WOYWW ATCs – finishing up.

I have shared this construction before but it still makes sense to share how it works with an ATC. In the past I mostly focused on the circle version, while this one is rectangular.

Taking eah ATC pair, I cut one in 1/2 short ways and one in 1/2 longways. I see these called hamburger and hot dog folds/cuts. I get it but still weird.

Each piece then gets folded ends in to the middle. I have to keep my wits about me so the colours appear where I want them to!

To create the flexagon, you need to place one set valley fold facing up, covered by the second set, valley fold facing down. I find it useful to match up the corners and use the little clamps to hole them in place. If you fold down the corner you can just see the little rectangle that is defined by the creases

That is the only bit that needs glue! I recommend Art Glitter Glue. It grabs fast and stick amazingly well. Once the glue is in place and the corner folded over, the clamp shifts to hold it in place.

I then just rotate the bundle around and do the same on each corner.

From there, it is just adding all the stamped and cut out bits and reinforcing the creases as I go

The bunnies and hoppy days blocks get added, the number stenciled and the WOYWW 14 stamped.

and the bunny needs to be folded, the the teeny circle added and the function checked.

Done!

The words should read, as the card gets flipped this way and that,

14 years of desk visits

Celebrating Inspiration

EVERY WEEK

Celebrating fun & friends

awe &

inspiration

WOYWW 14

728 Hoppy Days

I managed to cram all of that into a 2.5 x 3.5 inch card. Phew.

Really quite a bit of work but oh so worth doing for my crafty mates.

Roll on WOYWW 15!!

Just a little wrap up of stuff…some good, some disappointing

{sigh} I get too darn enthusiastic about stuff. Sometimes, I just need to put the damn brakes on and take a breath. And you know me – I am never shy about saying when I do dumb stuff. A loooonng time ago I used to say, often I make the mistakes so you don’t have to. And that still applies, although it isn’t always 100% my fault. For example, the Amazom KDP publishing thing is…weird. There have been cases where I got a message back saying that my cover needed to extend past the trim area (what they call bleed) and yet when I previewed the cover it was fine. So I checked the file, the size was right, I uploaded the exact same PDF that looked fine to me before, and once again it looks fine and three days later it gets approved. Weird. I did order a couple of my “books” to see what they look like and wow. I am really pleased with the vibrancy of the cover images and the feel of them as well. Yum.

What I am less enthusiastic about is a stupid error I made in creating the insides. My program has this quirk, in that when you group things, it will bring something to the front that you didn’t plan on having there. And if you lack focus, like I sometimes do, you might miss that. As a result, when I changed the Copyright from the word to the tiny small grey C-in-a-circle, I think I thought I deleted the word but obviously did not. DOH! I hope no-one buys this one till it gets fixed!

Weirdly it is just on the right hand pages. Which is odd cause it was originally on both – so why did it show up only on the right? I’m stumped. If it had been lower in the box I could have lived with it, but not where it is now. The other super annoying thing is when you make a mistake, Amazon will let you correct it, sure, but in the three days before they actually review and update the item, they still allow people to buy the darn thing, with the error! Even if you were to unpublish the book and try to begin again it would still be for sale. I mean crikey! Yeah, yeah, you should be a good editor and check every detail of the book before you approve it, but my eyes just do not work like they used to. So while I am super happy with the books except for this little error, it certainly taught me to slow my roll and take the time to review things two or more times, like I do with my calendars – I am so paranoid about publishing a calendar with the wrong dates on it I check, check, check, obsessively check again, then one more time. And yeah, need to do that on the two books I have mostly ready to go. Maybe even have the Hubster, who’s eyes are even worse than mine, have a look over them.

Interesting that they told me my changes had been approved, then I stupidly went and looked, saw the old version still live in the shop, so clicked the previewer to check is again – and of course that threw it back into another 3 day review! Madness!

Also interesting that reading many of the negative reviews of books, I see that maybe 90% of the comments are to do with the Amazon publishing. So problems with books, stained or wrinkled when they arrive, and often bizarrely, pages printed upside down! Not all books, so probably not the author’s fault, unless like me they made a dumb error and Amazon kept selling the books with that error till the three-day review process was complete. There should be a way to hide a book from sale till things get fixed, but for Amazon, a sale is a sale. Lesson learned. Take the time, review, review, review, and publish only when things look perfect!

I also tarted up one of the cards I made for the tutorial yesterday

I like it. Considering if I should go ahead and complete the rest of them – having already done a set of Frida ATCs doing a 2nd set seems like overkill. I do still have two of the original set left untraded, so not sure it would be worth doing.

