Showing posts with label Tutorials. Show all posts

Thursday, July 24, 2025

Gingerbread Gift Bag

Hello

welcome to my little crafting place!

It's Spellbinders Club time again, and we're still having fun with 'Christmas in July' crafting. This time I've made a gift bag, and used the Gingerbread man Deluxe Caboodle club gift to make a tag to decorate it

The actual gift bag is made from a sheet of A4 80gsm card printed with one of the designs from my ever-increasing collection of digital downloads. The bag is about 15cms high, 10cms across and about 4cms deep, so a good size for a smallgift, like a bag of nice chocolates or a set of mini toiletries etc

For the tag I cut the middlesized scalloped circle from Scallop Journal Cards and trimmed to leave 5 scallops and a bit of extra card to stick to the back of a simple rectangle. At the lower edge I added a cut-down piece from one of the borders in the Stitch & Dots Scallop Borders set. I used ribbon to conceal the joins

The gingerbread man is made the same way as on an earlier post, and I added candy canes from the July Small Die of the Monthand the little hat from last month's Walrus set (I punched a circle to use for the bobble)) and added a spring 'wobbler' between him and the tag base

Materials

from Spellbinders;

July Deluxe Caboodle club gift

July Small Die of the Month

Vintage Flower Shoppe collection
Scallop Journal Cards dies

Stitch & Dots Scallop Borders

Full 48 ColorWheel Cardstock Pack 8.5" x 11"

June Small Die of the Month

Other

80gsm white card aprinted with digital download design

Spotty ribbon

narrow satin ribbon

Gift Bag tutorial is HERE

Just a Note

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

THIS is my Affiliate link to the Spellbinders store
- you can use it to access the store whenever you buy from Spellbinders
It doesn't cost you anything, but I may get a little reward for pointing you there.
There's a UK based shop now, so you can use the 'Visit Our UK Store' button at the top right of any page on the Spellbinders site

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Thank you so much for coming by

Happy Crafting, Take care of yourself, and please come back soon!

Kathy xx

Friday, September 29, 2023

Weaving with Fibres

Hello

Welcome to my little crafting place!

I thought I'd share a few photos and info on how I made the woven section of this card, plus some thoughts on what I'd if I did something similar again, as this was very much a trial and error king of thing, even though I made it into a card!

I have a large collection of tiny spools of fibresthat I've collected over the years - I use them mainly for decorating the spines of books I make - though to be fair its a long time since I actually finished one of those!

The weaving turned out colourful and very textural so I didnt think it needed much else to work ok. So I went throungh a bag of pearly and glittery card scraps and die cut some stars in different shapes and sizes, and a few little hearts for good measure.

I started by making a frame using pairs of card strips.

If I do this again I will use dies to cut square frames - it would be simpler in the end.

I would also make the squares quite a bit bigger than I needed the weaving to be, so it would be easier to cut the finished piece out of the frame

Next I fixed the vertical fibres to the top and bottom of the frame - I used glue for this. They need to be well stuck before adding the horizontal fibres. I always have a pot of 'bulldog' clips at hand as they are so useful in many ways

I started weaving the horizontal fibres in the middle because I planned to keep gaps between the rows and starting in the middle helped me keep the rows even

I'm not a great fan of threading needles and as I was using lots of different kinds iof fibres with different thicknesses and 'fluffiness' it would have been a real pain! So I cut a narrow strip of card and punched a small hole in one end.

With this tool I could simply pull whatever type of fibre through the hole with tweezers then weave easily over and under the vertical fibres with the card strip.

Asain I used glue and a clip to secore each end

I just continued until the whole frame was filled.

Next I spread PVA glue overthe centre of a piece of card the same size as my card blank and pressed it down on the wrong side of the weaving. I put a paperweight over it and left it to dry

Once dried I cut away the pieces of card that made the frame

this is where I learned that I should have made the weaving fram bigger and stopped weaving to leave a good 2-3cms margin around the interwoven part - that way I could have used a smaller square of card for the backing, and it would have been much easaier to cut away from the frame too.

