumpkin to sit atop its 'field' at a jaunty angle, surrounded by vines.   

Working almost entirely with size 11s, I stitched my background.  I couldn't resist adding a few small accent beads - 3mm glass pearls, 4mm crystals and another pressed glass flower.  If I'd wanted a very simple ring, I probably could have stopped here. Or maybe right before I added the pressed glass flower.  If I wasn't going for a Pumpkin ring.....

A lot of the fun with freeform peyote rings is allowing yourself to go over the top.  With that in mind, it was time to embellish. 

I love how it looks perched on the graphite sphere

here it is on my hand - hard to photograph one handed

another view on my manikin's finger

you can see the little flower from this angle

Now I have two pumpkin rings.  As for whether its magic, I'll have to wait and see about that.  :)

Happy Halloween!