Valentine Card for my Hubby

Following on from yesterday’s post, I have now completed the card for my hubby for Valentine’s day, based on the digital layout I did last year, using Serif CraftArtist:

The first thing I did was to cut out the three layers of card with heart apertures, using Sheba, my Black Cat Cougar cutting machine. Since learning from Black Cat forum members that setting the blade higher results in better cuts, I cannot believe how much better Sheba is cutting, and how much less force I am needing. I am now setting the blade two CDs’ thickness above the media on the mat. Of course, the card I am using has proved itself to cut very well – I have used 3 colours from the Tim Holtz Distress Core’dinations stack, not because I want to avail myself of the benefits of Core’dinations paper, but because the colours were more or less what I wanted – Aged Mahogany, Victorian Velvet and Milled Lavender. The effect is slightly less mauve than the digital layout.

I printed out a background on some 100 gsm paper, from the same digikit that I did the layout from – “Valentine’s Day 2011,” and cut a small piece from that, which I stuck behind the aperture in the Aged Mahogany paper, which is the back layer. (I also printed out a sheet of this background on some heavier card to go on the back of the finished card, to counteract the weight on the front of the card, and to finish it off nicely.)

I cut out some small hearts from red cardstock that I had – from an online paper mill, unknown weight but cuts really well – I cut 3 different sizes, ranging from 3/4 in down to just under 1/2 in. Some of these would be stuck down, and others would float above the surface on narrow acetate strips.

I thought I was going to have to make some new flowers for this project, but I had four pink roses left from my mother’s 90th birthday card that I made last year, and also various odd flowers that I’d made at various times, and with the addition of a few leaves and some dark red and white feathers, these would provide the embellishment for the bottom of the card.

Here’s a mock-up of the card pieces and the flowers.

Assembling the card was interesting. I wanted a good, deep dimensional feel to this card, to follow through from the digital layout inspiration. I used a double thickness of double-sided foam tape between each of the layers, and when they were all stuck together, I ran some double-sided tape around the edges and adhered some narrow pink satin ribbon with pretty picot edges to cover the rather unsightly edges.

Before I stuck it all together, I stuck some of the small hearts onto the background paper in the central heart, and stuck the rest onto narrow acetate strips, which I then glued between the layers, using Scotch Quick-Dry adhesive – a wonderful new find, thanks to Lucy on the Black Cat forum – it really does dry quickly, and it gives a very good strong bond, too. (Can one ever have enough different types of glue? One needs so many different ones for all the different things one does!)

The flowers and feathers were stuck down using hot glue, which has to be my favourite glue for this sort of thing, as it gives a more or less instant, very strong bond, and really is the only thing for making, and sticking down, flowers.

I had some difficulty cutting the small scalloped heart with the word “hugs” in the centre, as there was really too much detail to cut very small without the detail blade for Sheba (which I haven’t yet got). In the end I made it 2 inches across, and then made a mat layer for it in gold mirror card to show off the cut better. (I have just learnt how to do nesting shapes in Inkscape!) This embellishment was finished off with a small bow to match that on the floral embellishment, and also a tiny charm I bought at the recent craft show.

Here is a picture of the main design of the card. It measures 6 inches square.

To mount this whole design, I matted it onto some dark red card, and created a narrow mat layer in gold mirror card, which in turn was glued down to the main card, also made of the same dark red card. As the finished card is 8 inches square, I had to make this of two pieces, but the join is round the back, and mostly covered by the back printed background piece, so it is not obvious.

Here is a picture of the finished card.

The following pictures show various close-up shots, showing the detail of the embellishments etc.

The last two photos show the ribbon covering the unsightly edges of the layered card and foam tape.

After all my misgivings about not being able to make my dear hubby a special card this year, I have managed it after all! He is so wonderful, and does so much for me, and I am so grateful to have him as my lifelong companion and soul-mate, and I wanted to make him something special to let him know how much I appreciate him. I hope he likes the result!

Valentine Hearts

As usual I am running late, and with a very short deadline… It will be a miracle if my hubby gets a Valentine’s card at all this year, but he will have to console himself that I did go rather over the top with stuff for him last year!!

