Sixty Five

I'm not one for conventionally keeping with tradition and I do like to see if I can make something a little different, so here is a slightly different way of making a wordbook that Anice and Funky Hand is so good at producing!

I've used the wordbook templates from the Wishes and Kisses cd but I've printed the 'pages' and letters separately.   On one of the pc's I use, I don't have the Papercraft Factory cd's installed so I just use them as a standard cd and click on the 'open' option rather than 'run' when it loads up.

I'm not able to use any of the fancy graphics and the digi's on the Papercraft Factory cd's but I can still use all the papers, letters and wordbook papers - I just have to do it a little differently!

The pages of the wordbook are easily printed.  But the letters are a bit more difficult as they are not attached to anything and I have to be careful when resizing so that they actually fit the pages!

But once I got the hang of it, I found it quite easy!  I've added the letters with foam pads so that it gives a bit of depth to the card and then used glitter glue around the edges for a bit of manly sparkle (if Anice can use flowers, then I can use glitter!)

The smaller letters are cut with a Sizzix alphabet set and I've added a little bit of black ribbon and some green cord to finish it off.

This is actually the card that my Mum asked me to make for my Dad's Birthday.  Which is today!!

Don't forget to link up any creation you have made with any Funky Hand products via the blue frog below - we'd love to see what you've made and you never know - it could be your lucky day!!

A male birthday card with flowers on it?

Hi everyone, Anice here today to talk to you about my struggles with creating male birthday cards. Every year I suffer the usual crafters dread when I have to make my other half, Ian, a birthday card.

Most of my cards these days are pretty CAS (Clean and Simple) as I don't really have much time for crafting whilst running the business.  My advice, if you love crafting never start a business in crafting..you find you get less and less time to do what you love!

Anyway, less of my moaning and back to Ian's birthday card.  I decided I wanted to use one of my I'm A Mug For You digital stamps.  Happy Birthday the Tea Is On Me to be exact.  But that digital stamp has flowers on.. I decided that I could make it more masculine just by the colours that I used for the card and colouring.  Here it is, see what you think?

I used the Happy Birthday Mug digital stamp and papers from my craft CD Colour Me Happy (Jovial Man collection) The base card is black which I think really helps to make it feel more masculine.  Using the workspace on the Papercraft Factory CD I shrank down the polka dot backing paper so that it was pretty small as I wanted a tight spot image.  As I had done that I was able to add the striped backing paper to the same piece of A4 card, so saving card and ink!

Using Letraset Promarkers and Letraset Metallic Markers (My new favourites!) I coloured in the digital stamp matching the colours on the striped backing paper.

 I'm not the greatest colourer in the world but this image is very easy to colour.  The handle and the top of the mug where coloured with the black metallic marker and the flowers with dark blue and green Promarkers.  The little spot highlights where done with a silver metallic marker.  By using colours that match the papers as closely as possible and leaving the rest white I think I got away with having flowers on the mug digital stamp. I decided to cut our the centre of the mug handle to show the paper below.  If I made this card again I think I would cut around the outside of the mug handle and a little of the mug leaving the other side square. I can try that next time!

I cut both backing papers that I used the same length but when I put them together on the card it just looked too simple so, I decided to cut the striped paper into a long banner shape.  By adding a little doodling around the edge it made that section stand out a little more.

 

To make the card I just attached the backing papers to the black base card using Collall PVA glue and added the digital stamp topper using 2mm high double sided foam pads.

So there you are, I created a handmade birthday card for a man with flowers on! You decide if it worked, but I didn't get any negative comments from Ian so it must have been OK!

Thanks for visiting Get Funky And Craft.  If you create anything using Funky Hand products that you would like to share with us, please add them to the link below.  We would love to see them and visit your blog.
Anice xx

Something for the Dad's out there!!

 Papers and alpha's from Steam Funk.

Image from Colour me Happy.

Morning Peeps!!

It's Lou here with a little bit of inspiration for you this morning!!

I have been thinking of Fathers day cards for my Dad's! and this one is my fav so far. I wanted something a bit different so went for this folded tag album card.

They are so much fun to make. 

