Season's Greetings!

My Christmas decorations have gone up a little late this year, apologies!  Yuletide felicitations and may merriment abound for all of you! :)

Freebie - Scalloped shapes

A bumper pack of scalloped shapes to use with your digital cutting machines is what's on offer today!  Not just the shapes shown above, this pack also contains a scalloped rectangle, library card and gift box.  There are two versions, SVG or DFX, depending on which works best with your machine.

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 tab at the top of this page?  "Cutting Files" will take you to the full list of files which will grow over time.

The files are available as SVG and DXF, which can be used with most digital cutters.

Enjoy!

CraftArtist2 Freebie - Quick Gift Tags Template

I was designing some quick Christmas tags for myself and suddenly thought I'd make a Craft Artist template so that others could use quickly create sheets of tags with their own designs.  There are two sizes of the file, A4 and US Letter. 

Speed was of the essence for me here, I didn't want to invest too much time on them because I figure that unlike a Christmas card which goes on display for several days, tags are only looked at for a few seconds and then usually thrown away once the gift is opened.  The simple luggage tag shape makes these super quick to cut out too (I hate cutting stuff out)! :)

 

I'm still pretty new to CraftArtist but, of course, some of you may be even newer.  Although the template is easy to use, I've included a quick video on how to use it in Craft Artist 2.
The template is for personal use only, please don't share it with others (but by all means send your friends here to download it if they want!).  If you make any tags of your own with my template, please come back and share a photo, I'd love to see them! :)

A fond farewell... (but not "goodbye"!)

First of all, today's challenge over on the Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge blog is "In the family".  Why not dream up something fantastically familial and join them this week, you could win a $50 gift voucher to spend on their online store!

Unfortunately I am not taking part myself this week - I've torn my achilles' tendon and my leg will be in plaster for the next 3 or 4 months.  This means I'm unable to comfortably sit at either my computer or crafting desk for any length of time, so I'm bowing out for the time being.  Simon Says Stamp have kindly given me a leave of absence and I'll hopefully return to the fold once things get back to normal here again.

Adios (for now)! :)

J...j...j...j...journal!

The theme over on the Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge this week is "J is for...".  A few weeks ago I wrote about how much I love my Dylusions Art Journal and that I was going to try to use it more often.  Given that, how could "J" be anything other than a journal page for me this week?  I'm sure you have loads of creative "J"-related ideas yourself, why not enter the challenge?  Remember, you could be the winner of a $50 voucher to shop at Simon Says Stamp!

I started out by stamping the pale dots on the left using the Mixed Media stamp set and a Hero Arts white ink pad.  Once they'd dried I blended distress inks over the top, rubbing in a few places with a wet-wipe to lift some of the dots and blend the colours.  I dropped some splats of water in places and used a white pen to hand-draw the design in the bottom corner.  The large circles from the Psychedelic Grunge set were stamped with Barn Door distress ink.  The phrase "Leave ordinary behind" is from the Random Quotes set.

The red dots were stamped with Fired Brick distress ink and the backwards text from the Reflections set was stamped with black Archival ink.  Simon Says Stamp sell some great, vintage dictionary pages, so I used one of those as the base for the stamped face from the Daydream set, which I then cut out and fixed in place.  The "silent" gag is cut from dictionary paper, coloured with Fired Brick ink and then hand-drawn with a white pen.

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!

With a hey-nonny-nonny!

The theme over on the Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge this week is "a mid-summer's challenge".  That's why I cleverly quoted Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream" in the title of this post, from memory mind you, no googling here!  Except it turns out that I'm too clever for my own good and "nonny nonny" actually comes from "Much Ado about Nothing".  Oops!  Well, that play is set in the lush Tuscan countryside, so maybe it's still relevant :)  Anyway, setting my poor knowledge of Shakespeare to one side for a moment, my aim with this card was to bring in some of the colours of an English summer garden.  We get more than our share of rain here so green definitely had to feature prominently!  Why not enter the challenge yourself?  I'm sure if you can come up with all kinds of summer-related things you can do for your entry!  Remember, you could be the winner of a $50 voucher to shop at Simon Says Stamp!

I started with the stems and branches from the Spring Sprung stamp set, stamping a border around the edge of my card with Peeled Paint distress ink.  My card base was from the Kraft Core Shattered collection and colour-matched the ink perfectly.  The stitches were from the same stamp set and I used Archival Black for them.  The yellow pennant was cut from Tim Holtz's Classics #18 set, coloured with Mustard Seed distress ink and then cut to shape.

I absolutely love the typography of this sentiment from Tim's Random Quotes set, I really like designs that feature a lot of white space like this, and I made a conscious effort to mirror that feel in my design of the card itself.  I coloured the letting with a peeled paint marker and edged the sentiment with peeled paint ink.

Those of you who visit here regularly will know that I'm not one to make much use of embellishments, my asthetic tends to lean towards flatter designs.  On this occasion though, I thought this card needed a little something extra so I decided to make my own flower.  I stuck a strip of tissue tape to my craft sheet and then swiped it with barn door distress paint, left it for a second, then wiped off the excess with a tissue.  I removed the tape from the sheet and molded it into a rosette shape.  I used the same tape, coloured with mustard seed paint to create the flower centre on a custom fastener and cut some leaves from the same Kraft Core card as used as my card base.  Isn't it cool how the design on the cardstock suggests the veins on a leaf?

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!

Face the Music

The theme over on the Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge this week is "about a face".  Those of you who are regular visitors to my blog know that this particular face is one of my favourite stamps.  Though I try to limit the number of times I used it, I felt that this particular theme deserved nothing but the best, so here it is! :)  Why not enter the challenge yourself?  You don't have to be limited to human faces either, what about clock faces?  I'm sure if you put your thinking cap on there are all kinds of things you can do for your entry!  Remember, you could be the winner of a $50 voucher to shop at Simon Says Stamp!

I decided I was going to use paper piecing for this card.  David's face is stamped on Bazzill Kraft card and his hair is stamped on Kraft Cored Shattered Collection.  I used a white pen to fill in the white of his eye.  I love the uniformity of tone you get by stamping onto pre-coloured cardstock.  Don't get me wrong, I love adding colour to white card too, but this made a nice change, don't you think?

The background is from the French Industrial card stack. I love those faded ticking stripes, they remind me of the mattresses that my grandmother used to have in her house, or those that I used to see in illustrations of books I read as a child.  I used a grey alcohol marker to add a shadow to the right of the head and the sentiment is from Tim Holtz's Random Quotes stamp set. I really like how fine the lines are on this image, so delicate.

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!