Last year I took part in a digital scrapbooking challenge and came up with this design for Valentine’s, created in Serif CraftArtist digital scrapbooking software.

I’ve been working all evening to try and come up with something based on this design, working in Inksccape, which is still pretty new software for me, and I’m still finding my way. This is the first basic heart I drew.

I then created three nesting hearts from this, and put them in a square. Each shape is in a different colour, so that SignCut (the software I am using with Sheba, my Black Cat Cougar cutting machine) can cut each colour separately. I will end up with 3 squares, each with a different sized heart-shaped aperture cut in it, which I shall layer with double-sided foam squares to create some depth.

I spent some time searching through various Inkscape tutorials (thank you Carolyn!) on the Inkscape Cutting Design forum and also on Youtube, and eventually learnt how to make a scalloped border around a heart. It is relatively simple round a circle or a square, but using “add pattern along path,” the small shape which becomes the border was always distorted. However, I was eventually directed to use “Generate from path>Scatter” which worked absolutely brilliantly!

This is the first one I did – combining the basic heart shape with a small circle:

This one went very well, without distortion, using “pattern along path,” but what I really wanted was an open scallop, using a small circle with a hole in the middle, and this is where the problems began. Using “Scatter” I managed to get this result:

The final touch was to add some text:

The idea is to cut this as small as I can, to make a sort of charm to attach to the card. The letters will be cut out in a stencil effect. It would be fun to cut it in shrink plastic, but I’m not sure I’m up to that with Sheba yet – I am still struggling to get a good, consistent cut, although I have had some success with regular cardstock rather than mirror card or the very dense navy blue card I started with (and used too much force and blunted my blade by cutting too deeply into my mat… grrrr).

This small piece will hang loose on the bottom of the card. I also want to make up some paper flowers and leaves to embellish the front, and some ribbon, and maybe a few feathers. The final touch will be to add some small hearts on acetate strips so that they move, emerging from the centre aperture of the card.

I really want to do this!! I’ve got so little time, and since Christmas my health has been such rubbish that I haven’t been able to spend the time in my ARTHaven that I would have liked, and I can’t depend on being well enough over the next couple of days either… We shall see. If I really can’t do it, I shall do a print-out of the digital layout and make that into a card for him. It won’t be quite the same, but it may have to do!

All these heart drawings have now been uploaded to my SkyDrive (see link in my sidebar) and can be freely downloaded.

Some New Texture Overlays

I’ve created a few more texture overlays which I’ve uploaded to my Windows Live SkyDrive album if anyone wants to download and use them. They are taken from nature.

Tree Bark 1:

Tree Bark 2:

As before, these are available for free download and use from my SkyDrive album:

http://cid-b56d3c83facaf396.office.live.com/browse.aspx/.Public/Shoshi%5E4s%20Texture%20Overlays?client=wnf

All I ask is that they are not used for commercial gain, and that if you mention my name and my blog address if you use them, that would be very nice.

They are all uploaded in their original size and resolution (12 x 12 in, 300 dpi) so would be ideal for scrapbooking projects where you want to print them out.

Here they are again, with different backgrounds using the overlay blending mode, to show how they might look in use. All these backgrounds have come from Serif CraftArtist digital scrapbooking software.

You can get an infinite variety of effects by using different backgrounds and colours, and even by overlaying one texture overlay over another – over and over and over – did I say “over”? OK, you get the idea!

To use them, simply import them into your photo editor and place them as a new layer over your chosen background. In the blending modes option, choose “Overlay” and you are done.

Hope you enjoy using them.

Book-Style Birthday Card–Vintage

Having revamped my book-style card template, I have started to create the cards. My mum’s card will have an aged, vintage feel. I have used some of the images from the ancient manuscript book which I posted about a few weeks ago, making a montage of images so that there was a distressed edge either side, and not exactly repeated, to give a more realistic look. I started with the distressed endpapers, and then added some of the manuscript text, using the mesh warp tool in Serif PhotoPlus to give the impression that the lines of text were following the curve of the page. I increased the contrast and blended it into the background using the Soft Light blending mode.

