The issue for me has always been getting as many cards on one sheet as I can.  Working in A4, which is about 8.25 inches rather than 8.5 like US letter, is the borders that are naturally left by the printer.  I *think* I’ve forced it to work, but anyone who cares to test the PDF on THEIR A4 printer and comment to let me know will be very much appreciated.

I printed and measured, and think the will cut to fit PL sleeves.

As ever, feel free to comment if you really want the original ones as blanks.  That should only take a moment to sort so if the tiny area for text suits your needs, just say….

So I took a collection that I like quite a lot (the Sea Foam collection), and changed my Fat Numbers set to match.  Perhaps it wasn’t the BEST one to pick, in that there are really not enough different colours (not like Cobalt, for example, which has more than enough choices) but summer is coming (I hope) and I am hoping for sun, sea and sand at some point.  There is also a yellow to make 6 unique colours.  I could have done one black and one white, as there are items in the collection that are B&W, but decided against it. What do you think?

The PDF has 0 – 9 – that is a change from the original, which was just 1 – 9.

I think I will look to the most recent collections when making future printables.  I know that PL is all a bit of this&that, and most people probably don’t make a great effort to really Match things totally, but it feels like having anything I make tone with the official collections might be worth doing.  Yes?

I just loved him, and at the time I made this piece I went on a hunt for similar images – I found the GF ones (sorry, adding the link to the ODD category) and downloaded them, but never used them.  They have been lurking on my Mac for ages, just waiting for inspiration. When I saw the piece again, it all just came together in my head and I HAD to make something.

Here is a list of some of the ways I think they could be used – do feel free to add a comment with YOUR ideas.  I’d love to hear them! And I think you could easily print and cut any text and add it over the ones here – I’ve tried to leave enough room around the text that it won’t be a struggle or too tight a fit! They could also be used on a scrapbook page, although I would maybe resize them to more 2 x 3-ish rather than 3 x 4.

Independent Barbarians:

• Kids running wild
• Halloween costumed kids
• Men doing something odd – they do a lot of odd things so use your imagination LOL!

Cackle, Blab and Rattletrap:

• Perfect for Hen nights
• Any gathering of women – a crop even!
• Little girls chatting
• Anyone on the phone or perhaps even at a computer
• Witch costumes

Queer Artistic Notions:

• Any photo of crafting
• Kids artwork

Ridiculous Airy Illusions:

• Anyone dressed up smart/elegant
• Teens ready for Prom
• Magician Costumed kids

Here is the PDF – I’ll find it really interesting to see how many people share my love of this sort of quirky image and oddball text!

Really happy with this one.  I also made a little YouTube slide show for it.  I added a better way to make the flap for the surrounding card to house the bits if you want to mail it.

I’m going to make this bit a PDF and incorporate it into the original, if I can but today (and tomorrow, and Monday) is all about the room tidy and re-org.  I got 3 additional bookshelves, AND managed to figure out (much to my DH’s dismay, as it requires some shifting of large, heavy pieces of furniture LOL!) where to put them.  It will allow me to group all my stamps in one area of my room, and shift all my magazines and books, and to organize those for ease of finding.  That has to happen quickly as we have a visitor coming n Tuesday and at the moment the whole downstairs is a bit of a tip.   But let me lay out the process for you with photos:

Working with an 8 x 6 card blank, and I am working portrait, but you can switch it up and work Landscape it you want, start with at least an 8 x 12 bit of patterned cardstock.

Mark 3 inches from the bottom and cut it across just to the 8″ mark – it will look like an L:

Stick the left to the front of the card to cover it, with the side extending out past the opening edge. Score and fold the flap, wrapping around just the front of the card, to the inside.

Trim off a bit from the short section, so it is about 1/2 inch from the fold.  I like to round just the top right corner.

Add double-sided tape along the bottom edge of the flap and secure it.  This creates your pocket.

Now you can slip the card bits into the flap!

Have fun with it!

I’ll sort the PDF and add it here, as well as replace the original – to be honest, I’m not sure how the page breaks will happen so it may end up a bit odd when I insert the additional pages, but I’ll try to annotate it so it makes sense.

Wait for it…..

Circle Tray Display Card – instructions, improved card with flap, and template all in one PDF

OK, I THINK it works.  It may be a bit odd where I inserted the info, but it is all there.  I also added the template so everything you need is in one place.  Phew.  Now, off to the cleaning…

Well that was a challenge!  The template I used for my original cards was on the disc from the book – that is something I am not able to share.  So I had a go at making one myself, using the basic idea as the starting point. Mine (the pink one below)  is smaller, in order to fit it inside a card , and the shelves are farther apart so you can add text and have it a little more readable.  I think it works.