I have a stack of ATC backgrounds on my desk, things that I had set aside because they were perfect for cards or coins, and they all just need a little thought to morph into actual cards or coins. I am hoping that will happen later today, but not sure if I will find the time. Maybe. Hopefully.

Border Punch and Gelli Play

Remember the other day I said I thought border punches could be used with the Gelli plate as well as the anywhere punch? Well they work nicely.

Still getting DH sorted for his trip so I’ll be brief – well, as brief as *I* can be (so not very, I bet)

I was aiming to create an ATC so this is geared towards that, but I have also punched a square frame to border a whole print, I just didn’t get a print I liked. I’ll add that once I play a bot more.

1. Punch a border – it should be at least 3.5 inches so it fills one side of the ATC.  Actually it could be shorter, and could include a corner, but I’ll leave you to play with that.

2. Lay the border on the plate and brayer the paint over it.  I did try brayering first then laying down the border and removing it, but it was simply too difficult to get the clean WHITE masked area I wanted that way.

3. Add whatever other impressions you like to add interest.

4. Remove the mask… 

 

…and pull the print.

5. Smudge on some Distress (or other dye based) ink to fill the white. The acrylic paint will resist the ink.

6. I punched a Post-It so I could mask off the inked bits when I stamped over the print.

Done!

Stuck it to an ATC back – honestly, how is it possible to LOSE a HUGE ATG on your desk?

This is how….

LOL! Actually if you look to the right, just above the straight ruler, you can sort of see the border frame print.  Maybe I’ll just grab a photo of that….

I think I just picked a too-dark colour of DI so it doesn’t stand out quite as much as I would like.

And while I was at it I thought I might as well show the lay-on-the-frame pull off and pull version. Interesting but not as white-white as I think it need to be to be able to smudge on the ink. But you get the idea.

Now my dilemma is can I cut down the photos to just 4 to do a recipe card?? Maybe….

ATCs and ATC back printables for Gelli fans

I finished the ATCs I had planned for those paper towel and baby wipe pieces from yesterday.  I like plays on words, puns, and all that sort of thing, and have often used slogans etc for layout titles.  These are a substitution joke, if you will.  DD, with her SEN issues, is still straddling the line between child and teen.  On the one hand she is a boy band fan (I may actually be forced into the cinema today to watch the One Direction movie…ACK! UPDATE: I’m saved!  she mis-read the listing and the movie isn’t out til the end of August.  Phew!) and on the other she is likely to pull out an old Sesame Street video to watch.  She has been watching Get Up And Dance often lately and the song Do the Jelly is stuck in my head.  As I was playing with MY Gelli, the idea for these sort of came to me.

The backgrounds are the paper towel pulls (For Jiggle and Do the Gelli!) and the baby wipe for the middle one. The glitter mixed with medium technique produced the sparkly dots. One thing about that is there is NO CHANCE the glitter will come unstuck.  RESULT!

I need to drag out my pasta machine to try a chine colle technique – I think I first saw that in a book by Claundine Hellmuth at some point in the past – for this sort of thing, and maybe even go back to something I’ve done before, printing on paper towels.  I just iron them on to freezer paper and put that thru the printer. My thoughts are that it will meld the cut outs to the backgrounds more effectively, making them seem all one piece.  I am also thinking it might be totally possible to pull a Gelli print, let it dry 100%, stick THAT to the freezer paper and run it thru the printer.  I don’t see why it WOULDN’T work, as I have printed on Gelli prints before.  We’ll see. And I wonder why I keep having to replace my printers……DOH!

The other thing is a set of ATC backs that I made.  I made them for me, of course, and almost didn’t share them as I think they do have limited appeal, but one or two people might find them fun. The old Jell-O slogan There’s Always Room for Jell-O! was the origin, slightly altered to make more sense.  I tried to mimic the Gelli packaging, with a typewriter (rather than rubber stamp) font and made the colours work, but the ATC by Me logo is my design from ages back.

The sheet is tightly packed, nine backers, in both orientations.  They SHOULD print ok on US letter paper, although the top and the bottom border line will be cut off.  That shouldn’t matter as they are just the right size for ATC backs and the borders of the paper will still be usable to get the fit right.

If you use your Gelli prints to make ATCs then you might like to use these for the backs.  If you print them on quite heavy card you could even use them as your base – although if you are mucky like me you might want to stick a large Post-It not over the back, or stick them with temporary adhesive to a plain piece of paper to keep them pristine. My ATC backs are SHOCKING usually.

So there you go.  The experimentation continues.  Keep cool…another hot one here, and the only redeeming aspect of sitting in the cinema watching a boy-band movie is the AC.

