This is a sponsored conversation written by me on behalf of Cricut. The opinions and text are all mine.

As the wife of an Irish man we have a love for St. Patrick’s day in this house… especially since his favorite color is green. It makes the holiday a blast!

This year I decided to make a fun shamrock inspired door sign so that we could show our love to the world. The best part? I’m sharing all the fun so that you can make one of your very own… happy St. Patty’s day y’all!

Supplies

Cricut Maker
Cricut Cut Files
Knife Blade
Strong Grip Mat (the purple one!)
Blue Painters Tape
Brayer
Fine-Point Cutting Blade
Standard Cutting Mat (that’s the green one!
Cricut Chipboard (2 packages)
Cricut Foil Poster Board
Hot Glue & Hot Glue Gun
Glue Dots
Paint

Need help picking your perfect machine? I’ve got you covered!

Step One: Cut Your Chipboard

Alright y’all it’s time to party! This first step is the longest… mainly because chipboard takes a couple seconds to cut. You can grab your cricut cut files right here… then load your knife blade into the Maker and setup your strong grip cutting mat with a piece of chipboard. If you’ve never used the knife blade before don’t worry… I go over all exactly how to use the knife blade right here.

If you haven’t used Cricut’s Chipboard before you’ll be pleasantly surprised. It’s quite substantial and gives a sturdy weight to your projects. It is recommended that you open the package and let the chipboard acclimate to your house for 24 hours before use though so if you just purchased your chipboard go ahead and put the knife blade down. You’ll need to wait a day before getting started so that you don’t risk the chipboard warping. Personally I like to open my chipboard directly after purchase and then leave it open on my shelf so that it’s always ready to go when I start a project.

This particular project has 9 mats of chipboard and 1 mat of poster board so get ready to load a few mats! I like to use two mats when cutting chipboard since pressing down the chipboard with the brayer and taping the edges can take a minute… that way you can always have a mat ready to go when it’s time to load the next mat into the machine.

Even having a mat ready to go won’t cut down on the time it takes to cut all the intricate cuts of this chipboard… the entire project takes about 4 hours to cut. Luckily once you load the chipboard it doesn’t have to be babysat. After the Maker does the first round with the knife blade you can let it work while you go off and do other things around the house.

After you’ve cut all the chipboard you’ll have one mat of poster board to cut with the fine point blade… this mat seems to go lightning fast after cutting all that chipboard! Since this is a St. Patty’s day project I used the green foil poster board from the pastel pack!

Step One and a Half: Tape Your Shamrock Leaves Together

Okay so the one negative about chipboard is that transfer tape doesn’t exactly work. I think chipboard would just laugh at the transfer tape and then stay firmly stuck on the strong grip mat. SO I used a slightly different method to keep all my shamrock pieces together.

As I took my pieces off the mat I numbered the backs so that if they got jumbled up I could re-arrange them… then I used a bit of blue tape to tape the backs together.

Basically I used blue tape as transfer tape… keeping all my shamrock pieces together.

The trick is that even blue tape can take the top layer of your chipboard off if you aren’t careful… so you want to place it on the back. It’s an easy enough process: take the chipboard pieces off the strong grip mat one at a time, flip them over (numbering the backs as you go) and arrange them in the proper structure on your table, then tape all the pieces together along the seams so that they stay in formation.

Step Two: Paint Your Chipboard

Now it’s time for the fun! I decided to paint the larger shamrock pieces (the background) a light seafoam green and the foreground shamrock pieces (the ones in a million pieces that we just taped together) a dark forest green.

This should contrast really nicely when we’re done.

There is also a large circle in the cut files that will go behind the leaves to help hold everything together… I painted the circle the same forest green as the front shamrock pieces.

Each chipboard piece received two coats of paint and didn’t warp a bit! Just a tip: make sure to paint the sides of your chipboard as well as the top since the sides will be visible in the end project.

Honestly I painted each piece as it came out of the Maker… I could have waited and painted them all at the end but the shamrock leaves take a while to paint so I worked on them while the other pieces were cutting. This is a perfect time to paint your board white so that you don’t have to get the paint back out later!

