Mad Hatter & Son of Mac

Today I post a Cricut® double feature of sorts — it's called "Men in Black (Hats)."

That's the good news.

The bad news is that I'm only providing one of the images as an SVG file download.

Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland from Walt Disney Pictures is opening this Friday, March 5th. I'm not much of a "movie person," but I am anxious to see this one. I'm mostly interested in seeing the make-up, the costumes and the set design, but I'm sure that I'll be entertained (and probably confused).

I become mesmerized every time I see a picture of Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter on television or on the 'net (also saw the poster at Wal-Mart yesterday and nearly bought it). It's such a haunting, graphic image, much like the illustrated version of Malcolm McDowell's Alex DeLarge character in A Clockwork Orange and Keith Legend's Joker character in The Dark Knight. These are images that one doesn't forget — ever. They're classic.


I decided to make a version of this image to cut on my Cricut just to see how it would come out. The card image at the top of this blog entry is a scan of the second version of this cut. The first version had the colors layered differently and had more detail in the right eye. It seems to work better with less detail. I'm quite happy with it and it has become my favorite project to date.

The other two characters (Alex and the Joker) are on my Cricut SVG file to-do list. They'll make for a weird trio of cards, won't they?


I saw an adaptation of Rene Magritte's "Son of Man" on someone's MacBook a few weeks ago, and realized that it would be fairly easy to make myself, since I own one of those amazing Cricut® cutting machines. I created an SVG file, made the cut using card stock and turned it into a card (because that's the nature of this blog), but the main intent is for the cut to be done in vinyl and used on an iBook, MacBook or Apple Studio Display.

One SVG file provided (I'm not including the Apple logo) and can be downloaded below. Adjust the size as needed for your particular hardware using the width of the apple as a reference point (the size provided seems to work well on a 17" MacBook Pro). The file can be cut using Sure Cuts A Lot software and a Cricut® cutting machine.

After a bit of research, I've convinced myself that the originator of this "Son of Mac" concept is Dan Kurtz at his (seemingly orphaned) Bricks Without Clay blog (way back in June 2006). He also provides an SVG file of his version of the decal, which you can download at his blog.

If anyone is dying to have this decal on their Mac, but doesn't have the ability to make it themselves, I found a few places selling them online for about $12...just google "Son of Mac decal." Please note that the SVG file provided here is for personal use only — do not use the SVG file provided to make decals to sell (Dan says that you can sell his version).