Cool Little Dude Card

Hello lovely people in blog land :) I hope that life is treating you kindly and you are all safe and well? I haven't had much time for blogging so far this month, we've undertaken a large DIY project this month. It started with just laying a new carpet in our bedroom and morphed in to getting new plug sockets and lighting installed, fixing all the squeaky floorboards and decorating the room, before we put the carpet down!

I'm using the time that everything has been boxed and bagged up to do some de-cluttering and redistribution, books to both Cats protection and the local National Trust book shop and clothes to a local charity shop. I really cannot believe how much clutter and things we have in our home that have been bought but never used or worn! I'm sure it will all be worthwhile when we're finished but at the minute the house looks like a bomb has gone off lol!

Until today I couldn't get at my craft desk because things from out of our room had been put in my crafting room, so there was no free desk space, but as I've boxed and bagged things up over the past few days, I've made some space to be able to get my craft on! I've been saying for a while now that I wanted to add more cards for the menfolk in my life to my box of made cards. So when a lady in a group I belong to on Facebook posted a card using this cool little dude I was smitten and knew I wanted to use the image to create a card or two (most likely more because he's such a cool little dude).

The images are meant to be used with a die from the latest issue of the Tattered Lace magazine which is issue 60, sadly I haven't been able to find the magazine locally yet, but the images and backgrounds can currently be downloaded from the Tattered Lace website. The Little Dude is available in 5 different colour combinations with colour co-ordinated backing papers. Once I'd downloaded the images and printed off the colour I wanted to use I carefully fussy cut out the Little Dude and added some card stock to the back of the paper to give him a little more substance. I used brown, black and burgundy markers to trace around the edge of the dude to hide any cutting imperfections.

I have to say I am impressed with the cutting I did on this image. I'm getting a lot better at fussy cutting and I think that is down to the scissors I use. My fussy cutting has always until recently been a bit hit and miss, but last year I invested in a pair of Fiskar's Softouch Spring Action Micro-Tip scissors, they are the dogs doodah's as far as fussy cutting goes, they are very comfortable to use and very easy to control.

As there wasn't much to do to this card because of how colourful the little dude and backing papers were I wanted to add some little touches. I used a Versamarker watermark pen to add some gold embossing powder to the little dude's chain and some Tonic Crystal Glaze to his shades. The sentiment is from a set of stamps that came with issue 52 of Creative Stamping magazine. I stamped the image with Versamark on to black card stock and used the same WOW Metallic Gold Rich Super Fine embossing powder that I'd used for his chain and then fussy cut the image out. I used a metallic gold sharpie around the edge of the cut out image to hide any little imperfections.

I used some 300gsm Purple Cardstock that I got from Limetree Crafts at the NEC, its an absolutely gorgeous shade, I've used it to make some Christmas cards and to make a Fairy themed card. The card base I made is tent fold and I added a mat of gold metallic card on to the purple then added the printed backing paper on top of that. I added the little dude and the sentiment to the front of the card using some 3D foam pads and popped some star shaped gems to the front from my stash of gems and bling and voila the card was complete.

I have to say the hardest part of this card was finding a sentiment, I wanted a 'cool dude' phrase but I don't seem to have anything like it, so I'll have to acquire something soon. I'm hoping to find the die at some point in the not to distant future, but for now I can continue to fussy cut the little dudes to make more cards!

Digital Crafting for Free - Resources

The Miserly March challenge (Day 9 and still going strong) has got me looking at ways of crafting without spending money. Making use of existing digi crafting CD Roms that I've bought or got free with magazines is a no-brainer option for no cost crafting. I have a monthly subscription with Hewlett Packard called Instant Ink which allows me to print off 100 pages a month for £3.49. When my printer is running low on ink, HP ship me out fresh cartridges and I send them the old ones back in prepaid envelopes they send with the fresh cartridges. The link I added above is a referral link so if you have a compatible HP printer and you sign up I get a free month and so will you!

As I look at the folders on my PC of the cards I've been making since I started crafting in 2014 I realised that almost all of the cards I've made consist of some printed element or other, be it a topper or a background paper. I've even made notelet sets and matching envelopes 😀 Not all of the things I print and use are from CD's though, I make use of lots of elements from sites that offer free downloads and I occasionally buy from a few talented designers on Etsy, but I love the finding and using free toppers and papers, especially now 😁

So I thought it would be a good idea to blog about some of the ones I regularly use and add a list of them to my Links list look for the section "Free Download Digis & Papers" whichI'll update as I find new sources. It should be noted that not all the links contain entirely free downloads, some of them also sell stuff to download, but they also give you some lovely free stuff to download.

