Christmas Rosettes – a card

I mentioned in my post about the word rosettes that I felt they would be best made using paper-weight rather than cardstock-weight paper. That was just my feeling, so I figured I should test it out and see.  At the same time, I thought I might edit the files to make Christmas words, given that I am getting loads of blog hits on Christmas stuff (in JULY!!) and if the interest is there, far be it from me to ignore it. I’ve done both HAPPY (more Europe and UK) and MERRY versions.

Here is the card I made.  I used some double-sided light cardstock weigh paper (Scenic Route, from a few years back) and it scored and folded well, and hold it’s shape perfectly.

How visible the text is is very dependant on the angle of view.

The same rules apply – no bigger than 1 1/2 inch strips lest the paper tear when you collapse it.  For A4 paper I could add another set of words, to lengthen it, but in order for the file to work for both A4 and US letter (which is shorter and wider than A4) and to give them the best chance of printing without printer border pre-sets affecting them, they are the size they are.  Why not have a go making your own strips?

Oh, and just to go back to the original post – I didn’t bother making any word-strip PDFs to print the around-the-edge version.  For that all you need to is repeat the words in a line, then rotate the text block so it prints lengthwise down the paper then cut the strip.  ANYONE can do that in any standard word processing package.  But if someone can’t do it and wants a set it would take 5 minutes to make one so speak up and I can do one.

Now I need to snap a shot of my messy desk and then tidy up – I have a project to work on that I have been thinking of for WEEKS, but just got the files I need this morning.  It may come to nothing, but it may end up very cool.

BIG CARDS – 4 of Hearts

The family returns, as did my mail server (finally) but t’internet is sluggish at best.  With luck it will return to full strength come Wednesday and the new month, then my dedicated broadband line will be up and running by the 8th so I will hope that signals an end to some of the issues I’ve been having.

I don’t always manage it, but I like when I am able to decorate my BIG CARDS in a way that is…significant, I guess is the best word.  For this one I first masked off the paper into four using masking tape.  I then added colour, with shades of pink Distress Ink.

I laid over a floral mask and added Barn Door, to keep with the RED theme of the Hearts.

Removing the tape, I used paper to mask all but the white cross-hairs and stamped with my favourite Visible Image stamp – lovely numbers strip.

all that remained was to trim it and enhance the 4s in the number strip with a bottle cap and black ink.

Done!

I might have smudged some black DI around the colour patches, which may have given it a bit more depth – I may still do, if I think I can do it without messing up the lines.  It would have been best to do it before the number stamping.

Now, with the family back from Womad, there is a TON of laundry to do and so far, a sunny day.  The perfect combo {ha ha}

Sunday-right-here – Word Rosettes

Enough people commented yesterday that they liked these that I carried on playing and made a PDF of some useful greetings.

I’m going to assume you know how to score and accordion fold rosettes.  If not, there are loads of YouTube videos for that, mine is just one. I would suggest using thinner patterned PAPER and not cardstock – I think that will be too thick, but hey, give it a go and let me know if it works!  Also if someone has the TH rosette die and wants to see if this can be made to work with that, I’d love to know.  I think the scores are 1/4 in that but don’t know for sure.  I am pretty sure the longer words won’t work but will any of them?

I use the Martha Stewart Score Board. To make these I use the BLACK lines (1/4 inch spacing) and the PDF is designed to fit that.  But lots of things may affect your attempts.

I thought about adding this as a PSE file, but frankly I think that wouldn’t work.  For a start, if you don’t have these fonts installed they will all appear in whatever your default font is.  And each font I used is sized to fit and they are not all the same point size.  I must have printed 20 test sheets, and scored them, then made tiny adjustments to try to make sure the text fell as it should. See my “scooch” notations?

At the bottom of this post I’ll give you some guidance as to HOW I did it so you can make your own file if you don’t like my greeting and font choices!

• if your printer adds a margin the PDF of text might be shifted down slightly.

Solution: line up the first groove so it falls just at the top of the first word (a SMIDGE above) then carry on scoring.  It SHOULD match pretty closely.

• it still doesn’t match, you say? 

Solution: Try to use the thinnest stylus you can.  My thoughts on this are that we are dealing with tiny increments.  As the stylus pushes the paper down into the groove, in is imperceptibly shifting it a teeny amount.  20+ score lines and it adds up. If you are scoring a STRIP, and not the whole page at once, you can shift the paper left or right as need be so the score line falls where you need it to.  If you saw my decorative edged Rosettes thing on YouTube (well over 2 years ago) you will see IT DOES NOT MATTER if your lines are all 100% the same.  Once you flatten it out, a smidge this way or that won’t affect the look by much.

