Gingerbread Gift Bag

Hello

welcome to my little crafting place! 

It's Spellbinders Club time again, and we're still having fun with 'Christmas in July' crafting. This time I've made a gift bag, and used the Gingerbread man Deluxe Caboodle club gift to make a tag to decorate it

 

The actual gift bag is made from a sheet of A4 80gsm card printed with one of the designs from my ever-increasing collection of digital downloads. The bag is about 15cms high, 10cms across and about 4cms deep, so a good size for a smallgift, like a bag of nice chocolates or a set of mini toiletries etc

For the tag I cut the middlesized scalloped circle from Scallop Journal Cards and trimmed to leave 5 scallops and a bit of extra card to stick to the back of a simple rectangle. At the lower edge I added a cut-down piece from one of the borders in the  Stitch & Dots Scallop Borders set. I used ribbon to conceal the joins

The gingerbread man is made the same way as on an earlier post, and I added candy canes from the July Small Die of the Monthand the little hat from last month's Walrus set (I punched a circle to use for the bobble)) and added a spring 'wobbler' between him and the tag base

 

 Materials

 

from Spellbinders;

July Deluxe Caboodle club gift

 

July Small Die of the Month

 

Vintage Flower Shoppe collection
  Scallop Journal Cards dies

Stitch & Dots Scallop Borders
   

Full 48 ColorWheel Cardstock Pack 8.5" x 11"

 

June Small Die of the Month

 

Other 

80gsm white card aprinted with digital download design

Spotty ribbon

narrow satin ribbon 

 

Gift Bag tutorial is HERE

  Just a Note

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

  THIS is my Affiliate link to the Spellbinders store 

-  you can use it to access the store whenever you buy from Spellbinders

It doesn't cost you anything, but I may get a little reward for pointing you there.

There's a UK based shop now, so you can use the 'Visit Our UK Store' button at the top right of any page on the Spellbinders site  

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Thank you so much for coming by

 Happy Crafting, Take care of yourself, and please come back soon!

 

 Kathy xx

Penguin Mini Gift Bag

 

Hello

welcome to my little crafting place! 

It's Spellbinders Club time again, and as it's July it must be Christmas. Obviously!

 In July's Small Die of the Month club set you'll get dies to make 3 super-cute character 'mugs'.  A reindeer, a penguin and the Father Christmas one I shared on my firt Clubs post, plus the froth for the top of the mug and the handle.  You'll also find a couple of cute extras like the scarf, snowflake and a teeny heart.  

In an earlier post I shared a simple 'wrapper' for a sachet of hot chocolate using the reindeer mug dies. This time I've used the adorable little penguin and made a sachet sized gfit bag.

I think these are perfect for sending 'warm wishes' to send as a little "Feel Better Soon" wish to someone feeling under the weather, or as a small Christmas gift, or even to hang on the tree when Christmas comes along

To make it I used a piece of thin card, printed with a digital design. I like using digis because I can crop, or just resize them to be perfect for my project.  You could also use a ready made patterned paper, or just make it in coloured card.

This bag is really simple and easy to adapt for whatever you want to put in it.  I've made a couple of very rough plans to show how it works.  You just need to adjust the measurements to make sure your item will fit inside.

The two 6cm sections are the front and back, so measure across your gift and adjust acordingly

The three 1cm sections relate to how 'thick' the gift is, so change those if necessary

The 2.5 section is where you add the glue to form the bag

The 1.5cm is the piece that is glued and tucked in at the bottom.

Dashed lines are fold lines

Red wedges should be cut off before sticking anything to make the overlaps neater

Punch holes and add ribbon to close thee bag 

The picture below shows the main dimensions  without the fold lines etc

 

These die sets are just fab, they go together really easily and are so cute

For the penguin you just need to cut the main body and the wings in black and the face and tummy in white, then add the extra bits you want.  The dies already have holes so the black shows through for the eyes, and the die cuts you make will have the marks on them for the features and to indicate where to add other pieces

I made a small error and forgot to add the handle to this one, oops! 

 I made a tag by printing the 'A Warm Wish for You' on card via the pc and bakcing in silver glitter card to make a tag and sealed the bag with some blue ribbon 

Materials

 

from Spellbinders;

July Small Die of the Month

 

Full 48 ColorWheel Cardstock Pack 8.5" x 11"

 

Other 

Snowflake digi printed onto thin white card

Blue Ribbon

hot chocolate sachet 

pc generated sentiment for tag 

  Just a Note

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

  THIS is my Affiliate link to the Spellbinders store 

-  you can use it to access the store whenever you buy from Spellbinders

It doesn't cost you anything, but I may get a little reward for pointing you there.

There's a UK based shop now, so you can use the 'Visit Our UK Store' button at the top right of any page on the Spellbinders site  

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Thank you so much for coming by

 Happy Crafting, Take care of yourself, and please come back soon!

