Chess Mate

Real confession time. First, I have never scrap booked in chronological order. I didn't begin this fabulous hobby until my children were in their teens. I must have been destined to be a scrapper as I have saved everything! All those adorable paintings from preschool to every flower they pulled in the garden to bring me. Now that I am much more experienced with my Cricut Expression, I tend to not buy ready-made embellishments. But, years ago that was not the case. I had purchased the
3-D Jolee's chess board and pieces for a LO, that I had in my head. I never got around to it until now. Since I bought this embellie, well, I am going to use it! LOL. Didn't seem right not to have any Cricut on my LO. Here is what I came up with. The men in my family are chess players. When they were all home, just about every evening a game would be played. I mimicked the chess board as the background paper. On the gold base page I adhered a black page cut at 11 inches, one inch from two neighboring sides.(Check to be sure your paper is a true 12 inches , before cutting). Then on your cricut using George and Basic Shapes Cartridge( truly a fabulous cartridge, one of my favs). I did this with the Cricut Design Studio, I chose the square and cut white card stock at 1.375 inches, you will need 32 of these squares. Once cut, they will now fit perfectly as a real chess board on the top 11 inch black top paper. Place the first square and glue it down then skip 1.375 inches before the next square( I just used a square for the measuring).Use a ruler to keep your lines straight. Every other row will begin with the white square and end in a black space left. Every other row begins opposite of the one above. Then it was just cutting letters and mats to match. I decided not to place the chess pieces on the board, instead I put them in a clear envie, like real board pieces would be stored. Hope you like it, thanks for looking.