Freebie - At the beach and movie snacks

Vacation time has descended on us, and here are some designs to help you scrap those summer photos or nights at the movies!  Have fun with them :)

As ever, please don't pass these files around.  They will be permanently free here so please direct others to come here to download them.  Notice the new tab at the top of this page?  "Cutting Files" will take you to the full list of files which will grow by 1 set each week.

The file is available as SVG, DXF and JPG, which can be used with most digital cutters.  For those of you who may want to print them out and cut with scissors, the JPG file can be printed from most image/photo editing programs.

Queen of all she surveys

The theme over on the Simon Says Stamp and Show Challenge is "Stripes".   I love stripes!  I suggested this theme because stripes have a strong, graphic boldness, yet at the same time they offer a lot of varied possibilities - crisp, distressed, horizontal, vertical, diagonal - there are so many ways to go with them!

I started out with a plain manilla 6x3 tag (something else I love, they're a great surface for stamping and ink work).  I stamped the face and then stamped it on some post-it notes and cut them out to use as a mask, which I applied to the face.  With the face protected I used an ink blending tool to apply various distress inks around the tag and then stamped the text, the black scratches that just peek out to the right of the crown and the black dots.  I also splattered with a little water to give some light spots in places.

The crown was a notepaper stamp, over stamped with text scallops and the curvy chessboard design.  I coloured it with promarkers and some picket fence distress stain, applied with a waterbrush then cut it out and fixed it in place.  The letters for "BOSS" were cut from the subway sign stamp, coloured with promarker and fixed in place.

The crown was much wider than the tag so I cut off the excess from the left side and used some of it as a collar for Queeny - that's what I've decided I'm going to call her from now! :)  I removed the mask and used promarkers for her heart and beauty mark and coloured the lips with some Fired Brick distress ink rubbed onto my craft mat, spritzed with water and applied with a waterbrush.

My first thought was to restamp her face on some coloured paper and tear it into strips to apply onto the tag, when I realised that basically that's what the post-it notes I'd used as a mask already were!  I tore strips from the mask and fixed them to her face in the appropriate places.  I love how the strips have the text on them in some parts and were coloured by some of the ink I applied to the tag.  I especially love the line you can see where the two post-it notes were joined together, I think it's a great detail and I love happy accidents like that! :)  Finally I edged her face with a grey promarker to give a little extra depth to the piece.

There you go, that's about it!  This is one of my favourite pieces of recent times, I hope you like it too! :)

Supplies I used included:

InLinkz.com
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! :)

Don't forget, Simon Says Stamp have a great Facebook page too!  Check them out here!

Freebie - Wonky Houses

This week's freebie is one of the first designs I ever gave away, the wonky house!  I've included the original design, with it's windowframe, fence and roof trim, along with a couple of variations of the basic design.  These would be great for Halloween, cut from black card to make a spooky street border for your window or wall.  You can also break these apart in your cutting software and move or resize the windows as you need to.  Here are a few ways I've used these designs in the past - the first was a class I taught for a set of 6 note cards. 

This next one is my take on one of Tim Holtz's 12 tags of Christmas from a couple of years back.  I didn't have his house die so used my wonky house design instead.

As ever, please don't pass these files around.  They will be permanently free here so please direct others to come here to download them.  Notice the new tab at the top of this page?  "Cutting Files" will take you to the full list of files which will grow by 1 set each week.

The file is available as SVG, DXF and PNG, which can be used with most digital cutters.  For those of you who may want to print them out and cut with scissors, the PNG file can be printed from most image/photo editing programs.

Krafty Stained Glass

The theme over on the Simon Says Stamp and Show Challenge is "Kraft".  A friend of mine has recently started learning the craft of stained glass, so I've been looking at a lot of examples of stained glass windows lately and that inspired me to use that as my theme for this card.

All of the panels were created using kraft cardstock - I love how the pale brown has made the distress colours even darker and more grungey!  I started by cutting a square panel of kraft card and then cutting it down into pieces by hand.

Each piece was then individually decorated.  I stamped with Black Memento ink so that I could add colour from promarkers without it bleeding.  White elements were achieved by using a water brush and painting with Picket Fence distress stain.  White highlights were created with a Ranger white pen.

Finally I covered each piece with clear packing tape, to give a more glass-like feel.  I stuck the pieces onto black card and then trimmed it down to size before mounting it on my white card blank.

I had a lot of fun making and combining all of the elements together.  I think I'll stick to paper and card though, glass looks too difficult! :)

Supplies I used included:

InLinkz.com

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! :)

Don't forget, Simon Says Stamp have a great Facebook page too!  Check them out here!