 

 Kathy xx

 

A Hug in a Mug

Hello

welcome to my little crafting place! 

It's Spellbinders Club time again, and as it's July it must be Christmas. Obviously!

 In July's Small Die of the Month club set you'll get dies to make 3 super-cute character 'mugs'.  A reindeer, a penguin and the Father Christmas one I shared on my firt Clubs post, plus the froth for the top of the mug and the handle.  You'll also find a couple of cute extras like the scarf, snowflake and a teeny heart.  

 

I couldn't help being inspired by the frothy mug theme of this collection - possibly because I love hot chocolate (and I love my Velvetiser that makes it so scrummy!) 

I thought these dies were perfect for sending 'warm wishes'  - so have made a couple of wrappers for prettying up a simple sachet of hot chocolate to send as a little Christmas gift, to hang on the tree or just as a Feel Better Soon wish to someone who's feeling a bit under par

 

This one is a simple band of red card wrapped and fixed around the sachet and topped with the adorable reindeer mug.  I just added a red ribbon on the handle and printed the 'a hug in a mug' on the pc to make a tag 

So, as you can see, this collection is great fun and offers plenty of opportunity to use for different projects.

Materials

 

from Spellbinders;

July Small Die of the Month

 

Full 48 ColorWheel Cardstock Pack 8.5" x 11"

 

Other 

Red Ribbon

hot chocoalte sachet 

  Just a Note

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

  THIS is my Affiliate link to the Spellbinders store 

-  you can use it to access the store whenever you buy from Spellbinders

It doesn't cost you anything, but I may get a little reward for pointing you there.

There's a UK based shop now, so you can use the 'Visit Our UK Store' button at the top right of any page on the Spellbinders site  

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Thank you so much for coming by

 Happy Crafting, Take care of yourself, and please come back soon!

 

 Kathy xx

 

Weaving with Fibres

 Hello

Welcome to my little crafting place! 

 

I thought I'd share a few photos and info on how I made the woven section of this card, plus some thoughts on what I'd if I did something similar again, as this was very much a trial and error king of thing,  even though I made it into a card!

 

I have a large collection of tiny spools of fibresthat I've collected over the years - I use them mainly for decorating the spines of books I make - though to be fair its a long time since I actually finished one of those!

The weaving turned out colourful and very textural so I didnt think it needed much else to work ok.  So I went throungh a bag of pearly and glittery card scraps and die cut some stars in different shapes and sizes, and a few little hearts for good measure.

 

I started by making a frame using pairs of card strips.

If I do this again I will use dies to cut square frames - it would be simpler in the end.

I would also make the squares quite a bit bigger than I needed the weaving to be, so it would be easier to cut the finished piece out of the frame

Next I fixed the vertical fibres to the top and bottom of the frame - I used glue for this.  They need to be well stuck before adding the horizontal fibres.  I always have a pot of 'bulldog' clips at hand as they are so useful in many ways

I started weaving the horizontal fibres in the middle because I planned to keep gaps between the rows and starting in the middle helped me keep the rows even

I'm not a great fan of threading needles and as I was using lots of different kinds iof fibres with different thicknesses and 'fluffiness' it would have been a real pain! So I cut a narrow strip of card and punched a small hole in one end.

With this tool I could simply pull whatever type of fibre through the hole with tweezers then weave easily over and under the vertical fibres with the card strip.

Asain I used glue and a clip to secore each end

I just continued until the whole frame was filled.

Next I spread PVA glue overthe centre of a piece of card the same size as my card blank and pressed it down on the wrong side of the weaving.  I put a paperweight over it and left it to dry

Once dried I cut away the pieces of card that made the frame

 this is where I learned that I should have made the weaving fram bigger and stopped weaving to leave a good 2-3cms margin around  the interwoven part - that way I could have used a smaller square of card for the backing, and it would have been much easaier to cut away from the frame too.

That's it, I hope you'll let me know if you have a go!

Thank you so much for coming by

 Happy Crafting, Take care of yourself,

 

Kathy xx

Seeing Stars!

Zuzana is the hostess for the Daring Cardmakers Challenge this week:

  'Wish Upon A Star' 

Do you like watching the stars in summer? I believe everyone does! My favourite are meteor showers. You don't need any special equipment. Spread a blanket on the ground and look up into the dark night sky.

  Now, I would like to see stars on your cards. Create a project with a universe or astronomy theme, fairy-tales, sports, birthday stars, music rock stars, stars on the flag ... whatever you fancy!  

  There are some fabulous and inspiring designs from our Design Team - visit the BLOG to see them. 