Making Cards Magazine - Every month MCM have a free download, you get to download it if you sign up to their monthly newsletter, and as a bonus when the email newsletter arrives you get a bonus download. I've used MCM images a lot, they are always such fab quality, they print out without any issues and they are always vibrant and colourful. Other card mags have downloads but they tend to be half size papers and I prefer A4 sheets, check out Cardmaking & Papercraft (you have to sign up to get their downloads) and also Papercraft Magazines lots of papers and templates to download.

Harper Finch - If you like using checks and plaids as backgrounds for your papercrafting creations then sign up to Harper's newsletter, she gives regular freebies via email. I've mentioned Harper before in other blog posts because I use her background papers a lot, she also gives away scrapbooking elements as well. She has so many stunning designs which you can purchase via her Etsy shop.

Pixabay Free Images - Great site full of photos, illustrations, vector graphics, background images and lots more, you can download low resolution files for free, higher resolution files you have to have an account for, all the images are free to use for personal use, the majority of them have a Creative Commons Licence.

The Coffee Shop Blog - Nothing to do with coffee (well unless you count the lovely free coffee papers download), I came across Rita's fab blog whilst I was looking for some free clover leaf background papers, I found some on her blog and so much more. As well as lots of free digital download stuff, Rita also has tutorials and explains how you can edit some of the downloads yourself to alter colours, size etc.

Docrafts - The Docrafts site has some good templates and papers that are free to download and use, and if you sign up to the club you get access to downloads before the general public and also 15% off in the Docrafts shop. I met a lot of lovely ladies that now visit my blog via the DoCrafts site back in the day when they had a thriving forum and magazine, both sadly gone now but the freebies are still there.

My Craft Studio - Lots of freebies to download and use, toppers, backing papers etc, you have to create an account to download the files, but doing that is free. The files download in .zip format so you need to have a program on your PC to unzip them. If you run Windows then there is a built in unzipping tool more info here.

Crafters Companion Download of the Month - Note the link won't work properly for you until you've signed up to a Club Inspire account, once you have you get discounts on your CC purchases and access to the free downloads, its free to join and download the files even if you don't make a purchase.

Club Hunkydory - Another set up similar to CC, sign up for a free account via the Hunkydory website and get a discount on their products and you can also download some lovely papers for your digital crafting, also templates, how tos and videos.

These are most of the ones I use regularly, I'll update the list as I find more, I'll also add them all to a links section soon. If you have any good freebie resources for free to download craft papers leave me a comment and I'll add the links to the list.

For the Love of Pets: Kitties & Bunnies

I'm on day 7 of no spending this month and day 9 if you add the last 2 days of Feb, and I'm loving finding treasure of all kinds in my stash, thank you to all of you who commented on my Miserly March post and were so supportive, it means an awful lot to have the love and support of such a super talented bunch of lovely people. I'd like to give a special shout out to Shabneez of Happy Hijaabi's Papercraft Creations for her kindly nominating me for an Altenew giveaway such a lovely surprise 💖💋.

This morning I completed a couple of cards using some digital images from the 'Lovely Jessica Collection' a free download back in January from Making Cards Magazine, you have to sign up to get the downloads but its so worth it, each month you get a email newsletter with a link to something to download, usually additional backing papers to go with the cover gift but sometimes something different. MCM is now the only magazine I subscribe to monthly, their free papers and downloads are brilliant and I can always find a use for the free gifts.

The backing papers on both my cards are from the collection, and they work fabulously together. I had to play with the images in Corel PaintShop Pro x8, I captured the image I wanted to play with and saved it as a jpg file.

I then took the jpg into the paint program and removed the surrounding images and resized it for my card and then printed it off, finally die-cutting it out with the largest die from my Wonky Nesting Ovals die set from Craft Stash.

I used another die from the set to cut an oval for the sentiment and the sentiments for both todays cards come from the "New Best Friend" stamp set from 'My Favorite Things'. I'll be using the actually images soon from the set, they are soooo cute, I'm going to make some cards for the craft fair in May for people to send when someone they know gets a new furry friend 😸 I used a leaf and the flower dies from a Crafters Companion set from their 'Floral Delight' Collection the die set is called "In Bloom".

I decided to make these cards a little bit special by adding a surprise inside in the form of a bookmark, I've done the same thing before in September 2017 using some cute 'Barry the Book Owl' images from Making Cards Magazine. I detailed how I did it in that post so I won't repeat myself, but you can follow the link if you're curious.

The bookmarks are super quick to make, and these images were just the right size. There's a cool bit of upcycling in these cards as well, I cut the ribbons off tops I buy and save them in a jar and use them for adding to bookmarks and for gift tags.

