Five Star!

Hello
I hope your week has started well.  Here it's not as hot as it was last week, but it's still nice - that said, the grass in our back garden is looking a bit parched, to say the least.  I checked the Met Office's weather app yesterday and saw the words "heavy rain" forecast for tomorrow - so I didn't put the sprinkler on.... and I'm hoping that's not the end of the good weather!

It's another project for The Sketch File blog today - the last one for the July LO, so there's just one week left if you want to join in with us.

 I thought that the version of the sketch with the five stars and the pennant would be perfect for making those exam congratulations cards we often need at around this time of year, so I made this
 

 

The LO is called "Bunch of Five" and here's how it looks:

The Sketch File blog

Papers: "Coral and Grey" download from Grepic on Etsy, printed onto white Bazzill card - I love the added touchy-feeliness you get using different textures of Bazzill to print digital designs onto!
Dull gold card for backing, and Gold Glitter card for a few extra punched stars
Star Nested Dies by DieNamics, various punches used for the small stars 
Sentiment piece created in Paint Shop Pro using one of the paper designs as the base, I added a circle with the Pre-set shapes tool, and filling it ('Fill' tool) with a lighter shade, then adding the words ('Text' tool) to fit.  I then cropped down and resized the whole piece to about 6cms square and printed two copies.  I used a couple of Nested Circles dies (Tonic) to cut the circles and adhered them together with a small piece of chipboard between the layers

 
I never used to use digital papers till I was asked to join the Funky Hand DT and I was hooked.  I really enjoyed the versatility of digital - and soon realised how easy it is to print exactly what you need, and I learned a few other 'tricks' too!
Anyway, Anice changed career direction a few months back and sadly, Funky Hand closed its "doors". So although I still have all the lovely FH collections to use, I thought I should look around for something new to feed my addiction to digital.

I can't remember why I ended up on Etsy, but I did, and that's where I found loads of lovely stuff to explore.  
I really love the collections from Debbie at Grepic - lots of lovely designs and colours and most sets have 10 or so different designs in them.  Some of the sellers I looked at did lovely sets, but with fewer papers, and I think you need a good selection of patterns along with plainer or 'textured' designs in order to make a collection usable - and it's hard to colour match on screen and see if different sets go together.  
Just in case any digi designers are reading this - it would help so much if you would add a note to say which sets work together - plus we'd no doubt buy the extra ones too! 

With digital papers you get the ability to crop  to use just a part of a design, or change the shape of the eventual print, you can print the whole paper as it is (these ones are for 12x12), or resize design, to print the whole thing to a more card-friendly 6x6, or even smaller if you want to -  If you look closely at the card above you'll see that the chevron design is used twice, with one being much smaller than the other.

Anyhoo, enough waffling - it would be lovely if you'd see if the sketch works for your crafting over the next few weeks - it doesn't matter what you use it for or how you use it, flexibility is good ;)

Thanks for popping by