Pirate Themed Door Sign using Life's a Party

I wanted to do something a little different for today's post and Erica's Cricut Craft Room's Would You Ever Guess Wednesday.  Before I get into my project, please make sure that after you check it out you head back to Erica's page to see the other fantastic projects my DT sisters have been up to... and in December its going to be CRAZY with as many as 25 Christmas Projects A DAY!

The project that I wanted to share involves an alteration of an intended design from Life's a Party, and how I took this....

To this....

First, it involves Cricut Craft Room (CCR) - if you haven't started playing with this new and FABULOUS and FREE tool from Provo Craft, you are seriously missing out (that is if you aren't already addicted to your DS or Gypsy *wink*).  It allows you to design, redesign, alter, and combine cartridge images to get JUST the look you are going after.  I wanted to make a door sign to match the other party decor I had created (more to share later)l, and when I saw the map I knew that it was my pefect "backdrop". 

Using CCR I altered the size of the map to make sure I gave myself the maximum amount of space to include my writing.  I didn't want to alter too much and mmake it unrelative or things would begin to distor a bit on the edges I thought, so I kept it simple and adjusted it to an overall 11" height which maximized my paper space. 

The top layer of the map is the one with all of the map-like cut outs.  They needed to go.  Simple!  I clicked the "Hide Contour" button and when you move your mouse over the images they turn red.  whatever is red, if you click on it, that is what will be removed.

I just removed all of the little dots and marks that made up the map to clear my space for writing.

Then I used George to write up the sign.  I wanted to make it easy on myself, so instead of cutting out the letters and gluing each to the sign, I cut them OUT of the top layer.

Once cut, I had to glue in the negative spaces of the o's r's b's, etc, but that was a lot less work then having to perfectly line up and glue down all of these letters.

So, in the end you have the finished project shown at the top.  I finished it off with some Walnut ink to age it and accented it with the matching image from the cupcake toppers and banners.

As always - thanks for stopping by - I'll be back soon!