Coney Island!

Not much to say about this one really!  Some new stamps arrived today, mostly some of Tim Holtz' newbies, and I wanted to have a quick play with them, even if it was only for a few minutes before bed! :)

Stitch Girl

Well, I started this card with the intention of making another slight dent into my mountain of patterned paper, and it was hugely successful - I now have two 5 inch squares less than I had before! lol

I started out by scraping layers of red, teal and white paint onto the cardstock, then overstamping the image, which I painted with Distress Stains applied with a water brush.  Finally I stamped the faux stitching.  The mat was the same cardstock as the main panel, and I darkened it's edges with a dark grey promarker to provide a little contrast.

Ta for looking! :)

Messing about on the iPad

I'm not the world's greatest sketch artist (to put it mildly, lol), but yesterday I got hold of Sketchbook Pro for the iPad and have had great fun finger-painting with the various brushes and pens that come with it.  This is the first drawing I did, I'm not sure if I'll do a lot of sketching with it, but it might while away the odd hour on a plane or train at some point! :)

Faux Frame

This is just one layer of white card, I used masking to give the effect of a frame border on it, which I highlighted with a white pen.  I'm still loving stencilling :)  - the circles you can see, but there are also some stars peeping out above the boys head.

I coloured the whole card with blended red and yellow distress ink, stencilled the stars and then stamped the image in black.  I masked off the image and stencilled, stamped and coloured the frame.  I used a white pen to create the sketchy border around the edge and then finally I stamped the image again on printer paper, cut out the boy and fixed him to the background.  Job done! :)

Stamp it and Tag it!

This weeks theme on the Simon Says Stamp and Show Challenge is "A Tag".  I won't say to much about my piece for the design team this week, all of the details are over on the Challenge blog.  I will say though, that I definiely took a look backwards with this tag, returning to some techniques and methods I used a lot back in the day, but haven't revisited in a little while. :)

Our ever-generous sponsor Simon Says Stamp is offering a $50 gift voucher as the prize again this week, just make something for the challenge and you could the winner! The winner will be chosen at random from those who enter the challenge, so why not give it a try? At the very least why not head over to the Challenge Blog to see how the other members of the design team have interpreted this weeks theme! :)

Freebie #67!

The Pirate Collection!

This week's freebie is this fun pirate gear, here modelled oh-so-stylishly by yours truly! lol  Great fun for dressing up any family photos you want to scrap! :)

Please remember you are only allowed to download these files for your own use and can not share them or distribute them to others in any form. I spend a great deal of time creating my designs, please respect the terms under which they are shared.

Don't forget, if you have any requests, pass them on! I can't promise, but I will take suggestions into account when planning future templates.

These files may not be uploaded to a group, forum or website for sale or redistribution, or shared among individuals. They are expressly for the personal use of each person that downloads them from this blog.

There is one file and I have put it into a zip file to make downloading easier. After saving it, open in the usual way, and drag the files out onto your desktop or wherever you wish to save them.

There are 2 versions:

• An SVG version which can be imported into the Sure Cuts a Lot, Ecal or Make the Cut program and then cut out on any of the machines supported by SCAL, Ecal and Make the Cut.
• A DXF version which is Craft Robo friendly, and ready to be imported into your Robomaster software (I'm not a Robo user, so if there are any problems with this, please let me know!)

Simply click on the appropriate button below to download the file!

Any feedback on the templates is more than welcome, and if you have any suggestions for possible future templates you'd like to see, please let me know! If you make anything using one of the templates, please post a link to it here so that others can be inspired by how you've used them!

I hope you like the templates - let me know how you get on! :)

Files © dan99crafter@gmail.com 2012

Sky, Land and Sea

I really am loving paint at the moment!  I used Claudine Hellmuth's acrylic paints for this, the colours are so rich!  I applied a thin layer of each colour with an old credit card, then dried it and added a thin layer of white over the top, leaving some bits thicker than others.  Finally, I stamped over them with a black Versafine pad.  More tomorrow :)

The Eyes Have It!