This is the centre (uppermost) page. There will be a ribbon bookmark down the centre fold, and it will be embellished with sentiments and some of the roses I have created.

The pages which lie behind this one were created in the same way, but to save time, I simply copied the completed image of the top page and flipped it vertically and/or horizontally and stretched it a bit so that the distressed edges did not look the same. It didn’t matter how the text looked (upside down and curving the wrong way) because it will all be covered by the top page. As it is being covered, there was no point in printing the whole of the centre and wasting ink, so I have erased the central part. This is the central page.

After I had created these two pages, I went into Serif CraftArtist Professional, my digital scrapbooking software, and created a mock-up of how the pages will look when printed, cut out and assembled.

I have now printed these pieces on a nice substantial white A4 cardstock, and I shall ink the edges with distress ink to cover up any bits of upside down text on the underlying pages, and also to darken it down a bit. The photos don’t really show the true colour; it was hard to get the colour balance just right because my first attempts at printing came out different from how they appeared on the screen, and the final result is a bit too pink, so I may be able to tone this down with some distress inks.

The pages will be gently curved using a rolling pin, and glued down the centre. I shall also add a little glue to the underside of the top page near the edges so that it will not lift. When I make Wonderwoman’s mother’s card, I will not do this, because the pages on hers will be designed to lift, revealing photos underneath.

So progress is being made, albeit slowly! I have been pretty busy this week with other things, and then too tired in between to do much, but we are already half way through the first week of March, and a lot to do before the beginning of April!

Digital Scrapbooking – Daisytrail Challenge

I’ve decided to enter my second challenge on Daisytrail, this time entitled “Three Times a Lady,” in which you have to use the same photograph of a “female” three times. Since it didn’t specify a human female, I’ve decided to do it of our kitty Beatrice the Computer Queen. However, she’s not obviously in computing mode in this layout, but playing her favourite role, that of Lady of the Manor. Our kitties expect to be waited on hand and foot, and all the best luxuries that money can buy. I thought I’d indulge her fantasies, at least digitally, and have dressed her up in diamonds.

I experienced a lot of difficulty with the page curls in this project, because part of the CraftArtist software doesn’t seem to be working, and the “join” options are greyed out. I eventually posted a request on the Daisytrail forum for help over this, and it appears I’m not alone in experiencing this problem. However, there are work-arounds, and I’m grateful in particular to Wendyp for her solution.

My friend Wendy (a different Wendy!) says taking part in challenges is a very good idea because it encourages one to try new techniques. She herself learned the embossing technique this way (I haven’t tried it yet) and through this challenge I’ve learnt how to do page curls, although it wasn’t specified in the challenge.

It was fun using the same photograph in three different ways. I said that Beatrice wasn’t obviously in computing mode, but this picture of her was extracted from its background, and the photograph happened to be the one of her sitting on my hubby’s laptop! I wanted a picture of her with her nose in the air, trying to look like a lady.

The picture on the top left was fun to do. I enlarged a diamond teardrop embellishment and copied it, and increased the transparency of the copy. I made an edging with small diamonds, and put a cropped version of Beatrice on top. I then put the transparent version of the diamond on top of that, so it looks as if she’s embedded in the diamond.

I extracted our God-daughter’s wedding tiara from her unsuspecting head to use for Beatrice in this project! I’m sure she won’t mind!