I think a bookmark card is the perfect accompaniment to a book gift voucher and its something to keep once the event the recipient has been given the card for is over. I've found lots of images for making more for young and old, I'm also going to make some with stamped images and attach the bookmarks to the front of the card like a topper. 

Before I go I thought I'd share a tip and I know this will be old news to most of you, but for anyone that is new to the world of alcohol markers and card making I thought I'd share... You can use  alcohol markers to colour sticky gem stones to match your project. Whilst working on these cards this morning I found the perfect gem for centre of the flowers for the pink version of the card, but I didn't have them in red. So I used one of my red Nuvo Alcohol Marker pens to change the pink to red et voila, the flowers got red gem stone centres!

I have clear gems in my stash just for this purpose, you can also use the markers to colour white ribbon and lace so it matches your project with your pens. I always colour my gems off the card on the acetate backing, that way you won't accidentally catch the card or paper you're working on, this I learnt from experience. Once you've coloured the gems set them aside for 5-10 minutes so that the ink dries totally, then attach the gems to your project as you normally would. Clear gems are better but if you are going for a similar tone pink to red, yellow to orange, light blue to dark blue etc. then any colour works.

Eclipse Cards A New Obsession

I hope you're staying in a keeping safe and warm if you're in the UK and gripped by the current winter weather from the 'Beast from the East'? It's currently -3 here, this time yesterday it was -5 so its warming up a little. the bad weather is set to stay for another few days according to the weathermen so its looking like this weeks Young Roboteers session will be cancelled, so I'm going to have some extra crafting time this weekend, which is a good thing, although I have to tidy the room first.

How does it get so messy every time I work on a project? I think its the craft room pixies, they come into the room when I'm not looking and throw everything everywhere, and they hide things, usually the exact stamp or die that I NEED to finish a project which causes chaos when you upturn the room trying to find the missing item, least that's my story and I'm sticking to it lol!

I thought I'd share a coupel of cards from my new found obsession today, which  all started a couple of weeks ago when one of the ladies in my favourite craft group posted a card she'd made using the eclipse technique. Suffice to say almost all of us that are members of the group have now a) become eclipsaholics, and b) invested in a 5cm Alphabet die set lol! I already have a couple of die sets, but they were too small and too thin for this technique, so I picked up a set from China via Ebay.

Not wanting to not be able to start until the full alphabet set arrived, I used the only die that I did have to hand, a HUGS set that was again from China and came inside a double letterbox style frame, the letters are 3cm tall and 2cm wide, the die cuts all 4 letters at once so you don't have to worry about spacing them out, its fabulous for making quick eclipse cards, I've used it to make a couple of quick cards already. For this first rabbit card above, I used an image from a free set of Woodland Animals that Making Cards Magazine provided last year. The images are so cute and they make lovely simple cards.

The rabbits and teddies above were in a free printed papers booklet with an issue of Making Cards last year, when I posted these photos on my facebook page I got lots of lovely comments which I was pleased to receive, but I did feel a little guilty because all I did was use a couple of dies and the toppers and added a bit of ribbon, its the gorgoeus images from making cards that make these cards look so lovely. Of all the card making magazines I much prefer the free papers and downloads that making cards give the readers, moe on that in another post soon.

Just before I finished writing this post my dies arrived from China, so I couldn't resist making another couple of quick cards, I had a few problems lining up the loose letters, but I managed it sort of. I've since thanks to a tip from a crafting lady bought a t-square ruler, waiting for it to arrive from China, so eclipse cards are on hold until it arrives.

I made my own card blank again using the Tonic 'Victorian Frame Layering Die Set', the image was a free paper download from Hunkydory from the 'Shimmering Watercolours Collection'. Note you have to be a member of the club to be able to download the papers, its free to join and you get lots of other benefits. I've seen some fabulous examples of eclipse cards in groups that I belong to on Facebook and on Pinterest, so I'm fueled with lots of ideas and as soon as my t-square arrives I'll be making lots more eclipse cards. Time to go an appease the craft room pixies now, I also need to bake something nice for the weekend, I can't decide on Red Velvet cake or Chocolate Orange Muffins, whatever it is I better do it soon or it'll never get done! Until next time, stay safe and warm and enjoy your crafting :)

Colourful Monsters

Hi everyone, outside the window its bright blue skies and sunshine, but go outside and its blinking freezing, that said I noticed more of the Spring bulbs are pushing their way through the cold, damp soil which must mean that Spring is in sight? Think I'll dig out some Spring and Easter stamps and dies and have a see if I can create something that will encourage the Spring along in the house.

I posted the other day about having a day off and spending it mostly crafting, I went a little nuts printing off things from CD's to use after Si installed a new DVD drive for me. The old one gave up the ghost and refused to even open anymore, apparently the bearings had worn out that allowed the drawer to open. The shiny new one means I can print things off again with a relish.