That's it, I hope you'll let me know if you have a go!

Thank you so much for coming by

Happy Crafting, Take care of yourself,

Kathy xx

Friday, July 13, 2018

Rose Tutorial

Hello!

I love making these roses, they always draw admiring comments as they look so beautiful and effective - the secret is, they are not nearly as difficult to make as people think!

I've added lots of photos to this tutorial, so hopefully you can see clearly how its done. You can click on them if you need a larger view.

I like to use Bazzill-weight card for my roses as it holds its shape really well. Once you've got the idea you can experiment with other paper, card etc

You'll need to die cut, punch, or hand-cut 4 flower pieces, all the same size.

I prefer to use a 6 petal flower for roses, but they can be made with 5 petal ones or ones with a couple more - you may have to adjust the number of shapes you start with and which of the layers you need to make

With scissors cut out the centre of three of the flowers and make other cuts as indicated in the photo below

From the first flower you get the inner "bud" (layer 1) and layer 4

From the second flower you get the outer bud (layer 2) and layer 3

The third flower is layer 5, just make one cut into the centre

Make the two bud pieces

Use a bamboo skewer, Paintbrush or something similar to curl the SINGLE Petal piece. Curl it into a bit of a cone shape, and quite tightly. so it holds its shape, then set aside

Shape the 2-petal bud section by curling the two petals, again in a conical shape. Overlap the edges and add some glue to hold them together. I hold the edges together with tweezers for a minute while the glue is setting

When the glue is dry, gently curl the top of one of the petals over the skewer as if the bud is beginning to open

Here are both the bud sections ready to use. You can see the curl on one of the petals

of bud section 2.

You may find you need to trim a little off the lower ends of these pieces when you come to build your rose

Now you need to trim away a little from the petals which will be used as 'tabs". It's a case of trimming off the top of one petal next to where you've already removed petals from, or for flower 3, next to the cut you made into the centre.

Whatever you do, don't cut the tops off the wrong petals! This photo shows how they should look

Making the other Layers

At this point you can use the skewer, or something slightly thicker to start adding shape to the rest of the petals. If the card is a bit thick it can help manipulate the fibres a little. Nit its up to you and you may prefer to curl them later.

To make each layer, add a little glue to the trimmed down petal, then bring the one on the other side of the gap (or cut line) over to cover the 'tab' petal

and hold the layers together till stuck firmly. I use a mini bulldog clip to hold them in place while they dry, Repeat for the other 2 layers

You've now created all the layers and should now have five pieces like on the photo below, plus the extra one you put aside.

Cut a circle of the same card big enough for the largest flower (with 5 petals) to sit on and apply some glue to it. Press the largest flower into the glue.

Now add a little more glue to the bottom (where the hole is) of the 4-petal flower and sit it inside the first one, Be sure to off-set the petals to make it look realistic

Repeat with the 3-petal flower and leave aside to dry while you make the bud.

Apply glue to the single petal section of the bud, then place it inside the double petal section. Using wet glue means you can move it around until you like the shape of your bud. Give the petals a bit on shape by curling them over the skewer. I stood the finished bud in some blutak so that I could get a good photo - obviously, you don't need to do that!!

At this point pop the bud into the rest of the rose to check whether you need to cut a little off it. I usually find the bud stands a bit too high and need to trim off a few mms.

Once I'm happy with the height I add glue to the centre of the main rose section, and also around the lower part of the bud (about the same amount as in pic 1 above)

Then tuck the bud into the main rose, move it around until you like how it looks and leave it to dry

When dry, add any more shaping to your petals, remember to move it around to check all angles, then glue it to that last petal die-cut you saved right at the start, it gives some extra fullness to your beautiful rose

My finished rose measures about 6-7 cms across. I made a couple of smaller ones then used them on this project, which you can see HERE, using some little extras from the Bubbly Funk "Love Is...." craft box

Thank you so much for looking, I hope you'll give these roses a try, let me know how you get on if you do

Happy Crafting

Friday, May 30, 2014

Seeing Stars!