Digital Scrapbooking – Texture Overlays

Last night I was on someone's blog (see below) and she’s got various freebies to download, including some texture overlays, but rather than downloading these, I thought I'd try creating some myself. Whenever we go anywhere I'm always snapping away with the camera, and my hubby is always amused at the sort of things I take photos of – walls, pavements, different surfaces... I love textures and always photograph them, so I've got quite a library of them now. I opened one in my photo editor (Serif PhotoPlus – this software does 90% of what PhotoPlus does, but at a fraction of the cost) and increased the canvas size to make it the standard scrapbooking size of 12 x 12 in. and copied and pasted bits of the image to fill the space, to keep the pattern the same size. I then opened the channel mixer, and desaturated the image so it was greyscale, making sure it had good contrast – some adjustment was needed with the levels control. Then into the filters menu, where I chose Emboss, and adjusted the angle so it looked embossed rather than debossed (i.e. sticking out rather than sticking in!). I then exported it as an image saved on my hard drive. Into CraftArtist, where I put a nice plain-ish background in, and added this image on top. Using the Blending Mode, I chose Overlay. Hey presto! The two images are fused together, and the background has a nice texture on it!! I discovered you do need to use a background with a bit of colour, or the texture doesn’t show up.

This is the original photograph of a typical Norfolk chequerboard flintstone wall I photographed at Castle Acre Priory.

 

Here it is desaturated and embossed – this is what I saved as the texture overlay:

And here it is combined with a background.

Lovely effect, isn’t it! Here’s another one using a photo of some decorative stonework at Waddesdon Manor.

For this one, I made two texture overlays. You can change the angle of the simulated light source, and this gives a completely different effect.

This shows a bit more clearly on the next example. Here is the original photograph, of some crazed porcelain.

Just as you can produce either an embossed or a debossed effect with a Cuttlebug machine, depending on which side of the card you use, you can produce these effects by altering the angle of the virtual light source in the embossing effects tool in the photo editor. This is the embossed effect, i.e. the texture is raised:

and here is the debossed effect, with the lines appearing to sink below the surface.

This one, with a slightly different background, could be made to look like leather.

My final example is of some Chinese calligraphy. My apologies to any readers of Chinese – I have had to do a bit of cloning to get the image to fill the new canvas size, and I did this randomly to cover up the joins, and as a result the characters are not all in the right places! However, this is purely for decorative effect and will be used as a background for images and text, so it probably won’t be noticeable in use.

I have deliberately chosen fairly plain, neutral-coloured backgrounds for these examples, to show you how the principle works. However, you can experiment using different coloured backgrounds, and ones with an existing texture, and even using more than one texture overlay – the patterns combine to give some interesting results. For instance, if you have a striped texture, you can overlay it the second time at right angles to the first, and end up with a checked effect, but it goes a lot further than that. Actually the possibilities are endless.

I have created a couple of layouts using these backgrounds, which I may incorporate into a photo book of our holidays one day. This is the “title” page for Castle Acre Priory in Norfolk, and you can see how I have used the chequerboard flint wall as a texture overlay background, and put the images and text on top. I am grateful to Iris (http://trulytangoscraps.wordpress.com/category/friday-freebies/) not only for giving me the idea of trying these texture overlays, but also for some lovely free downloads that you can get if you subscribe to her blog, including the frames on this layout, which have a gorgeous mediaeval look which is in keeping with the ruined abbey.

Here’s another example of a layout I did, using the texture overlay process. This is made up of photos taken at Waddesdon Manor in Buckinghamshire, and again, the gilt frame came from Iris – I wanted to reflect some of the opulence inside the house.

One day I shall get round to making all my holiday photos up into layouts.

I am very thrilled to have discovered this new technique, which I think will be very useful, and a good way to create an unusual background for a project, using elements from the same theme. You can also create backgrounds and textures unique to you.

Digital Scrapbooking Challenge

I’ve signed up to the Daisytrail site, a community for users of the Serif digital scrapbooking software. My friend Wendy recommended I have a look at all the gorgeous projects people have uploaded, as part of a challenge. Daisytrail recently provided a free digikit for Valentine’s Day, which is fairly limited, and the challenge was to make a layout using only stuff from this kit and nothing else (apart from a photo if you wanted to put one in), which they thought would be pretty challenging, but it’s amazing what people have done with it:

http://www.daisytrail.com/challenges.html?id=91

This evening I decided to download that kit and have a play around with it. When I uploaded it to my gallery on daisytrail, I discovered that the challenge doesn’t actually end until tomorrow, so I thought I might as well enter!

