A Whale of a Time!

What a rubbish blogger I've been lately! 

I've not even blogged my Crafty Templates DT set this month yet so I'm going to put that right this minute!

This month's set have a bit of a "Father's Day" theme, but that's not to say they aren't adaptable for other occasions too. 

As soon as I saw the little vintage suitcase I thought it would be perfect to make a dinky mini-album, so I dug out the Bind It All and made this

 

The Kraft card for the covers, spotty paper, "wood grain" paper, tiny alpha letters, sunglasses and label stickers are all from this month's Crafty Goodies Kit

The card pages, yellow ribbon are from my stash

 I loved the whale template too and thought he'd be fun made patchwork-style so I cut the base layer from card then punched lots of 2cm squares from the various papers in the Crafty Goodies Kit.  It's a bit of a slow process to stick them all on, but I love the effect. 

I used wavy strips cut from a couple of the Kit papers to make the background and added a few "bubble" buttons in matching colours.

For extra dimension I made a little box hinge so that although he stands (or swims) proud of the card when it's standing up, he lies flat for posting! If you look at the detail photo below, you can just see the hinge peeping out

 Papers and tiny alphabet stickers from the Crafty Goodies Kit

Buttons from stash

This is such a fun car shape!  I made this using various papers from the Kit - though I wish now I'd used something more neutral for the windows

Papers from the Kit

brads and card for the sentiment from stash.  Letters are cut with the Craft Robo

Here is the link for all you need to know about Crafty Templates and the Crafty Goodies Kits - both are always fab and sure to spark off your mojo!

Just a couple of treats before I go:

Fellow Funkette Jenny has some gorgeous prizes to give away, so do visit her BLOG to find out more.

Over on The Sketch File we also have a prize on offer, so please have a look at the new sketch and if you join in then who knows our lovely bag of goodies might be yours soon!

I think that's it for now, I'll be back tomorrow with lots of news and other stuff to share!

Welding a Word Using Paint Shop Pro

I've made this screen-shot tutorial to show how I weld letters into words for cutting on the Craft Robo.  Presumably this will also work for the Silhouette machine too.

I use Paint Shop Pro to do all my graphics "stuff" and these pictures show the various screens for using PSP - I'm hoping that the processes will be similar for other programs (such as Photoshop) or at least give you some idea as to what to look for in the program you are using.

Once you get the idea, it's really easy to make "joined up" words and of course, you have your whol font folder at your disposal.

Please let me know if you find this useful - click on each picture for a larger view I've used lots of pictures so that you can see all the steps.

1.  Open Paint Shop Pro and Select a new page,  type in the dimensions you wish it to be.  This will depend on how large a word you want to make.  Remember to set the background as White.  This picture shows the settings I use for a simple, quite small word

2. Click on the Add Text tool and then check out the instructions on the screen-shot below to see what ettings to use in each area

3. Type your chosen word into the box, alter the settings as shown, then click OK

4. Now your word should appear on your page.  You need to merge the background and the "Layer" which has your word on.  You'll find the command in one of the drop-down menus:

5. You need to reduce the colours of your word to 2 - just Black and White, to do this use another of the drop down menus:

6. Now we can move the letters around with the funky Magic Wand tool!  Remember, if you do anything you're not happy with you can always just use the "back" button to undo it and have another try

7. Once you've selected the Magic Wand tool, click on one of the letters - you'll know it's been chosen because a dotted line will appear around it - it looks like ants marching around the shape!

8. Move each letter so that they overlap just a little, just follow the instructions in red on the screen-shot

9. Once you're finished moving things around, you'll probably have loads of white space left on your page, so get rid of it:

10.Now SAVE your word as a gif

11. Save it wherever you keep your Craft Robo templates (I save all the words I make into one area, called Words which is subdivided into; "Words A-F, Words G-N and Words O-Z , if I remember, I add the font name to each one I save.  eg this one should be saved in A-F and be called boy_crazyH)

That's it all ready to cut.

Now open a new page in Craft Rob, select the word you've made and resize to your preference - you can make it bigger or smaller, and you can also make it fatter or taller - and of course now you've made it you've got it to use again and again.