Zuzana is the hostess for the Daring Cardmakers Challenge this week:

'Wish Upon A Star'

Do you like watching the stars in summer? I believe everyone does! My favourite are meteor showers. You don't need any special equipment. Spread a blanket on the ground and look up into the dark night sky.

Now, I would like to see stars on your cards. Create a project with a universe or astronomy theme, fairy-tales, sports, birthday stars, music rock stars, stars on the flag ... whatever you fancy!

There are some fabulous and inspiring designs from our Design Team - visit the BLOG to see them.

Even though I quite often choose stars for those tricky male cards for some reason this time I found it quite hard to see beyond Christmas themes. So I turned to my trusty Funky Hand stash and in particular the Papercraft Factory CDs - oh how fab these CDs are with so many paper choices, images and even templates for making all manner of things - all resizeable in the built-in workspace.

The papers I've used are from the "Happy, Happy Birthday" CD and I've mixed the "Just for Men" and "Birthday Boy" colour sets to make this card

Papers all from "Happy, Happy Birthday" CD by Funky Hand printed on white Bazzill

large and small bunting is handcut

Large star punch, stars folded for dimension*

Inks, Bakers Twine

* to make the 3D stars, use a punched or die cut star then fold (wrong sides and crease on all the lines shown - try to avoid creasing too hard at the centre point (you might end up with a hole, or a "scuffed" patch if you do)

Open out and now form just the bits of the lines marked red into valley folds

Now just squeeze in on the folds on the pointed sections until you get the shape you like.

I used Collal 3D glue to fix my stars to the card

That's it for this time, thanks for visiting - please leave a comment

Friday, March 28, 2014

Financial Times....

Serious sort of title, eh?
But it's okay, I'm not going to get into a rant about Bankers, Insurance Companies and all the other assorted crooks... ;)
No - it being Friday should give a clue. It's all about our lovely Svenja's Daring Cardmakers challenge for this week:
Money Makes the World Go Around

I was completely stuck for most of the week as to what on earth I could do - nothing new there - I know I say that most weeks! In the end I decided to make a piggy bank - it was going to be a shaped card, but in the end I made this

Materials and Tools

Black, White and Pink card

Patterned papers from MME "Charmed" 6x6

Ribbon, White pen, Glossy Accents, Bakers Twine

"Happy Birthday" Text 8x8 embossing folder from Crafters Companion

Silhouette Cameo to cut the pig

Own template

Here's a quick run-down on the piggy template:
I made the piggy template from scratch in Paint Shop Pro it's just a series of what they call "pre-set shapes"!
Ellipses for the head, eyes, snout and nostrils,
Rounded rectangles for the feet
Triangles for the ears.

Once I'd put all these shapes together I reduced all the bits to a single layer, reduced the colours to 2 (Black and White) and then just used the Paintbrush tool to "round" the straight lines on the ears and legs, and to draw in the back legs. Once I'm happy I make sure to save a copy (as a .gif) to use as a master image for the next stage

Next job is to think about the layers I want on my finished item and alter the picture accordingly - I almost always make a base layer which is the full piece and is handy for sticking all the other layers on to
Then I use the paint brush to cut away the lines I don't want on each subsequent section, saving each new image along the way
So for this piggy:
Base layer is the complete image
Layer 2; cut away the ears and the back legs to leave just head and front legs
Layer 3; remove front legs so that just the head remains
Layer 3; snout with nostrils cut into it
The extra detail pieces to save are the eyes and the inner ear sections

Now I move all the pieces to the Silhouette, resize and get ready to cut - I cut the snout and the eyes 3 times each for some extra dimension
Once cut, it's just an easy matter to ink the edges and on the head behind where the snout will go, so a darker shade shows through the holes, then glue all the pieces together in their layers and its done

