Flood Fill Cricut Cuts

Nov 18 2011 Add Media

Flood Filling your Cricut Cuts

Posted by: Kristen Swain · Edit

Hello Circlets! Kristen here with a fun technique. Now this is a technique that was new to me, but once I found out how to create with it, I am just in love with it. Flood Filling! What’s that? Well, you take your Cricut Expression Cartridges, and plug them into your Imagine machine. Then you take your Imagine machine Art or Pattern Cartridge and fill in the various cut images with a pattern. It’s a lot like working with patterned paper, BUT so much better.
Better I say? YES!! So much better. Ok- so advantages- you can chose to fill the image with solid or pattern. You can use plain white cardstock, and print out a bunch of images using various patterns, all using the SAME sheet of paper. Less peeling your papers off your Imagine mat, saving the adhesive so it lasts longer. No more trying to get every last little piece cut with that expensive paper. No more worrying about buying enough patterned paper, then getting home and finding you run out of your favorite sheet ( not that THAT has EVER happened to me LOL!) and the store has run out of your paper. Oh the agony!!
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So how do we do this magical technique? well- first you plug your Imagine Art or Pattern cartridge into your Imagine machine, then  plug Cricut Cartridge into your Imagine machine. You will touch the screen as the machine instructs you, making sure to press the PRINT AND CUT button.
You will see the overlay on your screen. See the pink image- press your stylus on that….

then you will get this popped up. Simply touch the pencil and you will then be taken to the fill color screen.

You can fill with whatever pattern you would like, or solid from this point. You can drag the screen to see more colors and patterns, and you can even select your own color.

From there, it’s just a matter of hitting the apply button, then going on to your cut screen and printing and cutting your images out.
Here is what I came up with for the images you see above.

You can see I have changed the poinsettia to have a green shadow, a gingham overlay, then I added my flower in a more solid pattern and created another flower shrunk down a bit because I wanted another layer. This flower I colored gingham and then filled the center in a yellow flower dot pattern. What is also super neat about the flood fill technique, is that the pattern shrinks down with the image. I printed a large sheet of the yellow again ( to use as background and the banner) and you can see the image is much larger for a full sheet. I also flood filled a tag from the same cartridge for the background piece.

Here you can see I have added foam tape between layers to add dimension. I also flood filled the shadow of the font and cut that for my greeting.
Next, I have a plain card. I like to have cards without greetings for numerous occasions, this would work for any winter holiday or occasion.
You can see I flood filled the skates layers, and then added another tag background. This time I layered the tag, first with a red/white stripe, then with a solid blue.

This really gives a lot of dimension to your cuts, and of course the colors cut perfectly. Another bonus I have noticed. Sometimes with my white backed patterned paper, little white edges will show inside the cuts. Not a problem with this flood fill technique. Again, I have added my usual buttons and twine, and detailed the lacing on the boot. Adding a few tiny pearls really adds a nice touch as well.

I used a bit of crinkled ribbon to ‘tie’ up my skates, even though they came with their own laces I colored with a blue snowflake pattern.
Lastly I created one last card, using a phrase and accenting it with a smaller diecut snowman. I used the flood fill to put in a heart pattern in the phrase, then I added a pink snowflake pattern to the shadow. I diecut my snowman using flood filled layers. This really saved me a lot of time, and I didn’t waste a full sheet of paper cutting out the black buttons, the grey hat and scarf or the little red hat trim or scarf overlay.

Again, I used foam tape to pop my cuts up from my background, even adding a smaller torn strip of snow to add just a touch of dimension to the card.

So you can see, flood filling is awesome fun, and thrifty and cute, and neat, and did I mention, fun!!
I hope you will give this technique a try!


Cricut Imagine
Imagine Mr. Frosty: flood fill papers
Imagine Blossom: flood fill papers
Winter Woodland Cartridge
For Joy Card

• cut- , ,LAYER, BLACKOUT at 3.2 inches
• cut-TAG at 4.5 inches
• cut- at 3 inches
• JOY- FONT Shadow at 1.25 inches

For Skates Card

• cut , , LAYER (2x each) at 3 inches
• Cut TAG at 4.3 inches
• cut TAG at 4 inches

For Frosty Kisses Card

• cut at 4 inches
• cut at 4.3 inches
• cut , , LAYER, LAYER at 4 inches

Buttons/Twine: Craft supply
Lace: Walmart
Crinkled ribbon: www.scrapinkris.etsy.com
Foam tape: Glue Arts
Scallop punch: Eksuccess
Cardstock: American Crafts
Pearls: Kaisercraft