Even though I quite often choose stars for those tricky male cards for some reason this time I found it quite hard to see beyond Christmas themes.  So I turned to my trusty Funky Hand stash and in particular the Papercraft Factory CDs - oh how fab these CDs are with so many paper choices, images and even templates for making all manner of things - all resizeable in the built-in workspace. 

The papers I've used are from the "Happy, Happy Birthday" CD and I've mixed the "Just for Men" and "Birthday Boy" colour sets to make this card

Papers all from "Happy, Happy Birthday" CD by Funky Hand printed on white Bazzill

large and small bunting is handcut

Large star punch, stars folded for dimension*

Inks, Bakers Twine

* to make the 3D stars, use a punched or die cut star then fold (wrong sides and crease on all the lines shown - try to avoid creasing too hard at the centre point (you might end up with a hole, or a "scuffed" patch if you do)

Open out and now form just the bits of the lines marked red into valley folds

 

Now just squeeze in on the folds on the pointed sections until you get the shape you like.  

I used Collal 3D glue to fix my stars to the card

That's it for this time, thanks for visiting - please leave a comment

Printing and Pyramids Tutorial

I've not got a Daring Cardmakers card to share this week - hopefully that will be along later as I really hate having to miss making my card for the blog.  This week Miri is celebrating the birthday of one of he Grimm brothers by asking for cards inspired by Fairy Tales.
The team have come up with some fantastic ideas, so please visit the blog to see them - and test yourself to work out which fairy tale they were inspired by

Sometmes, life gets hectic and something has to move down the queue - this week it was my DCM card :( With a bit of luck though, I'll be in Fairy Tale mode over the weekend!

One thing I'm trying to do just now is collect up and add side-bar labels for tutorials I've made and blogged.  The reason for this is that I often go to make something and then spend ages looking for where I've put the instructions.  Even when I blog them I forget to add the link in the sidebar, hopefully this will mean I don't spend hours wading through photos just to give me an inkling as to when I made something and help me find my instructions.

This is a tutorial that first appeared on the Funky Hand "Get Funky and Craft" blog and shows how I prepared the designs for printing and making a pyramid shaped card

  Funky Hand Pyramid Card

If you've never made a Pyramid  card before then here's a great way to use your Funky Hand downloads and have a go at one straight away.

I made one of these for the first time a few weeks ago using Bazzill card and then adhering patterned paper to decorate it.  I usually use much thicker card for my card blanks but this style of card is quite bulky when folded.  Part way through making it I had an "A-ha!" moment and realised that using my Funky Hand downloads I could print the first "layer" directly onto card and create a thinner and easier to fold pyramid card base,  

Of course you could simply print your chosen Funky Hand designs directly onto the card without any tweaking at all, but I thought you might be interested to see how I get the most from my sheets of card, as by doing it this way you're left with lots of space on each sheet which you can then print more designs on to use in decorating your card.

 I use an old version of Paint Shop Pro to do pretty much any sort of photo or graphics tasks, but I'm sure that other programs, such as PhotoShop have the same sort of tools.  I thought the best thing would be to do a series of screen shots so that you can then have a look around your own photo-editing program for the similar menus, tools and commands.  

So here we go - you can click on the pictures for a better look!

Step 1

Select the design you want to use - in this case the pink chevron design from 
"I Love You Sew"

Use the tool marked with no. 1 and drag the grab-lines to a rough square shape as indicated in the picture.

Now click on CROP to get rid of the excess "paper"

Step 2

Now you need to find the tool that allows you to RESIZE the image and click on it to open up the resizing window

Step 3

You want to create a square which is about the right size for your project, so go for the ACTUAL SIZE option - this is a fab tip for printing other things like photos and other images just the right size too, btw

* Make sure that it's all set to resize all layers/dimensions at the same time - where I've drawn asterisks on the picture.  I Never touch this section of the box - I just know I'd have a disaster on my hands if I did

* Set to pixels/cms in the box marked no 2 or inches if you prefer to work in Imperial measures

* It's the box marked with no 3 that you change the numbers in rather than the ones marked height/width so as I want a square of around 14cms I changed the number in the RESOLUTION box until the number in the height box were about right 

Remember, I just guessed at the original square shape, the height turned out to be a bit shorter than the width so it's the height I need to get the right size for before printing

Step 4

Check all is well before printing by using the PAGE SET UP command.  It brings up a new window with a picture of how your image will look on the page - like the one below

Step 5

You just need to check you printer settings now

You need to use a thin card (about 160gsm) for this particular project to reduce the bulk and make it easier to fold.  I need to use the REAR TRAY to feed this through, and I need 3 copies

Then click print and you're done.

Once you've printed your three squares, don't cut them out straight away.  Measure how much white space you have below the square and use the resizing method above to crop down some of the other designs, and fill the white space with those designs.  
You're not finished yet as you can print on the reverse of the 3 sheets too. 