1. Download the PDF template here.

2. Cut out the base and the circles from really heavy weight cardstock (or cut double and stick them together)

There are some little bits of text  in the PDF as well – if you are hand delivering this, I would say you can omit that and just set it up for them.  The plain text bits are for YOU, not to include on the card LOL!

Obviously if you alter the card you will have to type up your own instructions {wink}

A word about that: Only the base is critical. The squares inside the circles can be bigger or smaller (but not too much!) to change the “shelf”  position, up or down, closer together or farther apart, but they need to be in the centre.  The circles themselves can be cut to lots of different sizes.  Mine are 5.5 inches for the lower one, and 4 inches for the top one. I’ve said cut a second circle B (the smaller one) for the “display circle” but feel free to alter that.  In my sample, the display circle is about 4.5″.  You can instead:

• make it a square or rectangle – what about 4 1/4  x 6 1/4 so a standard photo fits on it?
• make it oval
• leave it out entirely so something like the birth announcement or a wedding invitation can be displayed

I see no reason square rather than circle shelves wouldn’t work.  Give it a go with 4″ and 5.5″ squares.  Bet it looks cute…

3. Decorate them as you like – cut a 2nd template to use to cut the patterned paper, stick patterned paper to the back of the template then cut, or decorate just the central panel. I added a little bit of Washi tape along the top edge, before I cut the slits that hold the display.  Totally the wrong colour, I’ll probably cover it or remove it (Washi tape is SO forgiving!)  but it will make the top more sturdy.  I cut to the OUTSIDE of the lines on the template, but maybe just a snip along the line.  You want it to hold the display item securely, and it may depend on how thick your cardstock is, how many layers you have, etc.

I love my Distress ink, so of course I inked the edges, and you can see I used the focal point paper just on the front panel.

Cut the circles and decorate them on the BACK, leaving the squares visible so you can cut them out after they are decorated.

Note: I made my folded photo corners, so they matched the paper, but commercial photo corners work too.  I also cut a 3 x 3 inch square as a sort of mat, attaching the photo corners to THAT and then the square to the display circle.

4.  Add double-sided tape to the flap – don’t peel off the backing!

That is it for the display – now, you can make another card to house it.

1.  Fold an A4 sheet in half for the card base.  An 8.5 x 11 inch sheet should also work.

2. Cut another strip widthwise, from the same size paper.  Mine is about 2- 3 inches wide. Round the upper right corner.

3. Attach this just along the bottom edge, along the bottom of the inside page, folding it over to the front of the card and attaching the full area to the front of the card. This creates a little pocket for the display stand bits.  Decorate the front of the card as you like.

Now, I want to test a theory.  I THINK if I use the trick to make a blog tutorial a PDF it will make the link to the PDF doe the template clickable.  Let’s see if it works…. in any case, here is a link to that in this blog post, but it won’t be in the PDF as I have to make the PDF before placing the link!

Note: Well yippy skippy!  The PDF of the preview of my blog post worked perfectly, and includes a  clickable link to download the template PDF from the instructions PDF.  Woo hoo!

Have fun with this project, and LMK if you have a brilliant use for it.  My feeling is it’s perfect for a new baby, or for a wedding card, as those events seem to naturally include something to display (like a photo) but I also think it would be cute as a birthday card, maybe with a photo of the birthday person as a child for the display part! I may just make one of them now, so I can do a YouTube doodah for it.  But I’d be interested in any other thoughts you might have.

Lucky I asked, because the Mom-to-be apparently dislikes PINK and is having a girl.  Oh dear.  Back to an old Basic Grey collection that has a touch of pink but not so much that I would expect anyone to object to it.  I may make a feature of the GIRL journaling card that is just hidden by the circles, not sure yet.

I also plan on a good long look at the disc from the book, to make sure I print any of the files that I think may be potential jumping off points for future projects before I have to return it.  I wonder if it’s still in print…..

First, I went to the library and stumbled on this book:

It is full of interesting packaging items, from boxes and bags to displays and folders.  It comes with a disk of .eps files.

I opened up the file from the disk (yes, I KNOW – a library copy, checked out by who knows how many people, and the disk was not scratched!) in Intaglio.  I converted it to a PDF for Editing (which breaks apart the bits) and re-grouped them as I wanted them.  Then I copied over the base into a new file, and scaled it up 300% (which made it fit an A4 sheet.

I did the same with the circles, more so I had the exact size of the center cuts than because I can’t manage to cut a circle! Now the nifty thing – I can save the Intaglio file as an .svg.