I hope you found this useful, and easy to follow.  If you are interested I can show you how to make a mat for your letters and welded words next time.

Chasing Cars

It's Samm's turn to set the challenge for the Daring Cardmakers this week and boy has she come up with a fiendish one!

CHASING CARS - SNOW PATROL

Hi, It's Samm here, and I've set this week's challenge to use the song 'Chasing Cars' by Snow Patrol as the inspiration for your cards.

If you're not familiar with the song, then here's a links to the lyrics:
Chasing Cars - Snow Patrol

It means a lot to me, so I'd love to see what you all come up with, so don't forget to get your linking fingers on and show us what you've created!!!

 It's such a fab and unusual idea for a dare - and she's picked a wonderul song for us to use for inspiration.  The cards the team have made are to use that much over-used, and teeth-gratingly word ohhhh I don't think I can bring myself to write it so I'll make an anagram instead and you can work it out for yourself!  They are    EMAWOSE!

In my head I had the idea of little cars all nose-to-tail (like the M25) following each other round and round in a spiral from the centre to the outside edge.  I went ahead with this to begin with but it looked a right mess, I changed the background but it still didn't work.

So back to the drawing board, and I remembered about those interactive things where you turn a wheel and the little pictures appear in a window. 

After a few trial and error efforts, and a lot of gritted teeth and wasted black card I managed to get the circle in the right place at last.

Mind you, having spent all that time on the wheel I realised I didn't have a clue what to do on the the rest of it!

To Make this card:

Car images found using Google Image search then converting them for cutting with Craft Robo

Rotating circle section and window in black upper section both cut with Craft Robo

14cm sq card blank, white card, black card, large brad for attaching wheel,

Circle punch to allow you to move the wheel.

Strips of Black and White "Stripey Stripes" paper by Funky Hand

Paper for cars all from Fancy Pants 6x6 Beach Bum pad

Now I know how to make these I think I'll be doing more as they are a bit of fun whatever age you are.  The hard bit is getting the window in the right place as using a regular craft punch doesn't really work very well.

I hope you'll pop over and see the fabulous cards the team have made this week, and you'll feel inspired to have a go yourself.

I've been a bad blogger this week - I do have lots to share, but time and other things have conspired against me - you know how it is, I'm sure!

So that's it from me for today, I promise to catch up on my blog-hopping as soon as I can - so see you soon!

Thanks for visiting

Master Chef!

It's the Funky Fifteenth today and over on Get Funky! it's my turn to be the Hostess of the Month.  To really challenge the Funky Hand Gang and all those wonderful crafters who play along with us each month, I've come up with a fiendish ingredients list for things that must appear on whatever project they care to create.

This is the list of ingredients:

3 different papers

5 flowers

2 buttons

1 piece of ribbon (may be chopped to your preference)

Seasoning of pearls, gems etc

At least one Funky Hand product must be used on your project

Once more Anice has created a special Funky Freebie paper which you can use for this challenge if you like.  This month there's a lovely Kraft style paper to be collected for free for the duration of this challenge - then it will disappear for ever!

Here's the card I made to start the pot a-cookin'

I used the Funky Freebie for the lower layer (embossed with Cuttlebug's Distress Stripes folder), and I used it again for the top layer - but this time I over-printed it with one of the new Rainbow Stripey Stripes designs and I just love the way it turned out!

There's lots more about how I made this card on the Get Funky! blog and I really hope you will head over there and see how it all works.  Every month there's a "download of your choice" prize on offer too, so it's definitely worth joining in.

Every 2 or 3 days throughout the month a different member of the team adds the project they've made for the challenge to the blog, so there's a constant stream of ideas and inspiration over there.

 You can find Get Funky! HERE

You can find the Funky Hand shop HERE

That's all for today, thanks for visiting ♥♥♥

What's Bugging You?

Well I suppose poor old Blogger has been bugging a lot of people today!  A big THANK YOU to all the people who've been working hard to get our beloved blogger back up and working - I'm sure I'm not alone in saying how much it's been missed over the last couple of days.  We're really very lucky to have something like this that connects so many people, that usually works so well AND that's free to use and enjoy.