I don’t think I’ve ever done so much stuff for Valentine’s Day before in my life. I made a card for my hubby, and a hanging bon-bon basket, a card for my friend to give to her hubby, some ATCs for a swap on the Crafter’s Companion forum, and now a digital scrapbooking challenge entry! What fun it’s been.

I am getting seriously concerned that this is going to become a totally out of control addiction, however!! I’ve got “real” crafting that must be done – special birthday cards, Mothering Sunday, etc. etc. Once I’ve got the ironing done and my credit card statement checked through, I’m going up to my ARTHaven and getting stuck in – energy permitting! – but not tonight – it’s now nearly 2.30 a.m. and time for bed, methinks.

Personalised Choccie Boxes

When I opened the choccies my hubby gave me for Valentine’s, there was a leaflet inside saying that Thornton’s are now doing personalised boxes. You can upload your own photo and they will put it on the lid of the box, and you can choose a message to go on the side, and you can even choose which choccies they put in!

What a gift for digital scrapbookers! There is a limit to the size of the file you can upload, but they don’t tell you the measurements. I measured the little window on their web page and the proportions are 3:2, so I’ve designed a layout 9 in x 6 in to comply with those proportions, which I am going to have done for my hubby for our Silver Wedding Anniversary in May. (I just wish I didn’t have to wait that long before I get it done!)

I did this using Serif CraftArtist, which has a marvellous tool for extracting images from backgrounds. I spoke to the man from Serif on the phone the other day, and told him how much easier this tool is to use than the one on their PhotoPlus photo editing software, and he said that they are going to put it in the new version, which is good.

I also used the transparency tool to fade the main image, and the text, into the background.

One thing I really like about Serif software is that once you’ve got used to one program, the others are really easy to learn, because they tend to keep the interface the same, and many of the tools become familiar.

The picture shows Beatrice with my hubby. After lunch she always comes up asking for Dreamies, which are kitty snacks. These are the kitty equivalent of crack cocaine. Both our kitties adore them! Beatrice has a special relationship with my hubby and I have to prise her off him if I want to get anywhere near! In the small picture in the frame, you can see our two girlies together, with Phoebe at the top.

I can think of several other people I would like to get these personalised choccie boxes for. They do a range of prices depending on how big a box you choose – you can have more than one layer of choccies. I think it’s such a lovely idea!

Digital Scrapbooking–My First Layout!

At last I’ve managed to get going on my new Serif Craft Artist Platinum software for digital scrapbooking. My friend Wendy is absolutely brilliant at this, and has encouraged me no end, and been very helpful, and when this new software was launched at the end of January I decided to get it, and it’s certainly very powerful.

Last night I used one of their existing backgrounds and added a repeating pattern of tiny hearts, to created a background paper to print out for the ATCs I’m making (more on that when they are finished).

This evening, after coming down from my ARTHaven, I thought I’d have a go at working through some of the video tutorials for the software, and did the first one on Basic Skills, in about 6 parts, and made my first layout! It’s a picture of my parents a few years ago, at our local Pick Your Own fruit picking place.

I love the way you can make part of a picture project outside the frame! It’s really cool. Also, the shadow tool is awesome. All you do is select your object or group of objects, click on the shadow tool, and drag and drop the selected object in the direction you want the shadow, and as far from the object as you want it, and then drop, and lo and behold, a perfect shadow! Easy peasy.

The frames are really smart, too – you just drag a photo into the frame and it automatically crops the photo to fit. If you don’t like how it’s placed or how big it is, you can zoom and pan until it’s just right.

The scissors tool will cut out objects (like the “paper” with the text on it – this was using a square shaped cut) and you can make it as big or small as you like, and there’s an edge tool to make loads of different fancy edges, like a frayed edge to a piece of fabric, and the brushes are amazing too – you get all the usual things like charcoal lines etc. but also there’s stitching and other effects – all with full photo realism.

There is just so much to explore and to learn with this software, which is very powerful. It’s going to take me ages to work through all the tutorials and get the knowledge under my belt so that it becomes second nature.

It’s a lovely thing to be able to do when I feel the creative buzz but don’t have the energy to sit at my table in my ARTHaven and do “real” stuff.