There is some flexibility in the width you cut your strips.  But, they must be between 1 inch and 1 1/2 inches.  If you make them wider than that, because the PDF is based on an A4 sheet of paper (but made to accommodate  US letter paper) the text strip is no longer than 11 inches.  If you cut it wider than 1 1/2 inches, the paper may tear as you flatten it.

In general, I keep the aligned edge of the words pretty close to the edge of the paper, leaving the empty area on the other side.  Especially for the longer ones, like ANNIVERSARY, it keeps most of the word visible once you form the rosette.

As I mentioned, you can score the entire sheet and then cut your strips and fold.  The you will have a stash of rosettes for when you need them.  If you want just one, copy the word strip into another file and print, or print once, cut strips from a number of papers, adhere them to the first print and print again so you have each set of words on different papers.

The other issue is the centers.  You will need to use something fairly small for all but the 1 1/2 inch strip, or the decoration will obscure the words.  See what I used for guidance.

At the back I add a circle of cardstock covered in adhesive – that plus the brad thru the middle holds them just fine.  A dollop of hot glue in the middle works too.

Here you can see the 1 1/2 inch, 1 1/4 inch and 1 inch rosettes:

I thought about trying to make a set to fit a strip edged with a scallop punch, but there are so many on the market, so many measurements of scallops, and life is too short!

How I did it, in case you want to make your own:

Easy Peasy. This is the program I use, and you can see how the words are arranged:

• Open a file in whatever you use for this sort of work.
• Trigger the GRID, making it .25 inches (1/4 inch)
• Type your text.  Make sure each word is centred within the grid lines top and bottom
• Leave a blank grid.  So Happy then a blank 1/4 inch, then Birthday. Repeat to fill the length of the paper.
• Select all the text and either CENTRE it or ALIGN RIGHT (or left, I suppose it doesn’t matter)
• Print the strip of words and make your first score line just over the text.  Then, as I say above, you SHOULD be able to score at 1/4 inch all along the strip.

There may be a bit of trial and error to the process (there was for me) but you’ll get there. I hope you have fun with this!

Word rosettes? worth the time?

Super quick today – I have been playing around with adding words to folded rosettes.  The thing is, it’s hard to get it precise, as in such tiny increments, the barest smidge of  difference in the scoring and folding gets magnified with each subsequent fold.  So I wonder is it REALLY worth the effort? What do you think?  Cool idea or a waste of time?

One with the word around the edge, one with the words along the folds:

The B&W one is just on printer paper – no point in wasting good paper if I didn’t like it LOL!  Actually, that one is the one I like best. Might look cute on a card.

Maybe I’ll play some more, maybe I’ll abandon it.  Who knows…..

Steampunk card

I did manage to get a large number of stamps mounted, despite being quite busy with household things – and today looks to be much the same.  My internet is S L O W (roll on 8th August, when my new line gets installed!)  I’m awaiting a delivery of printer ink, and a visitor with flooring samples.  But I had to grab a little bit of time to see if the mounting job was good enough. My desk is back to a mess, who’s surprised? See?  I really and truly did mount those stamps.  Well done, me!

Doffing my hat to Julia, I used “7 shades of wee” Distress inks.  Overall I like how it turned out.  A quote from The Difference Engine (could it be that was the first appearance of “steampunk” ever?) which is perfect, as I am a font-fanatic.  I’m still trying to visualize a use for another favorite font quote, from Chuck “working on my 5-year plan.  Just need to pick a font” but this one fit the images so perfectly.

I think the hat could be slightly lower on his head, but otherwise the masking and stamping directly onto the card front worked pretty well.  Usually I avoid that, preferring to cut things out and layer them, but I do need to practice that skill.  I wish there WAS a font called Engine Gothic (and I did look) but clearly that was as fictitious as the machines in the book!  Ah well…..

I did just have to pop back to add that it really is 80-point, that font, and actually called Crown Title.

WOYWW 164 – chaos and clean, again

Well, at about 4pm yesterday, when I was finally done with my card, I took a look around and though OMG!  I mean, I know the WOYWW crowd likes messy as much as tidy, but this was ridiculous. No matter where I turned it was chaos – my desk, with my just completed card on it (look back one post to see it more fully):

My side table:

My floor:

Then, by 8PM, it was all a lot better – and I began attacking my unmounted stamps.  I caught WOYWW-er Lindsay’s mounting-stamps video, and it gave me the kick I needed to actually start and reminded me I actually have a bottle of Tack it!

So that is what is on my W today – and hopefully much progress will be made by the end of the day. I have some packing to do for those in the family who are heading off to WOMAD this weekend and am as yet undecided regarding DDs usual Wednesday skating (but oh with the heat the thought of 45 minutes in a nice cool ice rink sounds heavenly!) but I should have SOME time to make progress.