 If you want to leave the inside of the pyramid "legs" white, just print on the reverse of the "other end" of the card ie not on the back of where the squares are.  Remember that the inside of the legs will show, so if you don't want them plain white, print each of the three pieces with the same paper design on the reverse of the squares.  

I hope all that makes sense!

Making the Pyramid

Cut out your 3 squares accurately and fold each in half diagonally

Take the first 2 squares and adhere the edge of the upper one to the fold of the lower one matching the points and edges really carefully.  

The edge of the 3rd square is then adhered to the fold in square 2

Hopefully the photos will help make it clearer!

I've used a white square in this middle and clipped the 3 squares together just to show how they all fit - it's not as complicated as it sounds, is it?

Once they are glued together the pyramid just falls into shape of it's own accord really, the two end triangles overlap and are glued together and the base shape is formed. 

 

At this point you need to squash and fold one "face" in half  inwards so that the card can be flattened to go in an envelope

Now you can use all the extra bits of card you printed out to decorate it - just remember to keep the folded-in area fairly simple or it won't fold up!

In true Blue Peter spirit, here are more photos of the one I made earlier!

I really hope you'll have a go at this - it's sure to impress as it looks sooooo much more complicated than it is ;) 

Box Tutorial

I'm sharing this tutorial over on Funky Hand's "Get Funky and Craft" Inspiration Blog this weekend, so thought I'd post it here on my own blog too.

Once you've got the basic idea, you'll find you can adapt it to make boxes in other shapes too. I've made a few of these little boxes now and they are quite simple to make. I've used Spellbinders Nesties Label 26 for the top and base sections of my box, and kept to a simple square shape for the actual box section so that I can just cut the chipboard pieces using my guillotine.

 There are lots of photos, which I hope will make it nice and easy to follow

Start off by printing your chosen Funky Hand designs onto both sides of some white card.  I like to use a basic textured Bazzill type card (cut to A4), but just printing onto any white card would be fine.

I've used a few different designs as you'll see in the photos, but you could just make the box using one or two designs.  You''ll need a couple of sheets of printed card.  I've used our current Forgotten Funky spotlight collection "Minty Madness" for this box. 
 If you scroll down the blog a bit you'll find a whole array of other lovely projects using this collection

You'll also need some thicker card - I use card cut from an empty cereal packet

From the printed card

*Cut a 6cm wide strip from the long side.  Crease at 4cm as shown in the photo above

*Cut 4 of the 2nd largest Spellbinders Nesties Labels 26 die. Ink the edges and adhere 2 of each (if using different designs) together - be as accurate as possible. These will be the base and top of your box

* Cut 2 pieces measuring  9cm square

From the cereal packet

* Cut 6 or 7 (depending on thickness)  pieces measuring 6.5cm square

* Glue just 2 of the card squares together and set aside for the base section

* Trim a tiny fraction (1 - 1.5mm only) from 2 adjoining sides (not opposite ones - you need to keep the shape square) of each of the  other squares and then glue them together. It's important not to trim away too much or the lid won't fit at the end

Cover the card squares with the 9cm squares, wrapping around and making the corners as neat as you can.  Set the thicker of the squares aside for now

Using the thinner covered cereal packet piece, line up and mark the long strip as shown so that it will wrap around all 4 sides and have an overlap at the end. Make creases and cut slits up to the 2cm fold line

* Adhere the square piece to the side strip starting with the second section along.  Next glue the third and fourth sections under, and then the overlap.  Apply glue to the outside of the overlap piece and then glue the first section in place to cover it, and end up neatly at the corner of the box

 

 The underneath should look like this

Now apply glue to the box you've created and centre over one of the die cut pieces.  If you've done as I did and used 2 different designs, you'll need to decide which will be on the "inside" edges and which will be the outer ones

Finally adhere the thicker cereal packet piece to the 2nd of the die cut sections.

Trimming those tiny slivers from the card squares should mean that the lid will fit nicely into the top edge of the box - have a quick check before the glue has dried completely, then if you find the fit isn't snug enough, take the cereal packet piece off quickly and cover with another square of paper - that might just be enough to make it work

 It looks a bit dull and boring at the moment, but I'm sure you'll think of a way to brighten it up :)

I've made a couple of other boxes in the same way - these have both been shown here before, but hey, I might as well show them again

This one uses the same Labels 26 die as the one above, and the papers are from the Christmas 2013 "Silent Night" download collection

This next box is made the same way, but I've used a nesting heart set of dies by MFT Die'Namics to cut the shapes. These papers are from the gorgeous "Winter Wedding" download collection

They are fun to make and easy too - and of course Funky Hand papers make it really simple to get exactly the look you want. 

 I hope you'll have a go - and if you do I would soooo love to see your boxes, so please don't forget to let me know

Happy Crafting