Friday is Daring Cardmakers Day and thankfully Mr B. was back in time for it not to be a Daring Saturday instead.  A bit of a special one because this is the one we're using for Stage 2 of our DT Call - though a lot of the girls who applied in Sate 1 have "been practising" by joining in with some of the recent challenges too - it's been great to visit their blogs and start to get to know them.

It's Lynda here and it's my turn to set the Dare for this week:-

The Darlin' BUGS of May

I'd like to see some BUGS eg ladybirds, bees, spiders, caterpillars, butterflies, dragonflies - it would be lovely to see them taking centre stage on your card or be used as a lovely embellishment but I won't accept them if they're just printed onto your backing papers as that wouldn't be a challenge at all!

Although I hadn't a clue what to do about it I did know I wanted to make something with a "bee happy" sentiment.For a time I wondered if I could sneak the Winnie the Pooh card that I did for another dare a few weeks ago through the net for a second airing but I didn't think Lynda would let me get away with that hehe

.  Eventually I came up with this - sorry for the fuzzy picture - the photo isn't fuzzy on my photo screen but once it got on to the blog something weird seems to have happened.

 I used:

Blue background created with Broken China and Faded Jeans Distress Inks

For the flower; Red and black card, Glossy Accents, Yellow beads

Bees; cut with Craft Robo, Yellow, White and Black card, Pale Blue ink, Black Sharpie, white gel pen

Sentiment; cut with Craft Robo, yellow and black card

Other: Lace, Ribbon, Green Leaf Braid.

I'm happy to email a copy of the templates for the bees and the bee happy sentiment I've used for this card - contact me via the email link in the sidebar if you're interested.
The Daring Design Team have come up with a whole host of buggy cards this week so please do buzz on over  to the BLOG and have a look - they are fab.  We'd love it if you'd join in with us this week 

go on, I dare you!
Thanks for visiting

The Study So Far

As the Bad Fairy of Procrastination has come for a visit (short one, I hope) I thought I'd tidy my desk. 

 I know, I know.... things must be bad!

That done, it seemed only right to mark the occasion with a photograph - a nice big one so you can click on it and have a closer look my new shelf-thingummyjig at the back. 

It's actually an expanding 3 tier shelf meant to go in your kitchen cupboard so you can see the tins at the back.  I saw it in the Lakeland catalogue and thought it would work for my bottles and tubs of brads etc.  My new desk is much deeper than my old one and tbh I can't even reach the back without standing up, so although it takes up about 210mm at the back of the desk I think this will work pretty well for me - as you can see there's still loads of working space in front.

Here's a close up

It's taking a lot longer to find the sort of boxes and baskets that work in the units than I'd thought, but bit by bit it's getting there.  I'd really like to disguise all the bitty bits and make the cubes look tidy but as you can see, there's a way to go yet.  Plus I keep moving the drawer and cupboard units around as I change my mind about where I need them to be - once I've finally decided they'll be fixed in properly so I need to make sure I'm happy before the hammer or screwdriver comes out

A little bit of customising has gone on with the shelf inserts. IKEA only sell inserts that divide the space into four sections, to be made up like this

I really wanted to have some shelves so we bought some of them and built them.  I started to fill them but really they weren't much good for my stuff and when I mentioned it to hubby he pulled them apart and used some of the pieces to make a much better format and the perfect size for some baskets we found at a local garden centre

The latest purchase has been 4 brightly coloured file boxes and a bigger storage box.  At the moment they are a "work in progress" as I'm not sure whether to use them for my paltry collection of stamps/paint/embossing stuff that I've put in them to start with, or whether they'd be better for all those bits of chipboard and ephemera that hasn't made it back into the study yet.  Maybe I should just go back to Smiths and buy some more of them. 

Well, that's how things are looking at them moment.  I really should be crafting today but as I said, the BFoP is in residence and no "I can make ....." ideas are getting through.

So I thought I'd show my latest note block (I've just used up all the pages in my old one), made with some lovely Funky Hand papers

I used

papers from the following Funky Hand download collections: Rainbow Stripey Stripes, Rainbow Polka Dots and Salt and Pepper, Letters are also from the Salt and pepper download.