I have lots of CD's with images for toppers and backing papers, I've been using papers I print off to make cards for a while now, and I love the fact that if the images are not the right size or colour I can take them into Paintshop Pro and tweak them to get the colours I want.

These two cards are a perfect example, the purple distressed background was a free download - and I can't remember from where! - I decided that I wanted to make the same card but using the different monster toppers in colours to compliment both, but the background paper came only in the purple variant.

So I took the image in to my paint program and tweaked the colour, hue and intensity and shifted the colours over from the warm (red/orange/purple) side of the spectrum to the cool (blue/green/white) spectrum, it worked perfectly and looks almost like it was made to match in the beginning.

The monster toppers are from a "Making Cards for Boys" CD that came free with Making Cards Magazine in March 2017, it has over 120 papers (an assortment of backing papers and toppers) and includes the lovely dinosaur set that came free with the magazine last year. Again I made my own card blanks for these two cards, I can't believe I'd not done this before, I've made stepper and easel card bases so its amazing that I didn't, I really have to stop thinking that things are too complicated because each time I try something new, I realise its not as hard as I think it is!

To create these card blanks I used Lavender and Xmas Green centura pearl card stocks and a die from the Tonic Studios Bowscale die set. I cut the toppers and sentiment circles using the Creative Dies Plus Wonky Stitches Nesting Circles Die Set and backing it with a slightly larger circle cut from a plain circle in the same colour centura pearl that I'd used for the card base.

I'm trying harder this year to make more cards that can be given to male recepients, I find when I create without an intent or project in mind that I gravitate towards making cards for female recipients. So when I enter a challenge or I create a random card I'm going to try putting a male slant on the challenge or making cards that can be given to either a male or female recipient.

Breakout The Stash, It's Time For A Swing Out Sister Card!

Greetings from Warts n All HQ, its been a busy few weeks so I've not been doing much crafting or blogging, we've been away on holiday to France and I've also been organising the cupboards and trying to de-clutter rooms, well every room but the craft room, although really I should try to tackle that room lol!

Over the past few weeks I've acquired lots of jolly new stamps and dies from Lawn Fawn and Newton's Nook and some of the new Tonic Halloween range, so now I have some time on my hands I can Breakout the stash and play, you see where this is going from the title, right?

I've decided this year I'll be making pop up box cards for close friends and family, so I've been cutting the panels to create them like a trooper. I've also cut a few halloween themed panels and some for get well and birthday.

The boxes are quick to put together and I'll show a few examples soon in another post, but I couldn't help but want to try my hand at a new card type, I bought some dies from China off Ebay that were purportedly like the My Favorite Things Die-Namics Flip Flop dies. Only to be disappointed to discover that then don't score and cut like they should, they just cut, grrr!

I'm sure they'll have some kind of use in the future, but they aren't any good as flip flop card cutters. So I had to put my thinking cap on and find an alternative way of making a flip flop card, also known as a Swing Out card. It's really a lot easier than I thought, and you can use any die shape you care to, there are other versions of the swing out cards as well to try in the future that are more complicated than my simple design.

For my first ever attempt at creating a Swing Out Card I used some free papers and toppers from Making Cards magazine (October 2017), a set called 'Christmas Puppy', such cute images and I love the bright festive chevron striped papers, that accompanied the toppers. The toppers were so cute that I decided to add another on the reverse side of the swing out panel.

I finished the card off with a stamped sentiment panel that I stamped with 'silvery Shimmer' Tsukineko 'Delicata' Pigment Ink. It's a fabulous metallic ink which dries really quickly and unlike other metallic pigment inks, it doesn't smudge and smear once completely dried. A couple of snowflakes cut from white glitter card with some crystal diamanté gems in the centre added a finishing touch. In hindsight, I should have put paper on both sides of the Z fold, a point to note for next time.

As the first card went well, I wanted to make another, I have lots of the red metallic pearl card that I got last year but haven't used it yet, and its great for making card bases like these, so what better excuse?

I stamped and coloured the image on the second card whilst on holiday using my Altenew 'Poinsettia & Pine' set.

I gold heat embossed the corner decoration and the inside panels have sentiments on stamped in 'Delicata' Ink again, this time in the 'Golden Glitz' colour.

Whilst I was putting the card together I kept finding myself humming a tune, it took me a while to realise that the tune I was humming was from my early twenties by a band called Swing Out Sister, for all you youngsters who have no idea what I'm talking about, I've added a Vevo video of the song below. Music or not I think there will be a few Swing Out cards on my crafting horizon and using different shapes. Now back to chilling with tunes and putting the box cards together :)