Joining Shapes to Letters - MTC Tutorial

I was skimming through the Make The Cut forum the other night and came across a post where a woman was having some problems with joining a shape to a letter. I of course thought it was a quick fix but it wasn't! I tried to boolean join *okie still really wonders what in the heck that means* and all the options for it didn't produce the desired effect. After trying several other things it finally dawned on me what to do...I know this might seem time consuming and complicated but it really does go fast and I am including pictures since I have a hard time explaining things.

Step 1 - Choose your letter and image, set objects to desired size and position. In this case I used the letter M and a baseball.

 
Step 2 - Click on the baseball (or object of your choice) and do a "break". After the images is broken then select the inside of the image, or guts if you will *okie cracks up laughing*. Now hit "copy" and then delete. If you are unable to get all the pieces then just do a "copy" and "paste in place" to a new mat until you have all the pieces removed.

Step 3- You should be left with the letter and what is now the base layer of the image.









Step 4- Weld the two objects together.









Step 5 - Now do a "paste in place" with the parts you deleted and weld together and POOF! You have your image and letter as one image. 








I am really not sure how Make The Cut works since I am fairly new to the program, all I know is that all the welding and joining options wouldn't work for me. The lady who was needing the help was able to quickly join her shape and letters with the instructions I gave her. Another lady gave some instructions about a "import to a raster image" which I have no idea what that even is but it might work more easily if you know what it is and how to do it. For me this method worked fine and really did go quickly!