Step Three: Hot Glue Your Shamrock Leaves Together

Alright y’all now it’s time to start putting all the pieces of this pie together. I started by hot gluing the front dark green shamrock pieces onto the lighter shamrock leaves. As you can see in the Cricut Cut Files the dark green portion is slightly askew and sits off the back leaves just a tad.

I placed the pieces together so I could decide exactly how I liked them best. Once I had decided on exactly how they would be glued together I (carefully so the chipboard wasn’t pulled) un-taped the top 3 pieces on the green shamrock leaves.

Then I cut the extra tape off so that I could see the light green shamrock leaf below. This gave me access to glue the top three pieces in place while the rest of the dark green shamrock still rested on the background.

I wanted to make sure they were in the correct location so it just gave me a good reference while working.

Once I had the top 3 pieces glued in place I moved the rest of the (still taped) green shamrock off to the side. The top 3 pieces were a great reference as I glued the other pieces in place… I basically worked my way down the leaf. Taking one piece of the dark green shamrock off the tape at a time and gluing it to the background.

If you work left to right and top to bottom you’ll always have a reference for where the next piece should be glued.

Go ahead and glue all 3 shamrock leaves and the stem of the shamrock like this… then we’ll be ready to put the entire thing together!

Step Four: Glue Your Words in Place

I thought lucky charm was the perfect phrase to make this cute little shamrock door sign pop! I lined them up on the bottom of my white board along with the stem of my shamrock so that I could get the spacing down perfectly.

Then it was time to start gluing the words in place! I worried that hot glue would get a little bumpy under the poster board so instead I used glue dots to keep the poster board smooth and give the words a little dimension from the board.

Glue dots aren’t like foam dots so they aren’t out from the board very much… just enough to give a little shadow which makes the words easier to read. I simply placed a glue dot on all the edges or junctions of the letters and then pressed them into place.

Step Five: Glue Your Shamrock Together

Now is the moment of glory… the sign is finally coming together!!!

Put all of the pieces together so that you can get the placement right… The 3 leaves of the shamrock at the top of the stem with the dark green circle in the back. Then we can start gluing things in place.

Since we already know exactly where the stem is going I went ahead and glued the stem in place first. A bit of hot glue on the stem is more than enough to keep it in place… just make sure not to put glue on the top or bottom where the stem goes over the edge of the board.

Now go ahead and glue the very top shamrock leaf to the top of the green circle. Make sure not to put glue too high up on the back of the leaf though… you’ll glue it to your rug (or table if you’re not working on the floor like a crazy person!).

Next move the entire placement off the green circle so that you can glue the back of the white board to the front of the green circle. Just make sure not to place glue above where the white board will be… you wouldn’t want a bunch of hot glue to be visible.

I just placed my finger at the top of the white board before I picked the white board up from the arrangement… then I placed glue underneath my finger. Just take a look at the picture below if this doesn’t make sense.

A simple trick but it works.

Once the white board is glued to the green circle we only have the two side shamrock leaves left. Glue the two side shamrock leaves in place and we’re finished!

Step Six: Staple the Back

So close to done! The hot glue will hold your shamrock together if you decide to skip this step but since this baby is going on the front door I decided to give it a little bit of extra security and place a few staples through the back.

I stapled around the back of the green circle, through the white board and into the leaves. If you staple through two pieces of chipboard the staples will come out the front so be careful where you place your staples!

Step Seven: Staple Jute to the Back to Hang your Shamrock

We’re in the home stretch y’all. In order to hang my little shamrock on the front door I needed a bit of hanging hardware on the back… but I didn’t exactly want to hammer a nail into this baby to use my usual picture hanging hardware.

Instead I measured a piece of jute (from the top of the white board to the middle of the top shamrock leaf and back). Then I tied a knot in each end and stapled each end to the back of the white board… volia.

Instant jute picture hanging hardware.

Now you just need a front door and you’re ready to go.