Pink Seam binding, pink wired flower, 

black wired flower all from Creative Treasures

Other "flat" flowers in pink, grey and black from stash

Coiled roses made from scraps of the same papers, 

Glossy Accents and Glamour Dust on letters, 

Black Stickles

If one of the BFoP's cohorts is living with you just now, maybe a trip around the WWOWOYWW (Wonderful World Of What's On Your Workdesk Wednesday) might provide some inspiration.  It all starts with a visit to Julia's Stamping Ground and is a great way of seeing what crafters from all over he world are making (or not!) today

Thanks for visiting

Please come again soon

Chocolate Buttons?

Yesterday I showed the handbag card I made for this months Get Funky! theme, which uses one of the lovely new papers from the newly released download collection "Rainbow Stripey Stripes".  Today I've three cards to show, all using the same download, along with the matching "Rainbow Polka Dots".that has been available for a few weeks now, and all using the chocolatey shades in the download. 

The first card uses both stripe designs, plus the Polka Dots.

Mosaic tiles are punched squares, backed with punched squares of card and inked around the edges

For the buttons I glued paper squares on to flat square buttons, then added a layer of Glossy Accents

The flower is made using Nesties dies, a button and twine

Two lengths of Stripey Stripes paper woven through slits cut with a craft knife to make the loops

Buttons made with 2 sizes punched circles (paper layers plus 2 card layers for each).  Polka Dots paper on larger size, Stripey Stripes on upper layer.  

The layers are then glued together and holes made with Cropadile. 

A layer of Glossy Accents was added to the top and brown twine knotted through the button

Three squares cut from one of the Stripey Stripes designs and mattes onto Brown Bazzill card. 

Two very narrow lengths of the other Stripey Stripes design used to add narrow borders above ad below. 

Three small 2-layer flowers (Nesties die) cut from Polka Dots paper and fixed together with black brads.

Black pen used to doodle around the edges of the squares

That's it for now, thank you for popping by, I hope you'll come again soon :)

A Handbag?????

Said in true "The Importance of Being Ernest" style, of course!

My turn to load a project for Funky Hand's challenge blog "Get Funky" has come around today.  The theme set on the Funky Fifteenth of April by hostess Debs was "Spots and Stripes" which is always a popular crafting combo - so we were all pretty happy with this one.  If you go over to the BLOG and scroll through the past few posts you'll find loads of Spotty, Stripey inspiration from the rest of the team - and there's still a couple to be published before the Funky Fifteenth of May arrives with it's brand new challenge.

For the last couple of weeks we've also had a brand new download to play with.  It's called Rainbow Stripey Stripes and has gone on sale this weekend - the colours match those of the last download Rainbow Polka Dots, so together they are a fabulous resource for all sorts of projects.

 

I've used the pretty pale green colour from each of these downloads , plus the Wobble Card Template from the last CD "Craft the Year Away" to make a handbag card.  I would actually quite like it if this was a real handbag!

 You can get instructions on how I made it on Get Funky!, and find out all about the fabulous CDs, Downloads and other Funky Goodies HERE

As always there's a prize up for grabs, but you must use at least one Funky Hand product to be in with a chance of winning - so don't forget that bit!

Ohhhh, I nearly forgot -  every month Anice creates a special freebie download paper which is only available for the duration of the current challenge,  I've not used it on this month's blog project, but here's a sneaky peek of something else I've made that does use the freebie paper

Thank you for visiting, I hope you like what you see here.  Please come back soon :)

Ne'er Cast a Clout....

...'til May is out

goes the old saying - whether that means the May Flower or the month of May seems undecided and to be honest  the only connection with this post is the word May.  It's just a contrived title, but there you go.

Today is the first Friday of the month so time for the Daring Cardmakers to return to our 2011 theme of Flowers of the Month.  I like that each month has a choice of flowers - gives a bit of room for manoeuvre, which is always good, plus it adds a bit more variety to the cards on the blog.  

May's flowers are the Hawthorn and the Lily of the Valley.

I went for the latter - my mum's favourite flower and one I've failed dismally to get to grow - which annoys me!

Mum had lily of the valley in her wedding bouquet so in honour, I thought I'd add in a bit of lace to my card - any excuse, eh?