All you need to do is print out your fav paper on some thin cardstock.If you want the inside to have a pattern on too, pop it back through the printer and print on the other side too.

How you do the pocket inside is up to you, I had fun making different pockets for this one! I love the shirt and tie one!! 

I added a bit of string and saw charm to the second pocket, rolled the edge of the next over and added an eyelet and some punched Alpha's from the Steam Funk download. For the last pocket I punched a little out of the top of it and then printed out the tools image from the Colour me Happy workspace.

Then it was time to do the tags. I cut my tags from kraft paper and I was really careful with the little scalloped circles. I looked all over my texted paper and picked out some cool Dad describing words from it and then punched them so they would be clearly seen on the bottom of the folded over circle. I chose Smart, Slick, Knowing and Skill!! how fun is that?!!

Thank you for popping in on us

huge hugs Lou xxx

Spring is here!!

It's Debbie here and I'm hoping to inspire you to get your Funkyhand bits and pieces out and have fun.

When I was thinking about what to do this time I had a few ideas but then out of the blue I decided to get my   offcuts out from the Daisy day download and use the Spring has sprung sentiment topper.  I actually won this download from the challenges here so you never know what can happen.

Here's the offcuts I collected with some pieces of card for matting and layering to inspire me:

How can you not be inspired with such fantastic products from Funkyhand.

 I really tested myself on this one.It was very simple to make - a few cuts with the scissors, faux stitching, some bakers twine and jobs a good un.

So come and join in, add your link here or on our facebook page so we can pop and see you.

Hugs Debs x

New Baby

Hello All :) Sammylou here and today I would like to share with you a card I made for a new Baby Girl using the fabulous word digi available over at Funky Hand.

Now, I will share a secret and tell you that I absolutely adore stamps and digi stamps especially, I just love their versatility. Unfortunately my talent for colouring them does not reflect my enthusiasm...

Lucky for me then that the word digi's are just perfect for paper piecing and as they are digital, you can size them to fit any card! Taking some inspiration from Kathy's scraplings, I have now taken to keeping my offcuts and used the scrapling to create an over-the-edge card:

Using the pink polkadots from the wonderfully versatile Rainbow Polkadots download, I pasted the negative and positive papers into word and popped the digi's over. The great thing is you get two cards from one sheet of A4! I then cut out some alphas from the Just for Jen download, added a bit of ribbon and bling from my stash and the card was complete.

Despite a tiny bit of cutting out, this card was incredibly simple to put together but I think the overall effect is rather striking. It's fun, modern and a little quirky. When you have a baby you receive a lot of cards so it's nice to know that you've made a unique card to celebrate the birth of a unique child!

So, have you been and checked out the new digi's available? If not, head on over: they are so much fun to play with!

And, as always we would love to see what you create, so pop your link under this post or head on over to the Facebook page and share your cards with us there. We truly do love to see what you create.

See you all soon, Sammylou xxx

Building Pyramids

Hi there, 
it's me, Kathy here this time to try and inspire you to try 
something Funky this weekend!

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 ;)  

We can keep the secret of how easy it is to ourselves!

Please share a photo of anything you make with Funky Hand goodies; to make it easy for you there's an Inlinkz gadget you can use and we'd all really love to see what you are making.

Happy Crafting

Kathy xx

Flower Power

Hi everyone, I hope you are still munching your way through your chocolate mountain! Can you believe that we are into the first week in April? Who stole January, February and March? My poor little daffs haven't a clue what they are supposed to be doing, some are open, some are in bud and others just haven't bothered to do anything at all. We were in Cornwall over the weekend and they haven't had any snow, just biting winds and flooding (not good) but there were fields and fields full of beautiful daffs, so vibrant in colour.

I've put a flower on my card today, not yellow but pink and grey. If you want to go over to my blog after you've read this then I will pop a tutorial on for making the flower if you want to. It will be found  at Scruff's Corner

I have used papers from Just For Jen on the Funky Hand web site, silver leaves which I found in my die cuts drawer but don't have a clue where they came from, the punch used is from Stampin Up and the gems are from my stash too.

Thanks for dropping by, I'm now going to pop over and get the tutorial up for the flower. 
Till next time xx