Baby Book folds

I get such interesting requests!  Thank Em for this one.  And I have to say thank you too, because I learned something new in doing these. I am only able to add the folding lines to certain types of images (.svgs, or dingbat/text images) but with my upgraded OS, and a new version of the program I use, I can convert other types of images so the folding lines can fill them!

Here are all the images – there are two distinctly BOY ones, a pair that I think could be generic, and four girl ones.

DO NOT be concerned by the weird stuff you can see here on the baby feet, nor any odd things you see on your monitor when you open the PDF.  I am guessing it will have something to do with your resolution ON THE SCREEN, if you see the ghostly echo of some of the edits (like the fill on the feet so they are solid and not outline) or lines that look less distinct.  I printed them and they print fine.

ANY of the faces can get bits left out.  You can either use a PDF editing tool or simply NOT FOLD any of the lines you choose.  That could simplify some of the more complex ones like so:

Here is the 4-page PDF to download.

I’ve had another couple of requests that may be of general interest as well, so look for them over the next few days.

There is something so right about a baby for the New Year.  New year, new life!

Hungarian? You betcha!

I have had a huge flurry of activity on my blog from a Hungarian blog, that has a round-up of calendars. Despite my best efforts (and with the help of an online translation bot) I am unable to figure out how to contact the poster directly without registering.  So I am doing this the lazy way LOL!  I just converted the calendar that seems to be the focus into a Hungarian version. Never done one of them.  I looked at a number of sites that listed the day abbreviations and while most places say the names of the week are NOT capitalized, most of the sample calendars I saw did use capital letters for the abbreviations.  Some of them used SZ twice.  I ended up using a variation of the abbreviations used on medicine packs, but it may not be exactly right. My head spins.

Here is what it looks like.  Maybe someone who is (or speaks) Hungarian can let me know if it is OK or not!

The PDF is here for download.

Just as an experiment, I thought I would translate my blog post into Hungarian sing the BING translator.  This is what it says:

Volt egy hatalmas szélroham a tevékenység a blogomban egy magyar blog, hogy egy kerek a naptárak. Az én-m legjobb erőfeszítés ellenére (és egy onlinefordítói bot segítségével) nem vagyok képes, hogy kitaláljuk, hogyan lehet felvenni a kapcsolatot a poszter közvetlenül nélkül beiktat. Szóval én ezt a lusta út LOL!Én csak át a naptárban, hogy úgy tűnik, hogy a hangsúly a magyar változat. Soha nem történt meg az egyik közülük. Én nézett–on oldalak, a nap rövidítésekszereplő számos, és míg a legtöbb helyen azt mondják, nincs tőkésítve a nevét, a hét, a minta naptárak láttam a legtöbb tett használ nyomtatott nagybetűkkel arövidítések. Fejem forog.

Itt van, amit úgy néz ki, mint. Talán valaki, aki (vagy beszél) magyar is hadd tudjam meg, ha ez rendben vagy nem!

I wonder how close it is to what I actually wrote.

Off to link in the original so people can find it!

Housekeeping – book folds and a calendar

I’m just adding a couple of things from requests.

First, a calendar.  I’d made this one in 2015, then updated it as a Spanish language one for 2016. When I got a request for an English version, I couldn’t find that I had made one.  So I sorted that out.  I asked if the original requestor wanted the Sunday to Saturday version or the Monday to Sunday version like the Spanish one.  No reply yet, so I just did Sunday to Saturday.

The PDF with all the months is here.

Next, I had a request for a ! book folding template.  The request was for a specific font, Habano ST, but that one was pretty slanted and I just wasn’t sure.  So I made a few others, as well as a Habano that was straightened

I figured with those choices there would be ONE that worked.  Having made the 3-page PDF I might as well share it.You can download it here.

So as far as I know all request have been dealt with.  Phew.  Busy day for me, so I’m off….

Merry Christmas!

I’ve just been so busy that my crafting has had to take a back seat.

I thought I would post a round-up of last-minute Christmas goodies, as previously posted. Not all of them but my favourites.

Got a gift to label? Get some tags here!

Traditional colours (seen at the top) – Download them by clicking here

Modern colours (seen at the bottom) – Download them by clicking here

Hipster tags! Download them by clicking here

Download them by clicking here

 

Grab the PDF here

Need a last-minute gift AND a card?  Make one of my ornament cards.  This post (with the red and white Scandi-style cards) has links to three different printable versions.

The flat ones make up in minutes!

Just need a quick card?  The word-search ones are cute and they are in 4 x 6 or 3 x 4 sizes. This PDF has both sizes on a kraft card colour background, and this PDF has the three shown here on a white background.

Print, cut and stick to a card blank.

and lastly, these.  Download the PDF, then cut out and stick to a card.  You can add a patterned paper background, and ribbon or a gem, if you have the time!

Happy holidays to all!

Last one – Lots of LOVE templates

UPDATED:  These are now stretched to produce a thicker folded word.

Just to complete my “set” of word templates, generic ones that will be useful for many occasions as gifts, here is a set of LOVE templates. As requested by Rose …

 

The PDF is here.

Just to go back to a question I have had a few times in comments, how to keep the folded book closed, I thought I would show you the one I did manage to do, for the word JOY.

As you can see, it is tied with a ribbon, as I have suggested before, but the ribbon is tied thru a pair of eyelets, set into the front and back cover.  A Crop-a-dile does the job nicely, although depending on the thickness of the cover and the length of the barrel of the eyelet, you do have to really SQUEEZE to make sure the eyelet is well set and not going to just pull loose.  I was lucky to find a £1 book, where the end papers were a lovely shade of forest green.

