Woven Cane

When we visited my sister yesterday I noticed that she was working on a chair seat that she was redoing with woven cane. In the bin beside it was the old piece, which had evidently split down one side. I fished it out and asked if I could have it and she readily agreed – my motto plays out every day: “One person’s rubbish is another person’s treasure”!! I knew I could do something with it – it’s a very decorative pattern with loads of potential, and definitely too good to throw away.

My original plan was to use it as a stencil, and also to press into gesso or Polyfilla (joint compound) to create a texture, and I still intend doing this, but then I thought I could get some mileage out of it as a digital image, so I started off by scanning it, and then created a texture overlay in Serif PhotoPlus. This file has now been uploaded to my SkyDrive – link in my sidebar – in my Texture Overlays folder (big surprise, that! Shoshi’s nothing if not logical…). If you want to download it and use it in any digital imaging projects, please feel free.

Then I added it to a couple of backgrounds in Serif CraftArtist. I like the pale, washed out greyscale-on-white one but I ended up adjusting the colour balance in PhotoPlus because I wanted it a more beigey-brown colour – I decided I would make a thank you card for my sister, using her woven cane.

I printed these digital images out, together with a sheet of 3-inch square pictures of the piece. These squares have had their background removed, and blended with the beige texture background. The remaining squares can be used in other projects.

Here is the card I made, using the beige texture background.

I cut out one of the smaller squares out, and cut around the edges of the printed design, and inked the edge with a small amount of Walnut Stain distress ink to hide the cut white edges.

I cut the beige background piece in half to A5, and printed the “Thank You” sentiment onto it. I trimmed it down by 1/8 in all round, and then distressed the edges with Walnut Stain distress ink. I took a sheet of plain white card for the card base, and distressed the edges with Old Paper distress ink, and then matted and layered the texture piece and the small square, which I added with foam pads. Finally I added a couple of leaves that I’d made from my stash, and a purchased butterfly embellishment as a finishing touch, and a small splash of colour.

New Blog Background–Work in Progress!

Thanks to my friends Wendy and Rachel, I have now been able to get my newly designed blog background and header to work. It’s still a work in progress and I apologise if some of the headings aren’t yet that easy to read – for some reason the background is coming out much darker than my original design – it’s as if a dark semi-transparent layer comes down over it immediately after you open the blog. Hopefully we will iron out this small difficulty and you will soon see it as it should be.

Details of the Design

The header consists of a montage of photos (from left to right) of some knitting I did ages ago (now awaiting unravelling and knitting up again) – Kaffe Fasset style in yellows and purples. I love that tunic top, but unfortunately it is now too small for me, but one day it will be knitted again in all its former glory!

In the middle is a snippet of an interesting rock formation at the Bullring in Oban.

On the right is my first piece of hand-made paper made from recycled paper towels (kitchen roll), distress inks, DIY glimmer mist and gilding flakes.

The butterfly is an image I had on my computer, and the flowers are photos I took of several hibiscus flowers I made last year according to Penny Duncan’s cut file of the hibiscus flower – I extracted them from the background and they are now useful as digital elements in my projects.

I did the design of the whole blog background in a combination of Serif CraftArtist Platinum and Serif PhotoPlus, and the faux embroidered border along the bottom of the header was an element from CraftArtist. The montages were done by using different blending modes and transparency settings.

The main body of the blog consists of photographs I took last year of some ancient parish records dating back to the 1600s, from which I have created some vintage backgrounds. You can see some of them on this project – the book-style card I made for my mother’s 90th birthday last year.

Top left is a photo I took of some honeycomb, with a bee on it, and underneath this, and on the right as well, are some photos of a wonderful old cracked pot I photographed years ago when I got my first digital camera.

At the bottom on the left is a photograph of a beautiful wall that I photographed at Waddesdon Manor in Buckinghamshire when we were on holiday there several years ago.

I have also made a texture overlay of this.

Bottom right (but not really visible, I’m afraid, as it seems to be a bit cut off!) is a photo of a glorious Norfolk split flint wall. (I also made a texture overlay of this one.)

I love taking photos of walls, tiles, textures…

On both sides, I have added to the montage some of my recent digital backgrounds created from a still-life painting in oils.

Unfortunately, while the dark layer is still over the background, these are not visible.

I think this new blog background expresses far better the sort of person I am than the previous one, which I chose when I first started my blog. The new background incorporates my love of colour and texture, and photographing such things, and also some of the creativity I enjoy. It’s been a long hard slog to get it up and running, and hopefully over the next few days we’ll iron out the final niggles and you’ll see it in all its glory!

My Horrible Blog

My blog is looking HORRIBLE at the moment. I’ve been thinking for ages how fed up I was getting with the old background – I’ve had it since I first started, and it’s feeling pretty tired these days, and really doesn’t express who I am, so I decided to revamp it. I’ve designed a nice background in Serif CraftArtist Platinum, using my own photos, including some pictures of my own work.

Some time ago my friend Wendy sent me some instructions how to change the background, and I have been trying since last night, absolutely without success – the picture is coming out much too small, and if I try and change the size of my blog and the columns in the layout editor, nothing will fit.

I’m at the hair tearing stage now, and have emailed Wendy for some urgent help – and if I can’t sort this out, it will either go on looking quite ’orrible, or I’ll have to resort to another pre-made one, which I really don’t want to do.

So my apologies everyone for allowing such an eyesore to appear in my name in Blogland!! Hopefully it won’t be for too long.

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.

Birthday Cards for my Mum and a Naughty Squirrel

(Warning – image rich post!!)