Just a quick card tonight! I've had this Hero Arts face stamp for well over a year and not even tried it out yet, so giving it an outing was one of my main aims. It's wood-mounted, a rarity for me, but it stamps well, which is the main thing! :)

My other aim for this post was to do the whole thing on my new iPad, even the photo editing. To be honest, I struggled a bit, simply because I'm so new to both the iPad and to Photoshop Touch, which I used to edit the photo. Still, I got there in the end and it can only get better from here! :)

 

The Multi-layered Man

This weeks theme on the Simon Says Stamp and Show Challenge is "Handmade Background".  I wanted to have a play around with layers on this piece, so while creating the handmade background with Claudine Hellmuth paints, I inserted 3 images of the man at different stages in the process.  The framing also plays on the idea of layers - at first glance it looks like the central panel is mounted on a larger panel covered with script, whereas the script is a wooden frame and the central panel is sunk into it.

Our ever-generous sponsor Simon Says Stamp is offering a $50 gift voucher as the prize again this week! The winner will be chosen at random from those who enter the challenge, so why not give it a try? At the very least why not head over to the Challenge Blog to see how the other members of the design team have interpreted this weeks theme! :)

Rainbow Mona

A bit of playing around with ink, paint and stamps again, just for a change! :)  Of course, what I should have been doing is making a Mother's Day card for tomorrow, but I've already bought one.  I know, bought one, how embarrassing, eh? LOL

Freebie #66!

Hooray for Hollywood!

I've started to make my files available from my blog again and am adding a new set each week. Check out the "Cutting Files" tab at the top of the page to see which ones are available for download.

This week's freebie is these two film strip die-cuts, perfect for scrapping those movie night photos or using as a fun frame!

Please remember you are only allowed to download these files for your own use and can not share them or distribute them to others in any form. I spend a great deal of time creating my designs, please respect the terms under which they are shared.

Don't forget, if you have any requests, pass them on! I can't promise, but I will take suggestions into account when planning future templates.

These files may not be uploaded to a group, forum or website for sale or redistribution, or shared among individuals. They are expressly for the personal use of each person that downloads them from this blog.

There are 2 files and I have put them into a zip file to make downloading easier. After saving it, open in the usual way, and drag the files out onto your desktop or wherever you wish to save them.

There are 2 versions:

• An SVG version which can be imported into the Sure Cuts a Lot, Ecal or Make the Cut program and then cut out on any of the machines supported by SCAL, Ecal and Make the Cut.
• A DXF version which is Craft Robo friendly, and ready to be imported into your Robomaster software (I'm not a Robo user, so if there are any problems with this, please let me know!)

Simply click on the appropriate button below to download the file!

Any feedback on the templates is more than welcome, and if you have any suggestions for possible future templates you'd like to see, please let me know! If you make anything using one of the templates, please post a link to it here so that others can be inspired by how you've used them!

I hope you like the templates - let me know how you get on! :)

Files © dan99crafter@gmail.com 2011

Butcher Boys Out on the Town

Another chance today to play around with the circles stencils I cut yesterday.  Whereas I used distress stains with them, today I used Claudine Hellmuth Studio paints, dabbed on the stencil with an ink blending tool.  I love Claudine's paints, they're so richly pigmented that you can use the tiniest amount and still get a good strong colour from it.  When I got them, my first impression was that the bottles were small and they wouldn't last long, but I couldn't have been further from the truth!  At the rate I'm using them, they're going to last me ages.

I stencilled the large circles in yellow and the small ones in red.  The nice thing about using the ink blending tool is that you can fade out the paint at the edges to give a graduated result.  The green and blue paint were applied with a craft scraper (kind of like using a palette knife I guess).  At the end of the day, I had fun making this card, and that's the main thing, right? :)

Splash Autumn on Gardens

Not really too much I want to say about this one.  Well, a bit maybe! :)  My main aim here was to experiment with a couple of circles stencils I had cut.  I used distress stains of various colours with them, and I'm pretty glad with the way it turned out! :)  I could have put a bit more effort into it in terms of composition (that poor girl is rather stuck there, floating in mid air, lol), but I just wanted to play with the stencils, and I achieved that so I'm happy :)

BTW, if you're mystified by the title, it's a line from Pure by the Lightning Seeds, which I was listening to while I worked.  It really is a lovely song and if you don't know it you should go listen to it right away! :)

1 dress, 2 dress, red dress, green dress!

