The Wheels on the Bus...

Well, it's been 3 weeks or more since my last post.  We went on a wonderful 2 week vacation to Colorado, and I want to go back.  Then it was a very busy week back with school starting and our annual fall gala at the museum that I work at.  So, to say I haven't had time to craft would be an understatement but it has been a wonderful time.  I did find time at the cabin in the mountains to do some digital scrapbooking at nights on my laptop, so that was fun.  Not something I usually take the time to do, so it was a fun change.

This project for today was a special one because it was created to help raise funds for the museum and our educational programs.  As the Director of Education, I took it upon myself to make this instead of having something created professionally, hoping the members would see the care put into it and be willing to help out.
The idea was to sell a "bus load of kids" for $75, which means that for the $75 donation a bus full of kids would get to come on a field trip to the museum.  With budget cuts in the arts and in education we thought this a very worthy cause.
So the project started with creating something to get the word out at the event.  So I decided to make little bus pins for patrons to wear once they "bought a bus" so that people would ask about it when they saw them wearing it.  I started the night wearing one to get things going.

 I began with my Imagine! It made things way easier!  I used the bus from Doodlecharms, page 117 and the patterns came from Imagine Hopscotch (yellow, tone on tone flower pattern) and one from Imagine Bubblegum Stripes (yellow polka dots).  I cut the buses at 1.5 and used the fill page function.  This first print and cut is the shift.  While it was still on the mat, I used a ruler to draw lines across the bus and then wrote in, with a black marker, "I bought a bus".  I also put a few white highlights on the buses, which you can't really see in this photo.

 Next I printed, in black, the blackout of the bus, and as you can see, I finally ran out of black ink.  I got my Imagine at Christmas, use it all the time and this was the first time I had to replace the black ink cartridge.  I just used a black copic and colored over the last row and you couldn't even tell.

 Next was 75 (I cut a few extras) little wheels to "go round and round".  I didn't like the wheels not being popped out so I decided to make my own to put on the buses.  These are just the built in circles in the Imagine filled with black and cut at .5"  After I cut them out I used a white Gelly roll pen to add the highlights.  It was easier to do a lot of the accent work while the pieces were still on the mat since they were so small.  I also put little white jewels on each wheel as you will see below in the last picture of the pins.

 Now, back to the buses.  I took each one off the mat and used brown ink to ink around the edges of each bus to add dimension.  It really made a difference in the finished project.  Also before removing them,  something else I TRIED, but it didn't work, was to use my Glossy Accents and a paint brush to paint over the buses to give them a shiny finish.  I tried it on the first row and it dried really fast and it made punching them out of the paper REALLY hard so I removed the rest and just painted them individually after that.  The idea was that it would be neater to paint them while still on the mat, but NOPE, it didn't work.  Oh well, I had to try!

 Here are the 35 finished buses in the bin ready to go to the gala event.  You can see the little jewels on the wheels and the red stickles for the lights.

 Here you can see that I popped up the bus layer with thin pop dots and then the wheels are popped up with thicker ones so that the buses are 3 dimensional.  To finish it off I hot glued an alligator clip to the back of each one.  This way I clipped it to the peoples dresses or lapels when they sponsored a field trip.  They loved them!  Even the men donned then on their suits.

 The next thing I had to do was create a poster to put in the auction room so people could see what it was all about.  I had the foam backed sign made at a local print shop with the lines printed and a sky background color on it.  I used a 3rd party software that I purchased about a year ago and never used until now.  It is called "Sure Cuts a Lot" and I used it with my old Expression machine.  Just so you know, this software can no longer be purchased to use with your Cricut machines due to a law suit that I won't go into.  The nice thing is I used a font I had on my computer to cut all the letters and with one click I created shadows for them.  The red font is called "I am 5 years old" and the other is a journaling font I had.  The program made the lettering so easy to weld and cut, it was nice.  This same thing could have been done with a Cricut cartridge font and the Gypsy but creating a welded shadow seemed daunting to me so I decided to use the SCAL software instead.

 I cut the same bus from Doodlcharms, this time at 8.5 inches.  First I cut the layer and filled it with the yellow polka dot pattern, then the blackout and the regular bus cut.  I used black cardstock that I had so that I didn't use up a ton of ink printing the two black pieces.  I glued the yellow layer on the blackout piece and then cut the wheels and the bumpers from the regular black bus and popped them up for dimension.  I inked the edges and used white Enamel Accents for the shine marks and big jewels for the hubcaps.

 I printed and cut out 3 blacked out dolls from Everyday Paperdolls at about 6.5" I think.  I used the bus window for reference and looked on the Imagine virtual mat on the screen to see what size the heads were.
I wanted the heads to almost completely fill up the windows.  I filled the paperdolls with color using the RGB numbers Red 241, Green 194 and Blue 140.  This is my favorite combination for skin color.  I used various hair cuts and filled them with colors from my Imagine cartridges and then used my copics for highlights and details.  THEN I used my favorite stamps, Peachy Keen Everyday Character Faces!  I just love them.  I used copics for the eyes, Gelly rolls for the white part and chalks for their cheeks.

I just used a red polka dot paper and black cardstock from my stash to cut out the letters.

This was a fun project and it was another reason I am so happy to have my Cricut Imagine.  It made this project a snap, looked good and didn't hardly cost a thing to make.  Every one at the gala event loved it.  Our goal was to sell 10 buses and we actually sold 18!  I was all worth the time I spent making it.

Thanks for stopping by, I hope you enjoyed this fun project.  I 'll try not to wait so long between posts.
blessings,
Jana