I don’t seem to have blogged for several weeks, except for the weekly WOYWW blog hop – for details click on the logo in my sidebar – for over a fortnight I’ve been laid low with a dreadful throat infection/flu-type virus and although I’m tons better now, my throat is still a bit sore and I haven’t got my voice back completely (I was voiceless for over a week!). I’m also feeling pretty wiped out as a result. Still, it’s the time of year for it and I’m not the only one who’s been suffering.

My main project recently has been to make a collection of birthday cards to give my mum for Christmas. She is hard to get presents for these days as she’s 90 and wants to get rid of stuff rather than acquire more, and she always appreciates things I’ve made, and these can be given away, which is even better. I have tried to keep them fairly simple as card making isn’t my No. 1 favourite thing to do, but I do enjoy embossing and inking and experimenting, so I’ve been having some fun. I am not going to give them all to her but put some in my ever-diminishing stash – there’s always a panic on when it’s someone’s birthday and a card has to be made in a hurry, and everyone’s birthdays in our circle of family and friends seems to be in the first half of the year.

I’ve made a box to put them in, which I thought she could use again to put cards in when these have all been given away. I used my Crafter’s Companion Top Score Multi-Board to make the box out of black cardstock, and decorated the sides and top of the lid.

I designed the label using Serif CraftArtist – I wanted a soft, romantic shabby chic look for this box, which I hope I have achieved.

The embellishment is made from two small crochet flowers I made a while back, which I sprayed with some pale pink glimmer mist (which doesn’t show!!) and secured with a pretty green brad over some organza ribbon.

Here’s a picture of some of the cards in progress – I uploaded this a while back on a WOYWW post. I have made them all the same size (A5).

Now for the cards in detail. Here is a pair of similar cards using clear heat embossing as a resist, and inking with Tim Holtz Distress Inks using my Inkylicious Ink Dusters. I love this technique as you get a lovely subtle blending of the colours. The sentiments are peel-offs.

Here’s a couple of pink cards – the first one is quite dark and might possibly do for a man – it’s embossed with a Cuttlebug paisley folder. The sentiment is cut on the Cricut, and as with all the sentiments so created, it was coloured using Tim Holtz Distress Stains to co-ordinate with the card. The one on the right was made using a doily as a stencil, using an Ink Duster and Spun Sugar Distress Ink, and then going over the white part with a white marker pen to give a bit of texture and make it look like lace. The sentiment is stamped.

The next two I am very pleased with. The one on the left is using a script Cuttlebug folder and some Core’dinations card in their “Whitewash” range which I really like – when sanded, the pastel shade underneath shows through. I made the flowers by stamping with some stylised flower stamps I’ve got, and then painting them with distress ink and hand embossing them, before gluing them down onto the card, and adding some orange Stickles glitter glue for a bit of bling. The background was inked with Distress Ink using some sequin waste as a stencil, and the sentiment cut on the Cricut. For the one on the right, I used a small oval die cut piece of decorative paper I had left over from another project, using a Spellbinders die, and I stamped and heat embossed the butterfly in gold, cut it out and painted it using pearlised acrylic inks. The iridescence doesn’t really show in the photo. The background was distress-inked with my Ink Dusters, and the sentiment is stamped.

The next two are done with some Tim Holtz Texture Fades embossing folders, and the sentiments cut on the Cricut. The one on the left is quite plain, but effective, I think – again it’s done with the Core’dinations Whitewash card, sanded and inked with Old Paper Distress Ink. The one on the right was inked in several green shades, and some of the embossed motifs outlined with a white marker pen and then emphasised with some Glossy Accents.

The next two are very simple, just using two different colourways of papers from one of my Tim Holtz paper stacks, which I then edged with a bit of gold rub’n’buff (which doesn’t show on the photo) and added some ribbon. The sentiments were cut on the Cricut.

I hand-painted some stems on the next card and then glued on some yellow hibiscus flowers from my stash, that I made from one of Penny Duncan’s cut files. The sentiment is stamped.

Here are the pictures of a doily being used as a stencil (small trial piece on the left) – I stencilled onto some decorative paper.

I used this as a background for the second card below; I then used the same doily to create the pink doily card above, and as a result the doily was really inky in graduating shades of blue and pink, which I really liked, so I cut it up and used some of the motifs to make these last two cards with, both of which have peel-off sentiments.  I arranged the different elements to make a suitable design, and on the right background, and with the addition of some stickles, they look quite exotic! I’m really pleased with this pair! Doilies definitely have potential for art!

I have also made some extra backgrounds which I am going to use for my card stash. Here are some nice dark, grungey backgrounds I created by embossing some black Core’dinations card with the Cuttlebug and sanding down to reveal the orange core, and then adding some heat embossing in a mixture of gold and copper, and also some black distress embossing powder. They are really gritty!

I had to trim off the edges of the various pieces of card that I used to make the birthday cards so they’d fit in the embossing folders, and I thought they looked really pretty, so stuck them down onto a piece of plain white card – not sure what I shall do with this yet but it’s got potential!

Here are some more backgrounds using the Core’dinations card again – the first ones are using the Cuttlebug script folder – I love this one with the “Whitewash” Core’dinations!

The second ones are using card from the Core’dinations “Gemstones” range – this has a nice pearlised sheen, but not much difference of colour underneath so there isn’t much point in sanding them.

Finally, here are what I call my “smooshed backgrounds” – I used some small pieces of card to smoosh up my distress inks from my craft mat after I’d spritzed it with water. The card isn’t very good quality and has gone a bit spotty, but I thought these were quite pretty, and could be used either as backgrounds or cut into flower shapes and made up. (Also, they are free!!!)

Completely off the subject, look what I managed to photograph the other day – the beastly little monkey!! Hope he doesn’t get too much of a taste for our bird food because it’s the BIRDS I want to feed, NOT SQUIRRELS!!! The window looks pretty mucky but that’s because it was wet – it had recently stopped raining (well that’s my story and I’m sticking to it!!).