I think the blue is too deep a shade - probably because I changed my mind and went over the original pale turquoise-blue inked background with a bluer one as I decided I wanted to use that baby-blue seam binding.  I was being lazy, I admit it - I should have started again with the new colour.

I just couldn't get a photo I was happy with, this is the best I managed.  Maybe I'll give it another try today.

I used:

Distress Inks, Bazzill card (2 x green shades),

White pearlised card  for flower heads and white pearlised paper for fan 

(no idea where these came from

Cuttlebug Swirls embossing folder, Spellbinders Doily die set,

Baby blue seam binding, green large headed pins, small piece of lace with seambinding threaded through (Creative Treasures)

Perarls are from the iRock collection and fixed with the iRock tool (Imaginisce)

There's crystal Glamour Dust on the flowers but it doesn't 

really show up on the photo.

The flowers were cut using my Craft Robo from a template made 

using free clip art pictures

If you would like the GSD file for the flowers email me via the link in my sidebar.

Please visit the Daring Cardmakers blog to see more May Flower cards and also to find out the identity of our very talented Guest Designer this month.....

Right, I suppose it's my turn to make the coffee. Thanks for visiting, please leave a comment

Mother And Son

The families of both sets of my In-Laws are beset with May birthdays. As mentioned yesterday, I cunningly made two cricket themed cards back in March - the one I kept is for Hubby's brother.  His wife and son also have May birthdays so here are the cards I've made for them,

 I used:

Robot from Funky Hand's Craft the year Away CD

Papers from Bo Bunny's "Blast Off 6x6 pad (Charmed Cards and Crafts)

Bazzill card (green, red and orange),

From stash: brads, 2 sizes googly eyes, wire, bakers twine (I think it came off a parcel!), tiny buttons

Computer generated sentiment on "Balloon"

It was a lovely change to make a girly card for his mum, so I may be guilty of being a bit OTT with this next one hehehe

More Bo Bunny and lots of pretty things!

I used:

All papers from Bo Bunny Stella and Rose 6x6 pad,  Bazzil card (2 x pink)

Wired flowers, 2 shades of pink seam binding, Pink pin all Creative Treasures.

 "Flat" Prima flowers, Imaginisce I-Rock Pearls (using I-Rock tool), 

Sentiment is a home made rub on decal, 

Aperture cut with Spellbinders Labels 9 die. 

Paper and card coiled roses

Today's main crafty task is to get my card ready for tomorrow's Daring Cardmakers challenge.  As usual I have no idea what I'm doing yet!  I suppose I should give the Dyson a bit of a workout too - the study floor has a carpet buried beneath all the paper scraps, I think....

Thanks for visiting.

So Much for My Big Idea

My "big idea" was to try and make/blog "A Card A Day in May" and see if anyone would like to play along with me.... well it was already the 3rd before I remembered this so maybe next year, eh?

It's a shame really as I've been crafting like mad as we have so many family and friends with birthdays in May - if on;y I'd remembered to blog in time.

Ah well, never mind.

Three of our nephews have birthdays in may, and there's one of my BIL's too.  I really don't like making "boy" cards so this month is always causes me a headache.

Anyway, here's the card for the footie-loving 17 year old:

A while back I used my Craft Robo to cut a load of silhouette cricketer figures - I made a couple of cards, one for my cousin and the other I put away ready for my BiLs birthday later in May  - sneaky ha?

They worked out pretty well, so I thought I'd do some footballer ones for this card and cut them in coloured card for a change.

I used:

Footballer silhouettes cut with Craft Robo, Bazzill card, football paper (made using my graphics package), spotty paper (Cosmo Cricket), 
Footballs were made using clipart images, resized to cut with circle punches, 
sentiment; home-made decal sticker

A few days ago my lovely blogging/FB friend Lisa mentioned she'd been making Rhubarb and Custard Cupcakes the other day so I went a-begging for the recipe.  We started growing rhubarb in the garden a couple of years back and I'm trying to gather a few recipes for using it.

I didn't quite get the frosting right - it was too soft to pipe, but boy! these taste good.

Often when I bake a boxful of the goodies get sent in to the office - that way I still get to do baking, but it saves us from pigging out on the lot!  When Hubby said "shall I take a few to work with me? this time I said "no!"

Thanks Lisa, you're a star!