Setting the eyelets will allow you to really keep the book at the optimum state of openness, to show off the word you have folded.  A ribbon simply tied around the book doesn’t always stay put! As I think I may have said, you could also add some dangling beads or charms, either to the bow or to the eyelet holes.  I’d love to see any other ideas you might have come up with too!

This book was numbered about 340 pages.  I really need to be looking for 4-600 page books, but I just never seem to come across them in cheap charity shops.

Peace templates for book folding

Thank Ashley for this one.  Although I was already working on JOY when she asked for it, I hadn’t even considered PEACE.  So here you go – a companion set. Not all the same fonts, because certain fonts work best with certain words.

I discovered a lot of new stuff working on these templates.  The first is the counting.  While the method I originally mentioned worked really well for simple shapes and words where there were small, very distinct areas where counting double folds was important, for complex  and especially slanted words it was hard.  I discovered if you count, and keep track of, every starting point (so the top of every line) you will have a very accurate number for the total sheets/pages you need.

As this font needs spaces between the letters, I’ve added 5 pages between the J and O and the O and Y.  I would just fold those back so there is nothing showing at the edge.

Another thing I learned is that I have very little accurate recollection of the fonts I use, when I do big groups.  They all seem to muddle up in my head.  One good thing about upgrading to el Capitan from Snow Leopard is some added tools in Preview.  So this snapshot of all the options has the font names listed too.  Nice, eh?

And the multipage PDF is here.  Have fun with them, and if you do, say a thank you to Ashley!

JOYful gifts! Book folding templates

Serendipity is a wonderful thing.  I had been working on some book folding templates that would be quick (relatively speaking) to make as gifts.  The serendipity comes in when I saw a request for a JOY template from a reader.  She asked for blocky and plain, but I had a few made so I sent them all.  Seems better to have choices.

I compiled the ones I have into a single PDF. Grab it here.   just print the page you need.

I have a very busy day, but I hope I can take the time to grab a book at the charity shop and maybe give one a go myself! If so, I’ll be sure to share.  I think one of these could be accomplished in a few hours.  A book that is at least 8 inches tall would be prefect, and as to page count, I haven’t worked it out myself yet!  All the Os and Ys will be double-folds for sure, but no 4 or 5-fold areas that I can identify from a quick look.  The 2nd one maybe has a triple fold, but I think that is the worst of it.

Let me know how you get on…and photos are ALWAYS welcome!

Some guidance for using the book-folding alphabets….

I’ve had comments and emails asking for guidance in using the book folding alphabets here and here. In general, you open the PDF in whatever program you have that lets you open a multi-page PDF, access a single page, then copy and paste a selection into a new file.  You copy the letters for your word, align them, save the file then print it.  DO NOT scale anything.  That’s pretty much it.  HOW you do that totally depends on the program you use.

With any amount of luck, I’ll be moving over to the new Mac totally.  That means I lose Photoshop Elements, at least until I get to open my Christmas gifts LOL! But for the next couple of hours I still have access so I’m going to try to grab some images and assemble a post.  So long as I am able to mail myself the images and collect my mail on the NEW machine it should be do-able.

And it is.

Open the PDF using Photoshop Elements

Pick the page that has the letter or letters you need

Clicking on the page and clicking OK should open it.

Now open a new blank file.  I usually make it A4 (or US Letter) size and 300 dpi, just like the original file.

Using the Select tool (the marching ants) select the letter you want.  Do each one individually. Copy > Paste the letters into the new file

Because the letters are packed fairly closely, to keep the page count and size reasonable, you may be forced to select part of another letter.  Not a problem.  Once you Paste it, be on the layer with that letter, select the extra and delete it.

Once all you grab all the letters on the page you opened, click Open Recent and select the PDF again – this will let you pick a new page to get the rest of the letters you need.  Sorry I seem to have highlighted the same page.  Doh!

When your word is complete, select Align (on my PSE edition it is hiding under the drop down menu you see) and align the letters to create a word.

Save the file as a PDF.

Now you can print your template and fold your book!

I am not familiar with other programs that might work – if you are, do add a comment with the basic info.

And the low tech solution is to print the sheets, cut out the letters, stick them in a line to another sheet, and use THAT as a template.  Not ideal, but it’ll work.  I suppose you could scan that and print the stuck down word for a sturdier template, if you want to make the effort.

Hope that helps.  I can only guess that the huge number of requests I get for templates to be sent has a lot to do with Christmas gift-giving.  As I get busier with my own holiday stuff, this info might just help you make your own template and not depend on my schedule to get started.  With some dedicated focus a few hours is all it takes to fold a book.

I may do a few more full alphabets if there is interest.  Comment to let me know and feel free to drop the name (or a link) to any font. If I have it or can get it for free, I’ll try to oblige.

What someone did with one of my calendars. Wowza.

Been a while since I did a Sunday-Somplace-Else.  I happened to see a few visits to my blog from a site I had never encountered before.  I decided to follow the link, as I often do, and was totally blown away by her project.  I just love it.  To be fair, my calendar is only a VERY small part of it, and I would encourage you to visit the site to see all the photos cause it is well worth it.

Isn’t that just fabulous? I have to say I love the Translate function.  It tells me the blog title is Smile.Live.Scrap and I loved everything I saw.  Not quite tutorials, but total eye candy for sure.

If you are inspired, do pop to her blog before you Pin the image.