I'm sure that Dr. Seuss isn't losing any sleep over my non-rhyming title! lol  If I'd have thought about it earlier I SOOO would have made her dress blue and not green!  :)  Ah well, you live and learn! :)

This is the last of the painty cards I made last week, this time mounted on kraft cardstock for a bit of a change from my usual white.

So I bought this laser printer....

... and then it sat on my desk for almost a year, unpacked, un-setup and unloved! 

It all started some time last year, when I was lucky enough to take a two-day class with the awesome Dina Wakley at Art From the Heart.  One of the mini-book projects featured a page that used a photocopy of a photograph Dina had taken of a ruined abbey.  (I can't find the project right now, otherwise I'd show you the page!)  Anyway, I can't remember exactly what we had to do with the photocopy, but I wasn't really feeling it, so I just started to apply ink, paint and colorwash sprays to it.  As the ink on the photocopy had been heat-set during the copying process it meant that none of the black bled or ran and I was really happy with the result.

I enjoyed making the page so much that it got my mind working and I realised that a laser printer attached to my computer could be used in the same way as a photocopier and I could do more of that kind of thing at home.  Jump to a few weeks later, and I decided to research laser printer prices online, and I was shocked, (SHOCKED I tell you!) to find that a brand new Samsung laser printer could be had for around £30!!  I ordered one immediately, keen to get started with it, and then when it arrived a couple of days later, I ignored it for almost a year LOL

Last night I needed to print some music out from my computer only to find that my inkjet printer was out of ink.  (Did I tell you I've started learning the piano?  No?  Well I have.)  Having no alternative I set up the laser printer, as I was only printing black text.  Needless to say, it worked fine, and my mind started turning again to ways in which to use it in my crafting.

The alphabet stamps on this card are from an Australian stationery chain called kikki.K.  (Did I tell you I was in Australia for a month recently?  No?  Well I was.)  The woman on this card is actually a colour photograph in a book I have, which I scanned in and then tweaked to make it into a black and white image.  I printed it out and this card is the result.  I'm sure I'll do more of this in the future, so watch this space! :)

Home is where art heart is!

This weeks theme on the Simon Says Stamp and Show Challenge is "Anything Goes".  After moving to a larger home a year or so ago, I still have a lot of wall space to fill and have consequently been making a lot more framed pieces than I usually would.  This is one of those, destined for my kitchen I think!

The stamp is one of Wendy Vecchi's from her set "Residential Art".  I cut out 6 of the 2"x2" squares from the Retro Grunge pad and then stamped the house and text onto each one.  I then stamped them again onto white cardstock and set about altering each house and then cutting out just the house part and sticking it onto the stamped image on the patterned squares. 

Going from left to right, this is what I did:

• House 1 is red and yellow Claudine Hellmuth paint applied with my finger.
• House 2 was left white.
• House 3 was coloured with green Claudine Hellmuth paint and then parts of the house were coloured with a white paint pen.
• House 4 doesn't show too well in the photo, but it's very pale blue, with a slightly darker blue flourish stamped onto it.
• House 5 is coloured with Fired Brick distress stain.
• House 6 was coloured with Promarkers.  I knew they would blur the Archival ink I had stamped the image with, but I hoped it would make it look like it might have been on fire.  The "for rent" is a clear stamp from a set by 7 gypsies.

And there you have it!  I'm really pleased with how this one turned out, which is a good job, as I'll be seeing a lot of it if it ends up on my kitchen wall! lol  I think it should probably go above that bit of worktop to the right of the sink, before you get to the boiler, don't you agree?  :)

Our ever-generous sponsor Simon Says Stamp is offering a $50 gift voucher as the prize again this week! The winner will be chosen at random from those who enter the challenge, so why not give it a try? At the very least why not head over to the Challenge Blog to see how the other members of the design team have interpreted this weeks theme! :)

Freebie #65!

