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How to create rainbow masterpieces with your cricut

Did you ever use rainbow scratching paper as a kid? It's covered in black and you scrape the top away with a stylus and it makes a neat pattern underneath. You can do this with a line drawing on your computer using the cricut. I've seen rainbow paper in kits at Michaels, and some at my local art store, though of course if yours doesn't Amazon does carry it in both half and full size so check which one you're getting.

First you need an SVG line drawing, which you can make on your own using a program like illustrator (very expensive) or an open source program like inkscape (free!). Or you can buy one of many available on the internet including from Cricut's store.

Once you have your line drawing, I'm using one I made of Ghanaian Highlife star Bisa Kdei, you can upload it to cricut and insert it into the canvas.

Select the entire drawing and click attach at the bottom right.

Then, with the entire drawing still selected find the menu on top that says "basic cut" by default and change that to engrave.

Then resize your picture to fit your paper. Half sized paper is generally 5x7 and full sized paper is 8.5 by 11.

Once your image is the right size and placement go ahead an press make. Once you get to choose your base material go to browse all materials.

under "paper" should be vellum, select that (it was a long process of trial and error, but this produces the best results). Then make sure your engraving tool is in and set everything to go.

And you should get a lovely rainbow picture in a few minutes

You can do very complicated pictures, but it does slow down the loading process to the cricut considerably, so keep that in mind.

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Cameo

I noticed my teddy bear head that was ready to sew kind of looked like a mouse cameo

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Needle Felting Alternative Fibers 6: Rose

Rose fiber is an alternative vegan fiber made from roses.

It costs about $11 per 100 grams here.

Rose fiber is very fine, like silk, and can become rather lumpy when worked as a needle felting alternative to wool. It mixes with wool well.

It feels like a good vegan alternative for silk, but you may want a thicker substitute for wool.

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Needle Felting Alternative Fibers 4: Ramie

Ramie is an alternative vegan needle felting fiber made from thistles.

It costs just over $5 per 100 grams here.

Ramie works decently for needle felting. It’s sort of a medium weight and can be felted with 38 gauge needles. It mixes well enough with wool.

Ramie works well as a vegan alternative for needle felting.

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Needle Felting Alternative Fibers 4: Hemp

Hemp, one of America’s Founding Fathers’ favorite crops, is another vegan needle felting alternative.

It costs about $6 per 100 grams here.

Hemp is thick, I had to use my smallest gauge needle, 42, to work it. It felts fairly quickly. It mixes with wool decently.

Hemp, like flax, works as a thicker vegan substitute for needle felting.

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Needle Felting Alternative Fibers 3: Flax

Flax, the plant used to make linen, can be used as a wool alternative in needle felting.

It runs less than $5 per 100 grams ($5.28/4oz) here, about the same as wool. It comes in a light brown color, but you can find colored and bleached flax roving on eBay too.

It felts very quickly and holds shape rather easily. The threads are coarser than many of the other felting fibers.  It mixes well with wool.

I would recommend flax fiber for a vegan alternative to wool, or otherwise as something to play around with for fun.

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Needle Felting Alternative Fibers 2: Bamboo

Another vegan fiber for needle felting is Bamboo.

It costs about $7 per 100 grams here. Wool is cheaper than $5 per 100g.

Personally I find Bamboo lumpy and hard to work with, though with enough attention it can work out nicely. I could use my 38 gauge needles on it though it gets hard quickly. It mixes with wool well enough.

It can work as a vegan substitute for wool, though I would recommend trying other fibers too.

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Needle Felting Alternative Fibers 1: Banana

Banana fiber is a vegan alternative to wool for needle felting.

It runs about $10 per 100 grams ($12/4oz) whereas wool is generally under $5 per 100g.

It felts rather nicely, but I would recommend brushing it out first. It mixes with well with wool (see lavender fibers below), though that’s not an option if you want to stick to vegan needle felting. The banana fiber did well with my 38 gauge felting needles, where other plant fibers would only take finer gauges. It compresses quite a bit when you punch the needle in, but you can fluff it back up using your fingers to shape things back into a ball.

I would recommend banana fiber for vegan felting or as a curiosity. You can get it here, where I did, or try somewhere else.

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I mixed grey brown and cream wool to get the color I wanted on the owl.

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I couldn’t find my gold sharpie, but I was happy to see that Crayola metallic markers did just as well on thermoplastic as sharpies. Tan hooded rats for sale here.

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These are about 15cm/.5 inches. making yarn sized ones today.

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Mr. Mime amigurumi

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Gray from Fairy Tail- needs a necklace now.

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Science the Rat Adventure Time

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Trying to push the limits of tiny amigurumi with classic 10 crochet string. Next step would be to go down to thread.

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Prototype Lina Inverse and better done, but yet unfinished Lina

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Airedale terrier