Negative Images

Hi there, it's Kathy here with the Funky Hand Midweek Inspiration slot and
I've been playing with left-overs again!

It was our wedding anniversary a couple of weeks back and I used papers from the "I Love You Sew" collection to make a card fro my Hubby.  As I'd already planned what I wanted to do, I knew I needed to print a lot of designs - but very small pieces of each.  A bit of resizing and cropping and I was ready to make my card.  I'll pop that on my own blog next week - but as I'm on a mission to use my printed scraps that's what I'm concentrating on today

Do you remember the line from The Feeling's song "Fill My Little World" that goes:
"All I wanted was some evidence that you really loved me"?  
Well OH always changes evidence to elephants, when he sings along, so it's become a sort of tradition that there'll be an elephant or two somewhere on the cards I make for him.  In this case the elephants were on the inside and I cut them on my Craft Robo using  Funky Hand image from the Colour Me Happy CD So anyway,  I was looking at my scraps and trying to figure out how to use them when I realised that among them were two perfect elephant shaped holes among the printed pieces and decided to use these "negatives" for my little cards.

 

 

Materials and Tools

All papers:   "I Love You Sew"download from Funky Hand

Elephant Image from  Colour Me Happy CD also Funky Hand
tiny heart punch, Craft Rpbp
Extras card 1: Black gel pen, 2cm circle punch,

Tiny black square gems (Prima) 
Extras card 2: Black Bazzill card. Pink Twine, Black gem

After I'd made these two cards I was a bit disappointed that the other two elephants I'd cut out hadn't left suitable "holes" to make a couple more mini cards!
  This idea would work for lots of punchies as well as die cuts and electronically cut shapes - especially if they are cut from card.  You can vary the papers you put underneath, and add some dimension with decoupage glue or little bits of chipboard.

I thought I'd just show where the actual elephants went before I go - they formed a border for the inside of my card

That's it for this time, thanks for popping by :) 
Don't forget to leave us a message - and you can share your own projects with us by adding a link to your blog via the gadget below

Happy Crafting

A Funky Hand Tutorial

Hello everyone, Tabbatha here today to show you a cute little card I made using the fabulous Teas Up digital papers. :)

The card is a fabulous tea cup shape that I cut using the Silhouette Cameo. This particular file needed at least 4 different patterned papers, which  was quite fun to pick out, but could be troublesome when you have 100s of wonderful papers to choose from. This made me think of how I actually choose my papers. I use Picasa for all my picture organizational needs so I made a little video talking a little bit about it, and showing how I organize my Funky Hand folders.

So watch the video, try out Picasa and let me know how it goes! :D I will being recording a Part 2 to the video for next month, showing you how to add Tags, Albums and share your finished projects online via Picasa.

Wedding

Well seen it's the time of year for weddings-Allison here with another Wedding Card for you.
I used papers, digi and sentiment all from the Wishes and Kisses  CD and added some faux stitching round the edges and distress ink.
I just love the Wishes and Kisses CD, it's full of beautiful papers for all occasions, great sentiments and quirky fabulous images to suit all those special events throughout the year.
Remember to pop back at the weekend for some more inspiration.

AllisonX

Summer Wedding Scraps!

I am not one to throw away any scraps of printed card because I just don't know when I'll need it!  And this bottle is made with such scraps!

I've used an offcut of cardstock for the base which is an X Cut fancy die and then I've used papers from the very fab and versatile Summer Wedding download.  The paper download itself is only £1.99 which is very good value for money! 

I've added some letters from my Girls Are Weird Sizzix alphabet dies and the hearts are also Sizzix die cuts.

The tiny little dots have been added with liquid pearls after the edges were inked with my trusty and faded blank ink pad.  And to finish, I've tied a length of satin ribbon around the main panel.

What you can't see in the photo is the back of the bottle tag which I've cut a circle where the bottle sticks through.

Don't forget to link up your Funky Hand creation with the link below!

How to colour Funky Hand Doodlewords digital stamps.

Hello everyone, Anice here this time to share my tips for colouring in Funky Hand Doodlewords digital stamps.  Obviously this is my own idea for matching up the colours. If you have any other tips please add them in the comment section, I'd love to hear more ideas.

Ok, so first off you need to decide which Doodlewords Digital stamp you want to colour, there are quite a few now and very soon there will be Christmas themed ones.  Then, you need to decide on your Funky Hand backing paper collection.  I've chosen the Thank You Doodleword digital stamp and the backing paper is from the Spring Has Sprung download.

When I design all the backing papers for Funky Hand, whether they are on downloadable collections or on the craft CD ROMs, I always use FIVE different colours.  Each backing paper pattern may not have all the colours on but they are all made up of the same five colours.  That's why it is easy to mix and match the backing papers in a collection together.  Anyway, there is pretty much always a striped paper and when colouring your Doodleword digital stamps to match with a collection this is where you will find all the colours in that collection laid out nicely. 

So, print off the striped paper from the collection and the digital stamp. I have printed my digital stamp onto Neenah Classic Crest card which is great for using Promarkers on as they blend well on it. The backing paper I printed onto white card. This is where the fun starts, matching the colours.  I have used Promarkers but the same technique will work for any pens you want to use.

