My little Birdie

I have this new stamp I saw that was just so cute and cheery I just had to buy him.

and i worked on this card for Mel of Mel Stampz who has not put anything up on her blog for a while so I thought she needed some cheerin’ up; so here it is and if she emails me i will mail it to her.

background paper is Mel’s ‘dream definition’ I downloaded from her blog and printed out.  I used 2/3 of it for the front and the other 1/3 inside covered with some white acrylic paint for the sentiment area. Card stock is Stampin’ Up!’s and the flower is from Fred She Said. I printed the flowers out on Dick Blick’s Sulphite drawing paper and colored directly with water color crayons then went over them with water and brush. This paper works very well as a general purpose craft paper as it accepts water colors better than most papers if you don’t use too wet a brush and shapes so well when water is applied to paper for flowers (although I did not do any ore than jut color the flower and leaves and shape with paper styluses. The Bird is painted with yasutomo’s pearlescent paints. I added some painted accent to the tail and top knot feathers also.

Font used is ‘factory’.

Chair Box

PCP (Paper Craft Planet) has a 3-D challenge this week with a free cutting file for the 2x2 1/4x5 1/4-inch chair box that I thought was so cute. I downloaded the file (which you can get if you are a member of PCP) and decided to make the little box. I didn’t do too bad…the bottom doesn’t lay quite flat which is due to the score being off 1 micro-mm and the top of the box keeps popping up 1/8th inch but otherwise it came out all right. With yesterday’s post I printed up a 2-sided paper for this project making sure that the leaf paper was going in the right direction for the chair.

The flowers were cut from the leftover pieces; 3 sets of McGill’s Petite Petals punch. The little pointy flower has stamens of embroidery thread that I cut a doubled length of (2 1/2 inches – which is folded in half) and tied a knot in the center with the help of a crochet hook. Then spread the threads out with a pin, needle or similar, and glued to the center with monomulti by Tombow. This glue dries quickly and clear, going on white so that you can see where it goes; a benefit for those with ’failing’ eyesight. The flower in the center front of the box is 3 layers of the rounded petal flower, shaped and Mill Hill beads glued to the flower for the center. The leaves are a Martha Stewart punch and I had taken a bit of Dick Blick’s drawing paper and laid it into a bath of Shabby Shutters some time ago.
The Ribbon bow would not cooperate (with one loop sticking forward stubbornly) and so i will not give it any credit. I really don’t know where it came from anyway; i inherited it from another lady's collection.

Using Software and Digital files to make DP!

I’m finally doing a tutorial…I am assuming you know how to use your printer driver to set up paper information. Every Printer is different anyway. But I am using a software program that may not be well known and is great for printing out digital files for paper, otherwise know as DP, and accents for cards and pages that are not going to be used in the Robomaster for Silhouette ‘Cut-n-Print’ feature.

I wanted to make some for a couple of projects (cootie catcher or fortune teller and a chair box) and this little program I am tutoiarl-ing today is the easiest way to do this. If you have Photoshop or Photoshop Elements it takes a couple more little steps but will do the same thing. This neat little program, though, costs nothing to try out and only $9.99 usd to buy with options to upgrade. With that and a couple of files from someone selling digital paper you can make your own 1 or 2-sided decorative paper for special projects. The program is Serif’s “Draw Plus SE Pro” and will do files for cutting on digital die cut machines as well.

To do this i have Windows explorer right handy next to the open program which opens with a piece of ‘paper’ ready for drawing on. With Windows explorer on top, i picked a paper and drug it into the other program.

You can then click on the paper and drag it into position with matching top right corners.

Next…I change the size of the paper to fit the width of the paper backboard. I do this in the lower right hand corner with the little properties box (Transform) by clicking on the lock to make sure it changes both width (input box ‘W’) and height (input box ‘H’)  of the paper and changing the size to 8.5 in. You only have to change the one box because you clicked on the lock (and show those little blue lines) changes the length to match and keep the aspect ration of the original size.

Down below the Arrange/Transform/align box is the place to size the view so that you can zoom in or out according to need. Make sure that you still have your initial paper file selected and that it is lined up with the top left corner then copy (ctrl + c) and paste (ctrl+ v) on top of the file and pull the copy down to line up with the bottom of the first file. This is where you might want to zoom in and make sure that the paper lined up with the first.

The program squawks lightly about have you print paper that is off the backboard but just click okay; it prints just fine. Make sure that your printer settings are set up for borderless printing if your printer has that option; my printer dialog box will make sure that my paper is set to photo paper too. To make your paper 2-sided DP make another file and print separately from the program or printing by page numbers. Just make sure to put your paper with the printed side down (the printers print on the top side of the paper) for the second side. My printer (Canon Pixma MP210) does not print 2-sided (pauses with a dialog box so you can turn and re-insert your paper) with photograph paper and borderless setting. 

My paper came out perfectly borderless and beautiful! Not that my photo show it as nice as it really is but I figured I ought to show something.