To mount onto the card I raised this image on a box hinge (like the cover of a matchbox) so that I could tuck rolled up cash or a cheque between card and pig to look like it was going into a piggy bank

It all sounds much more complicated than it actually is, but I hope it makes sense

Thanks for visiting today

Friday, March 14, 2014

Printing and Pyramids Tutorial

I've not got a Daring Cardmakers card to share this week - hopefully that will be along later as I really hate having to miss making my card for the blog. This week Miri is celebrating the birthday of one of he Grimm brothers by asking for cards inspired by Fairy Tales.
The team have come up with some fantastic ideas, so please visit the blog to see them - and test yourself to work out which fairy tale they were inspired by

Sometmes, life gets hectic and something has to move down the queue - this week it was my DCM card :( With a bit of luck though, I'll be in Fairy Tale mode over the weekend!

One thing I'm trying to do just now is collect up and add side-bar labels for tutorials I've made and blogged. The reason for this is that I often go to make something and then spend ages looking for where I've put the instructions. Even when I blog them I forget to add the link in the sidebar, hopefully this will mean I don't spend hours wading through photos just to give me an inkling as to when I made something and help me find my instructions.

This is a tutorial that first appeared on the Funky Hand "Get Funky and Craft" blog and shows how I prepared the designs for printing and making a pyramid shaped card

Funky Hand Pyramid Card

If you've never made a Pyramid card before then here's a great way to use your Funky Hand downloads and have a go at one straight away.

I made one of these for the first time a few weeks ago using Bazzill card and then adhering patterned paper to decorate it. I usually use much thicker card for my card blanks but this style of card is quite bulky when folded. Part way through making it I had an "A-ha!" moment and realised that using my Funky Hand downloads I could print the first "layer" directly onto card and create a thinner and easier to fold pyramid card base,

Of course you could simply print your chosen Funky Hand designs directly onto the card without any tweaking at all, but I thought you might be interested to see how I get the most from my sheets of card, as by doing it this way you're left with lots of space on each sheet which you can then print more designs on to use in decorating your card.

I use an old version of Paint Shop Pro to do pretty much any sort of photo or graphics tasks, but I'm sure that other programs, such as PhotoShop have the same sort of tools. I thought the best thing would be to do a series of screen shots so that you can then have a look around your own photo-editing program for the similar menus, tools and commands.

So here we go - you can click on the pictures for a better look!

Step 1

Select the design you want to use - in this case the pink chevron design from
"I Love You Sew"

Use the tool marked with no. 1 and drag the grab-lines to a rough square shape as indicated in the picture.

Now click on CROP to get rid of the excess "paper"

Step 2

Now you need to find the tool that allows you to RESIZE the image and click on it to open up the resizing window

Step 3

You want to create a square which is about the right size for your project, so go for the ACTUAL SIZE option - this is a fab tip for printing other things like photos and other images just the right size too, btw

* Make sure that it's all set to resize all layers/dimensions at the same time - where I've drawn asterisks on the picture. I Never touch this section of the box - I just know I'd have a disaster on my hands if I did

* Set to pixels/cms in the box marked no 2 or inches if you prefer to work in Imperial measures

* It's the box marked with no 3 that you change the numbers in rather than the ones marked height/width so as I want a square of around 14cms I changed the number in the RESOLUTION box until the number in the height box were about right

Remember, I just guessed at the original square shape, the height turned out to be a bit shorter than the width so it's the height I need to get the right size for before printing

Step 4

Check all is well before printing by using the PAGE SET UP command. It brings up a new window with a picture of how your image will look on the page - like the one below

Step 5

You just need to check you printer settings now

You need to use a thin card (about 160gsm) for this particular project to reduce the bulk and make it easier to fold. I need to use the REAR TRAY to feed this through, and I need 3 copies

Then click print and you're done.

Once you've printed your three squares, don't cut them out straight away. Measure how much white space you have below the square and use the resizing method above to crop down some of the other designs, and fill the white space with those designs.
You're not finished yet as you can print on the reverse of the 3 sheets too.

