Friday, July 20, 2012

Fun with Pictograms

It's Daring Cardmakers Day again!
This week is Zuzana here and I think I've come up with a very interesting dare for you:
Fun with Pictograms
 With the  London Olympic games knocking on the door I came up with the idea to  create cards using pictograms, icons or silhouette signs. Choose sport, travel, washing or some other basic signs, print them out -  or if you prefer use die cuts, punches etc
Have some fun and get crafty!
 When you think of it, we're surrounded by pictograms.  Most of the time it's easy to tell what they mean - after all, that's the point of them, isn't it?  To indicate something which you'll understand whatever language you speak.  Looking around for pictograms to use for Zuzana's Daring Cardmakers challenge this week though, I cam across quite a few which might mean something to somebody, but meant nothing at all to me!
Zuz gave us a link to the pictograms for the London Olympics and I spent a few minutes seeing how obvious the sports they indicated were - and then I chose a few to use on my card for this week
 I copied and enlarged the pictogram images, then arranged them on the Craft Robo desk-space.  Using the Position Settings button I checked that they all fitted into a 14 cm square (for fitting onto my 15cm square red card blank), then cut the whole piece out using white Bazzill
The tricky bit was making sure that none of the tiny white pieces such as on the diver and rowers went missing!
To give it a UK flavour I cut a triangle of blue card to fit diagonally across one half of the square before attaching it to the red card, then using tweezers I added those tiny details

Next it was back to Craft Robo to cut the letters, numerals and rings which were adhered to the top of the card filling the gaps between the pictograms.  It was a bit like a jogsaw making everything fit and there was still a gap by the athlete pictogram, so I echoed the Olympic rings with some coloured brads to fill it!

I reckon that you could find a pictogram for pretty much any sport or hobby, and lots of other things too - so they'd be a great way to deal with personalised cards - especially for those tricky "man and boy" cards - beer mugs, sports, hobbies, music - there are pictograms for all occasions out there waiting to be used!
Still focussed on pictograms I made another card which might be ok for an anniversary, valentines etc
I used:
Pictogram - cut on Craft Robo
Papers and corrugated cardstock: Fancy Pants "Country Boutique"
2 lengths grey-blue organza ribbon  - upper length is twisted and knotted
copper brtads, Narrow blue ric-rac braid
pc generated sentiment. 
Die-namincs Square stack dies
That's it for this time, I hope you'll join in with us this week, it's a fun dare and maybe a little more "challenging" than a lot of the challenges we see around the net!

Thanks for visiting

4 comments:

Lythan said...

All the work on that top card was worth it - it is really stunning. And I do love the boat pictogram too :)

Angelnorth said...

Fab cards, love the idea of the blue triangle behind the cut outs on the first one and the boat is really cute - you could easily do a baby variant on that one!

Natty said...

Great cards Kathy - the red and blue colours behind the images are fab in that Olympic card - and the sail boat is just lovely. :D

Sharon (glitterangel) said...

Brilliant cards Kathy, I love them both - and admire your patience putting all those pieces together for your Olympics card, but it was well worth the effort, it's fabulous!