Wednesday, November 16, 2016

Celebrating Get Creative's 2nd Blogversary


Get Creative Challenges

Get Creative Challenges is turning 2 and we are celebrating this occasion with the 52nd challenge that has the theme of Happy Birthday. We have two sponsors for this challenge - AliciaBel and Dr Digi.
http://www.aliciabel.com/index.php
My card used a digistamp called Alice & The Cake from AliciaBel. I did, though, change it a little by adding two candles on the slice of cake.
                                  
The gorgeous pink and foiled spot background is a vellum panel from The Craft Stall, bought from my local discount shop. (Look at my previous card to also see another of the panels from the packet.) The digistamp was coloured using Copic Markers and fussy cut, then mounted on an oval of white cardstock. The sentiment is a layered die cut using pink cardstock and Tim Holtz Alterations/Sizzix Celebrate cutting die set. You may be aware already that I love this set and his other, Friendship cutting die set. I use them so much.

Anyway. To complete the look I painted some pink Wink of Stella over the die cut and some clear Wink of Stella over the girl's bow. The faux stitching was also written using the pink WOS.

I'm doing more "simple" cards these days. Maybe it's a sign my style is changing or maybe it's because they're faster to do. What do you think??? Let me know what you think about my change in direction.

I'm off now. Pop on over to Get Creative Challenges, enjoy the party celebrations over there, and maybe you can enter a birthday card or two. (You can never have too many on hand.)

Bye for now.

Love,
Janelle



Saturday, November 12, 2016

Using a Digital Stamp to Make a Background

Hi to all.
I'm back again with the third challenge from Angie's Digital Stamps. This month's challenge is "Anything Goes". I used one of Angie's digistamps of a cute little cupcake and thought it would be fun to create a background paper with it instead of making it the focus of the card (like I usually do).

I don't know about you, but whenever I'm manipulating images like this, I always go to a Windows Word page and find that I can manoeuver the images however I like. Probably it's because I started doing this back in 1980 something when we first got computers in the staffrooms in QLD schools. I used to make up my own class handouts and was forever trying to make them look interesting and professional-looking. 

This technique is for those of you who do not own/have access to editing programs such as Photo Shop.

HOW TO CREATE A BACKGROUND WITH A DIGISTAMP AND WINDOWS WORD PROGRAM.

1. Start by opening your image in a photo editing program like Photo Manager; and crop it to remove any excess white space. Make sure it's saved as a jpeg file.



2. Open the Word program, create a new page document and insert a rectangle the size of your intended background panel. You can position the images where you want them to be. Insert the cropped image. Reduce the size of the image to suit the size of the intended panel. It's important to now edit the image by changing the "Wrap Text" to "Tight". Also edit the order by bringing this image forward.



3.  The image is now ready to copy and paste. 



4.  Move the images and rotate to suit your design. The little green-ended handle is used to achieved this manipulation. Make sure some of the images fade off the edge of the panel to make it more natural looking.




5. Once you've placed all of the images where you want them, save the page and then print. Leave the rectangle in place as this will show you where to cut out.



I hope you can easily understand these instructions. If there's anything you need help with, please leave a comment and I'll get back to you.

To finish my card I painted around the edges of the card blank with some gold Wink of Stella ink, coloured the image using Copic Markers and secured a foiled and printed vellum panel; before completing by adding some pink enamel dots.

Anyway, head on over to Angie's Digital Stamps; see the amzing designs on display and enter your own design for a chance to win.

Bye for now.

Love,
Janelle