 
The image above is the striped backing paper on the white card underneath some scrap Neenah Classic Crest card, the same as I have printed my digital stamp onto.  It's important to use the same product that you have printed your stamp on to or the colours wont come out the same when you colour the stamp.  Now start testing the Promarkers you have against the backing paper collection colours.  As you can see it took me a few goes with different pens until I found the match I was happy with.  Something I have learned is that you should allow the ink you have matched to dry for a few seconds as the colour changes and many times I have tried a pen colour, thought it was too dark and put it away only to discover it was perfect and I couldn't remember which one it was!

I decided on my five colours for this digital stamp..

They are, Tropical Orchid (Special Edition), Powder Blue, Pink Carnation, Eggnog and Leaf Green.  I've told you what colours I decided on just for interest.  These ones are possibly not what you would choose using the same backing paper download collection.  The reasons for that are, what paper or card you print your backing papers onto which will have an effect on the colours that you will see.  It also depends on the printer you are using if it's an Inkjet or Laser.  How much ink is in your printer? If even one colour is low that can have an effect on the colours that you get when you print out the digital backing paper. So, don't just follow what I have said, test it out for yourself.

So, Promarker colours are chosen, now you need to think about how you want to colour the letters in the Doodlewords digital stamp. The images are quite whimsical so you can mix all the colours together on one letter like this..

 
Or perhaps you would prefer to only use two colours like this..

The colouring is completely up to you.  These stamps are great for newer colourers, like me, as they are pretty easy to colour but you can get a really great effect. Which makes the colouring more fun when you start out as you actually want to use what you have coloured on your card creations.

Here is the Thank You Doodlewords digital stamp completed, layered over the striped backing paper...

I think it has matched the backing paper pretty well, what do you think?

Thanks for visiting
Anice xx

Mrs Organised

Happy Weekend everyone, Allison here today to share with you

Now I always seem to be losing the bits of paper that my orders are written on so I decided to make a little clip board to keep them all together and first I printed off some lovely pink papers from the  Just For Jen download.

Then I covered a length of chipboard with paper- after distressing the edges, then added a shorter layer and some flowers at the bottom and a small bulldog clip at the top to attach my orders............ah one of these days I will be known as Mrs Organised
Have a great weekend

AllisonX

A little hope

Hello, hello. Tabbatha here again on this fine Thursday and I'm here to show you another creation using the fabulous Just For Jen Downloads.

The card is close to my heart, as I'm sure it is for so many out there. The Just For Jen download is the perfect shades of pink for a breast cancer awareness card, so I knew that I just had to use it. Plus, did you know that for every download purchased Funky Hand will donate £1.00 to Cancer Research. So yeah, get yourself the Just For Jen set now! :D

This is one of those super simple cards that you can make, all you need is 2 or 4 coordinating papers and a die or cut file in the shape that you want. In fact, I'll be spelling out two different ways in which to pull off this card. The first way is by using a die and a die machine such as a Big Shot, while the second technique is done an electronic cutter, in this case a Silhouette Cameo.

Technique 1 - Die + Die Machine
Materials:
2 coordinating papers - printed out
1 square white cardstock (I used a 13.5x13.5 cm square)
Die of your choice

How to put it together:
Since my blank card is 13.5x13.5, I did a little division and figured out that the middle of the card would be 6.75cm, which means that each panel would be 6.75x6.75 cm. With that done (the math is the hardest bit to this!), I cut four panels of the coordinating files.

To get the cutting just right,  flip over the four panels and line them up so they would make the square. Use some low tack tape to tape each panel to each other. Alternatively, the panels could be adhered to some scrap paper. The idea here is that the panels are all properly lined up when you go to cut it out, with the added bonus that the little bits in the middle would be kept together.

The next step is to die cut the ribbon, just make sure to align the die centrally on the four different quadrants.

The last step is to adhere the quadrants to the card base using 3D foamy bits, making sure to support the areas around the ribbon itself.

Technique 2 - Silhouette Print & Cut 
Materials:
2 coordinating digital papers
1 square white cardstock (13.5x13.5 cm square)
Electronic cutter + sticky mat
Electronic cutter software such as Silhouette Studio, SCAL, ECAL

How to put it together:
To start with, open up your software and make sure your digital papers are available. In the Sihouette Studio, I made sure that my Just For Jen papers were imported to My Patterns Library. 

Next, we need to do that math thing again - four panels for a 13.5x13.5 cm square card would be 6.75x6.75 cm squares. Using this measurement, create four squares of equal size (6.75 cm width x 6.75 cm height). 

Per your software's instructions, fill the squares will your chosen digital paper. In the advanced tab (if applicable) reduce the scale of the pattern, if you want a smaller pattern, like I have. In this step you can easily have 4 different quadrants, it is totally up to you.

When you have your quadrants filled, make sure they are completely lined up so that you get the full 13.5x13.5 cm square.

Next, drag out a cutting file that you would like to cut out, I chose the Cancer Awareness Ribbon, but you can easily do a heart, circle or even a square. Place the image centrally over the quadrants and select all.

In order to get the image cutout, use your "Subract All" function. In the Silhouette Studio software it is under the square icon with an "M" on it. Not wholly sure how the other softwares do it, but I know this is a common feature.

Now it is all about doing your normal "Print & Cut" routine. It should all be perfectly lined up and looking good. :D

And same as the first technique,  adhere the quadrants to the card base using 3D foamy bits, making sure to support the areas around the ribbon itself.

So, there you have it. It really feels like the Silhouette version is more complicated, but really I wanted to detail as much as I could. Once you use this technique, you will always have those tools on demand for other things. :D