A strip of tickets! 

This file is no longer available here.  Contact me to learn how to access previous designs.

I have several different ticket stamps from various companies and needed to create an svg of a strip of tickets that I could stamp them onto.  2" x 1" seems to be the standard size of the stamps and dies out there (who knew that so many companies make a 2x1 ticket die!), so I made these slightly larger to allow for wobbly stamping! :)

Please remember you are only allowed to download these files for your own use and can not share them or distribute them to others in any form. I spend a great deal of time creating my designs, please respect the terms under which they are shared.

Don't forget, if you have any requests, pass them on! I can't promise, but I will take suggestions into account when planning future templates.

These files may not be uploaded to a group, forum or website for sale or redistribution, or shared among individuals. They are expressly for the personal use of each person that downloads them from this blog.

There are 3 files and I have put them into a zip file to make downloading easier. After saving it, open in the usual way, and drag the files out onto your desktop or wherever you wish to save them.

There are 3 versions:

• An SVG version which can be imported into the Sure Cuts a Lot or Make the Cut program and then cut out on any of the machines supported by SCAL and Make the Cut.
• A DXF version which is Craft Robo friendly, and ready to be imported into your Robomaster software (I'm not a Robo user, so if there are any problems with this, please let me know!)
• A Printable version which can be imported into your graphics or Word program, sized to suit your needs, printed and then cut out with scissors or a craft knife.

Simply click on the appropriate button below to download the file!

Any feedback on the templates is more than welcome, and if you have any suggestions for possible future templates you'd like to see, please let me know! If you make anything using one of the templates, please post a link to it here so that others can be inspired by how you've used them!

I hope you like the templates - let me know how you get on! :)

th="200" /> Files © dan99crafter@gmail.com 2011

Misfit Card

A bit of hybrid messing about for this card today!  The background and stamped image were created separately by hand and then brought together in the computer.  The "misfit" text was also stamped and then scanned into the computer, manipulated and then placed on the composition.  Not something I'm going to do every day, but a bit of fun to try something different for a change! :)

Oh, and thanks to everyone who let me know yesterday that the stamp I wanted was from Lost Coast Designs - much appreciated! :)

Annie Get Your Gun!

More messing about with paint and stamps today.  By the way, if anyone knows where I can get the stamp of the girl with the rifle, I'd love to know!  I used it during a class a while back but no one knew who made it, so I stamped some extras to save for a rainy day.  I'd love to buy the stamp if I can!

Painty Stampotique Card

I was in a painty mood again today and this card is the result!  I must say, I'm having great fun scraping paint around with an old credit card, I can't get enough of it! :)  The richness of Claudine Hellmuth's paints is a big help too, it has to be said :)

I used an old favourite technique of mine, that I call the painted mask technique.  I stamped the figure furst, then painted it with white paint, then stamped over it, off-setting the stamp a little to get that cool "printing error" look!

While I'm here, don't forget, there's still time to enter this weeks Simon Says Stamp and Show Challenge, and be in for a chance of a $50 spending spree!

Bottles and beads

This weeks theme on the Simon Says Stamp and Show Challenge is "Bottle It!".  I knew I was going to use Wendy Vecchi's "all bottled up" stamp, but I thought I'd ring the changes by stamping it onto shrink plastic to make small embellishments.  Before I started, I had a vision in my head of them suspended from twisted wire with beads in it, so the end result is pretty much what I had envisaged.  I had thought at first that I might make a card, but in the end I decided to decorate this mini-journal :)

Our ever-generous sponsor Simon Says Stamp is offering a $50 gift voucher as the prize again this week! The winner will be chosen at random from those who enter the challenge, so why not give it a try? At the very least why not head over to the Challenge Blog to see how the other members of the design team have interpreted this weeks theme! :)