WOYWW 214 – mag inspiration

Hello WOYWWers! Very lax today.  This should have been scheduled yesterday but there was way too much going on to get to it.

Last week when the power was out I got the current issue of Craft Stamper through the letterbox.  I did what I always do, which is have a quick flick thru it to see if anything sparks me off, but instead of putting it aside for another day, I actually had the time to try something right then and there.

The article, by Jean Beck, was about folding up paper then saturating the folded corners with Distress Stain. Unfold.  Fold, soak. Unfold.  Fold, soak, etc. all well and good but I really think that you have to let the paper dry between soakings, cause mine just tore into pieces when I tried to unfold it.  I will re-read the article with a little more attention to detail, but what I took from it the first read was the DRYING stage was only for the final step when you smudge on Distress ink to “fill the gaps”.  Quite possibly my inattention to detail, but what I had in the end was a bunch of little bits.

Don’t get me wrong, I love the way they look, but it certainly isn’t a whole-cloth sort of thing.

I did two of them, the one above and another one that used some sprays as well and some drawing ink too. That one held together better, maybe because I didn’t fold the whole thing, but did it in sections.  You can see it there to the side.

I stuck them with gel medium to ATC bases.  Today, I’ll hope to finish them, as well as complete the Pan Pastel one from yesterday.  Then, I guess if I am going to make the darn things I should probably try to trade them.  Or maybe, as is my way, I’ll just hoard them….

Have a great WOYWW.  Off to drop of DH’s car for servicing.  He’s been using mine and it’s a right pain in the butt to be without.

Gelli tape and sticker paper

So I DID find my packing tape and had a bit of a play with the Gelli Arts technique.  Love it.

I like what happened.  I did the pulls then stuck one to tin foil, rubbed on Indigo Blu foiling flakes for one,  and the other stuck it to a page of one of the MANY out of date A to Zeds we have from when we lived in The Square Mile.  I must have 10 of these.

That one I made into an ATC – or at least the beginnings of one. I got around the too-small tape by leaving a bit of the page on show.

I love the foiling flakes on the back – it looks fab IRL, less so in the photo:

Either in the video or on the blog it mentions that the tape is limiting, sizewise, and you can also use clear self-lamintating sheets.  Didn’t have any of those, so I did what I often do and looked at what I DID have to see what might happen if I used that instead.  I DID have a pack of Avery Clear label sticker sheets.

What happened is the sticker sheet, which is designed to dull any glare, really took the prints down to a very matte effect.  It   dulled the colours over paper and over tin foil, made the foil look a  dull silver-gray.  Again, not sure how well the photos show this.

Here is a close shot:

It’s interesting, a different sort of effect, and one I think I will play around with a bit more.

But not today….today, Kool Aid hair colouring.  Well, I SAY Kool Aid.  Two of the packs (sent by my MIL when I was planning on dyeing yarn with them)  are WalMart brand so no idea if this will work at all, especially on DDs brown hair.

Those ATC backs as a PSE brush set

Right.  I have no idea if this will actually work like I hope it will – only by someone testing it out for me will I know.  Just cause it works for ME, doesn’t mean it will work for everyone.

What I was trying to accomplish was to create a Photoshop brush set of my recent ATC backs. I thought this would be useful.  Is it more useful than the PDF?  Not sure.  What it does allow you to do is to set the colour of the text and the little image to anything you want, using the eyedropper.  I THINK if you just install the brushes, and use them in their native setting (so don’t touch the slider to resize them) they will “stamp” at 3.5 x 2.5, as they should for ATCs.

You can see that, perhaps, here? Can you see the purple is the already stamped brush and the sort of black outline is the brush image?

I created a bunch of .jpg files, each a different colour, then printed them on one sheet of cream cardstock. It doesn’t LOOK cream here, but it really is.

 

And a bit of a close up so you can see the quality of the image:

 

What got lost was the lines for writing on – you can see them on the cream but they are very faint.

Making the images into brushes was actually super simple, as was saving them as an .abr file.  What isn’t easy is making it downloadable from WordPress.  DOH!  I thought I remembered that a zipped file could be uploaded, but it can’t.  I’ll have to pop it on to Dropbox   and you can grab it there.  If you do, please let me know how it all works for you – does it unzip ok? When you double-click it, does PSE open and does the brush set get installed?  Does the brush set have a different name?   Is this useful at all?

Now, I am keeping my fingers crossed that the electrician has sorted out the problem we have had for at least a week with the RCD thingie in the circuit box tripping and knocking out the power to all the outlets whenever I turned off the light in the kitchen if the dishwasher was running.  Don’t ask.  I’ll know after dinner if what he did worked……