Oh and because I just KNOW you think I simply shoved everything out of the way….

and yes, I even hoovered…

No-cross-strip hidden waterfall card

I had it in my head to make a waterfall card to fit a 5 x 5 inch card blank.  I also wanted to try making one without the cross-strip that contains the pull-tab.   Here it is – very late in the day but I’ve been busy and (after weeks and weeks of cold rainy weather) it SO HOT now.

The front of the card is embossed then misted with a pale blue chalk spray.  The quote if from Albert Einstein, and apply to my Mom very well as she is always on the go!

As it flips:

Of course there is plenty of room to sign etc. inside the card.  Oddly, unlike the rectangular ones, this one seems to need no counterbalance – it stands just fine.

In order to avoid the cross-strip, all I did was add thin-ish foam squares to the sides of the diamond, either side of the tab, after sticking the centre of the diamond to the tab, as you do with standard waterfalls. Hard to see, but maybe the photo will help?

That MIGHT be me done with waterfalls. Not sure what I will become obsessed with next – maybe Cal’s cool bags from her THursday Technique on UKS?  I am sure liking the looks of them…..

BIG CARDS – Three of Hearts3hearts.jpg

What a day!  Two different workers come to sort things out, plus DD has a long appointment for a new foot splint What fun – and all on a Monday!

But I still managed to quickly do my BIG CARD. I’ve been playing about with sort of metal/patina effects.  I love the look but find it hard to achieve.  I think it might require a lighter touch than I have.  Not sure.

Here is what I did – I’m happy with the finished product so it may just be a case of making more samples to refine the technique. Looks a mess, doesn’t it?  I brayered on som red paint, letting the brayer stick to the paper a bit so it ripped off some areas.

It was random enough that I thought I could make use of the lighter patches to highlight the other colours.

I stippled on some gold paint, and some Cosmic Shimmer mists.  Then I stippled on some copper ink and added a few embossing powders, both for colour and texture.

I got this in the end:

I covered some random chipboard letters with the copper ink and embossed them with the Rust Tapestry powder, then stippled a bit of red and gold over, very lightly.

And here is the card:

I hope it looks to you like it does to me in real life – a bit like an old weathered and slight corroded/rusted piece of metal.  I particularly like the look of the letters.

I do think the lighter areas really helped, and the rough, ripped surface of the paper adds another neat texture to it all.  I feared it might make the paper too thin but with the card at the back it’s fine.  Def. something to experiment more with!

 

Sunday-someplace-else (Waterfall cards)

You know I am into waterfall cards lately.  I was working yesterday on a diamond-shaped one and, as is my habit, I went trolling across the net, to see if my idea was truly unique or had been done to death already.  Not done to death, certainly, but I did find this site that had a few interesting variations.  Not “hidden” waterfalls but there was one with diamonds that is very pretty.

Most interesting is the fact that Suzanne already tried something that I considered, especially for the diamond one, that involves trimming the top of the pull-tab so it matches the shape added.  I wasn’t sure it would work, as I felt it might make the pull tab too unstable, but she shows that it DOES work. Her photo showing the trim on an oval waterfall.

I may try this on the diamond one and see how it works.  I have a few other things I want to experiment with before I stop and move on to a new obsession LOL!

Check out her site and samples.  She’s a UK person and designs for Joanna Sheen. so my already be known to you but this is the first time I stumbled across her.  She has a page of tutorials here  that I want to delve into a little more as there are a handful that (from the titles) sound QI (“quite interesting”, to any non-UK.non-Stephen Fry fan readers)

I just had to pop back to add this.  I was flicking thru the Sunday Times and see that my fave band, The Alabama Shakes, are being hailed as the “world’s greatest new band.”  We stumbled across them on YouTube and looked for an album but they hadn’t released one yet.  It came out, I bought it, and love it.  You may too, if you like old blues, Stax/Volt, and Janis Joplin (or as The Times says, Janis Joplin via Mavis Staples. )  Have a listen:

Tutorial for the Hidden Waterfall Card

I might have rushed this a little as it is DDs last day of school for the year and I needed to finish it before she gets back from her 1/2 day.  Please forgive me any slight spelling or typing errors – I think any measurements are OK.

If you want to watch the YouTube slideshow (which uses the same stills as the PDF) you can do so here.  But I think the PDF is much clearer. (this is the correct PDF now)

I’ve used this card as the basis

I’ve added the page with the sentiment (from The Children’s Hour by Longfellow) and included both the ringed version and an un-ringed version.  My rings are orange and that just may not work for your card.

Now I did this PDF a different way.  It is based on an A4 paper size, so if using US letter, do tick scale-to-fit.  The sentiment will be ever so slightly smaller but frankly it isn’t anything special.  The font is Ajile so you can make your own to fit.

I’ll add this to the sidebar maybe later or over the weekend.  If you make one do comment with a link so I can see it!
Have fun.