And THAT means I can open and cut it using SCAL.

Which would be fine if I had a bigger machine than the baby bug.  So in the end to make full use of ALL the A4 sheet I cut it by hand.  I did all the decoration and assembled it for the photo, but it breaks down flat if you want it to:

This project came about due to a collision of a lot of things.

• Obviously, finding the book
• then needing to make a special new baby card – I had the idea I could use the structure from the book to make the card, but make it so the slot in the top could hold a photo or the birth announcement.
• but then Blinded By the Light (the Springsteen version NOT Manfred Mann – please!) came up on my iPod in the car – followed within a song or two by Madman Mora Blues by Boiled in Lead – Madmen being the link… but I digress…
• and DS is a drummer, due home for a summer visit, and I just KNOW he will want to get in to the garage and drum, long and loud…

Now the lyrics are shortened a bit, and that is both due to the length of the quote, and size of the font (before you ask, Hot Coffee)  as well as me being overly sensitive to how they might possibly be construed.  It has everything to do with the UK substitution of BUM for BUTT, and hearing something voiced by a homophobe on TV that made me think BUMMERS might not be something I wanted to put on a card.  And then while I think  American Indian has been shelved for Native American… or has it??  A simple card becomes a minefield of potential offense to SOMEONE, and 20 years on the Internet has taught me that if there is possible offense, sure as eggs is eggs, there will be SOMEONE who WILL take offense and make it a point to tell me I have offended them.  Still I am taking a chance with Madman, but there is simply not enough of the original quote left for it to make sense if I leave that off!

Some assembly required (for the card) and no offense intended…..

So I did my usual end-of-week check at The Graphics Fairy, to see what had been added, and I was so taken by this Menu graphic that I just wanted to do something with it.  I have a little project germinating in my head, and it mixed with what I was seeing and ended up as this little set of Month card printables.  I can’t decide if they are Vintage (too much colour?) or Grungy (maybe not grungy so much as Distressed?) but I DO think they are pretty.

They look like this:

A closer look, and a confession…. See the white bits of the design?  Can you see the little curl over the B is not coloured in?  And the one at the far right? Grrrr. I fixed them but then went and copied the wrong file to create the  cards.  I printed the whole set out, cut them up, and THEN noticed.  DOH!

I had to go back and delete alllll the little frames and replace them with the corrected one.

Interesting, too, that the screen versions are all MUCH brighter than the printed versions.  Not sure if that is a printer setting I got out of whack or if it is the fact I need to change a few ink cartridges, or something else.

Happy Friday!

Two problems – first, I only have the smallest scrap of transfer paper left.  And second, the only kind I have is what I think is the more unusual of the two, the stuff you decorate then peel OFF the film, lay it face UP on the fabric, then lay the silicone paper it comes on OVER it, then iron to adhere it to the fabric.  I am 99% sure that the more common transfer paper, and the one I am currently out of, is the one that you lay face DOWN on the fabric and simply iron the back.  The issue with that is that of course you need to reverse text, so stamping doesn’t really work for words, etc.  But I already know I can print over a Gelli Print, like I did on the bird, so that is not an insurmountable problem.

OK so I did a very small Gelli print on the transfer paper – I used the 2″ circle punch to get  the shape, I have that little paper left I wanted to make sure I could try more than one if it all went wrong.  It didn’t.  I also used only a scrap of fabric, again because I certainly didn’t want to mess up an entire shirt if it didn’t work!

I didn’t go mad with the printing, so just a couple of colours and a simple bubble-wrap press to give it some texture, then stamped the Mad Hatter on there, more because it fit the space and it was fairly detailed so I wanted to see how that worked.

The usual caveats apply – you can launder it, but on a gentle cycle, do NOT put it in the dryer or iron over it. But you can see the sample has been washed (ok, not in the machine, but I was pretty vigorous in my hand washing) and there is no bleed of peeling, although I did slightly crease it when I scrunched it up in the washing.  It’s dry now, and has smoothed out.

I think it looks lovely and vibrant.  I am heading out to get more transfer paper, probably the more common kind, to see how it works.  I can see this being great on a canvas bag, for example, or like this, a small area on a larger shirt.  Carolyn, of A Colourful Journey, printed with her plate right on a shirt (see it here) which cuts out the iron-on step, but I like the controlled aspect of using the transfer paper, and being able to compose my piece just how I want before I add it to the shirt (or bag or whatever) – plus the stamping and anything else I want to add.  Remember, Distress Stains work as does Distress Ink, and edging with permanent marker to define it better.

I have three large blank canvas bags and I think at least ONE of them needs to be experimented on, but needing the paper first….