• Paper printed on was Neenah Cardstock but Hero Arts layering paper (or similar) can also be used. Nice quality Inkjet paper can be used for the fortune teller. In either case the best results will be with absolute white paper or the colors may not come out as you expect.
• Digital papers used was ‘Susie Q’ from Tracy Ann Digital Art
• Program used id Serif’s DrawPlus SE

New Header for Blog

Hellloooo! I decided to make a header for my blog. I keep looking around at all that is available and did not find anything i liked. They are all beautiful; it just doesn't seem to find that spot in me that says "This is it! This is the one to use."And as I was playing around this morning this is what I did (referring to the header image). And I loved the colors, the way the blended, so decided to scan it.

I know it doesn't fit with the newly added background, which i really like but now does not fit with the header, so this page may look a little mis-matched till i get a background done. Edited to say I have my new background in place but I think it needs a little editing still. The Stamp is from Impression Obssesion and is an absolute favorite of mine. and i used the Yasutomo pearlescent color/paint box with an aqua brush by Niji. One of these days I am going to get a beautiful water brush with real bristle from Blue Heron but can't quite seem to fit it in my immediate list of wants with the amount of money i have to work with. This is a never ending problem it seems. I keep hoping to get caught up! I'm not doing too bad, though.

Fred She Said challenge

Well is it really not April anymore but the page is still accepting applicants and while my little card is not very much her it is! So I will be entering that challenge.

I have had a very difficult time with this, not making the card, but getting a photo of it and it still is not very good.

I used Prism Herbal green that i love for the first background, and Neenah for the dotted swiss with faux eyelet edging at the bottom. This was actually re-claimed from a card I was trying to make but didn’t come out of the machine cut correctly; it was a little off for some reason. And while the silhouette store has a scalloped square i could have used, I made my own and then made the card. That is another story though.

Pansies are one of my most favorite flowers and I had just a tiny amount of money to spend so I bought the colored set; both the blue and purple. I just love it! I put this through the Silhouette machine software (which is Craft Robo) printing it out on Neenah Cardstock and then running it through the machine to cut the circle. I had also set in a couple of extra pansies to make this a Paper Tole Project. I made sure that the little pansies were going to be all the same size by sizing a single pansy over the main pansy. Then copy/pasted another image after moving it to the side. My circle was drawn first then the print of the pansy cup was place in the sircle and sized to fit nicley.

Guess i need to get an new camera because mine is not taking a good enough photo of the card and it is hard to see that it is layered. But here it is. I thank you Fred, for the lovely little pansies and all the delightful little flowers on your site.

A Little Tattered Angels Glimmer Mist

on a plastic work surface of some sort and a ‘die cut’ from my Silhouette machine and i came up with this…

Tattered Angels Mists are rather expensive but they have a shimmer that is so lovely. And  i had bought Meadow Green and  Burnt Red (this one mostly for Christmas stuff) and so decided to try something  so I squirted a squirt of the red and a squirt of green on either side close to each other and laid the die cut into the little color bath and the result is this! The color is much more intense than just spraying directly on paper and looked so lovely for this little motif.

Then i cut another of this pattern and sprayed the glimmer mist directly on it and it looks like this…

Both are just beautiful! but it is easier to control where you want the color if you dip into a bath of color. I used the same colors and just love how they blended into each other.

My new Computer

sure took a long time to get here and when it did I was in for a few shocks. (It arrived today)

My new computer, i made sure, had the 4 USB ports in the back plus the one in front. But is does no longer have the little round tailor made serial ports for the keyboard and mouse. This i didn’t know. It wasn’t mentioned on the web page i ordered from, but i thought they would never change that anyway. Well, the keyboard and mouse now come as USB port plug-ins. That is fine for some people but i have a digital tablet, extra hard drive, camera, Silhouette die cutting machine, printer/scanner (that used to have it’s own serial port and is now USB) and a super Logitech mouse with those side buttons that make it indispensible and uses USB instead of a serial port). Not only that but it does not look like my spiffy little computer that i love. This just is never going to work! Not only that but it has Windows 7 and I don’t think I am going to like missing my side bar that has a clock, calendar (so I don’t forget what day it is), memo pad (for short little notes i can’t live without)a little gadget that give me my daily Bible Verse, weather and Norton (so I know I am secure or i need to fix something to keep protected) and a meter (that shows me how much CPU or Ram is being used at any given moment)

I don’t know How Linda Duke is doing with her new computer…she went to The Other brand (Not Linux).

MY daughter is also having computer problems and is going to college on the internet so it is even more important that she have a computer that works (mine is purely emotional (if i can’t get certain things cut Silhouette does require a computer at all times) or info and photos put up on my blog or Flickr I will have a withdrawal problem. Also if i can’t check up on what everybody else is doing…the same). So I must have a computer..but not this one; i gave it to my daughter. (She is finally working so maybe we can get caught up on bill and other things) My little computer is hanging in though things have been pretty rough. It (The software) did manage to finally come up with it needed to check one of my disks….   On its own too!