If you want to leave the inside of the pyramid "legs" white, just print on the reverse of the "other end" of the card ie not on the back of where the squares are. Remember that the inside of the legs will show, so if you don't want them plain white, print each of the three pieces with the same paper design on the reverse of the squares.

I hope all that makes sense!

Making the Pyramid

Cut out your 3 squares accurately and fold each in half diagonally

Take the first 2 squares and adhere the edge of the upper one to the fold of the lower one matching the points and edges really carefully.

The edge of the 3rd square is then adhered to the fold in square 2

Hopefully the photos will help make it clearer!

I've used a white square in this middle and clipped the 3 squares together just to show how they all fit - it's not as complicated as it sounds, is it?

Once they are glued together the pyramid just falls into shape of it's own accord really, the two end triangles overlap and are glued together and the base shape is formed.

At this point you need to squash and fold one "face" in half inwards so that the card can be flattened to go in an envelope

Now you can use all the extra bits of card you printed out to decorate it - just remember to keep the folded-in area fairly simple or it won't fold up!

In true Blue Peter spirit, here are more photos of the one I made earlier!

I really hope you'll have a go at this - it's sure to impress as it looks sooooo much more complicated than it is ;)

Sunday, March 09, 2014

Box Tutorial

I'm sharing this tutorial over on Funky Hand's "Get Funky and Craft" Inspiration Blog this weekend, so thought I'd post it here on my own blog too.

Once you've got the basic idea, you'll find you can adapt it to make boxes in other shapes too. I've made a few of these little boxes now and they are quite simple to make. I've used Spellbinders Nesties Label 26 for the top and base sections of my box, and kept to a simple square shape for the actual box section so that I can just cut the chipboard pieces using my guillotine.

There are lots of photos, which I hope will make it nice and easy to follow

Start off by printing your chosen Funky Hand designs onto both sides of some white card. I like to use a basic textured Bazzill type card (cut to A4), but just printing onto any white card would be fine.

I've used a few different designs as you'll see in the photos, but you could just make the box using one or two designs. You''ll need a couple of sheets of printed card. I've used our current Forgotten Funky spotlight collection "Minty Madness" for this box.
If you scroll down the blog a bit you'll find a whole array of other lovely projects using this collection

You'll also need some thicker card - I use card cut from an empty cereal packet

From the printed card

*Cut a 6cm wide strip from the long side. Crease at 4cm as shown in the photo above

*Cut 4 of the 2nd largest Spellbinders Nesties Labels 26 die. Ink the edges and adhere 2 of each (if using different designs) together - be as accurate as possible. These will be the base and top of your box

* Cut 2 pieces measuring 9cm square

From the cereal packet

* Cut 6 or 7 (depending on thickness) pieces measuring 6.5cm square

* Glue just 2 of the card squares together and set aside for the base section

* Trim a tiny fraction (1 - 1.5mm only) from 2 adjoining sides (not opposite ones - you need to keep the shape square) of each of the other squares and then glue them together. It's important not to trim away too much or the lid won't fit at the end

Cover the card squares with the 9cm squares, wrapping around and making the corners as neat as you can. Set the thicker of the squares aside for now

Using the thinner covered cereal packet piece, line up and mark the long strip as shown so that it will wrap around all 4 sides and have an overlap at the end. Make creases and cut slits up to the 2cm fold line

* Adhere the square piece to the side strip starting with the second section along. Next glue the third and fourth sections under, and then the overlap. Apply glue to the outside of the overlap piece and then glue the first section in place to cover it, and end up neatly at the corner of the box

The underneath should look like this

Now apply glue to the box you've created and centre over one of the die cut pieces. If you've done as I did and used 2 different designs, you'll need to decide which will be on the "inside" edges and which will be the outer ones

Finally adhere the thicker cereal packet piece to the 2nd of the die cut sections.

Trimming those tiny slivers from the card squares should mean that the lid will fit nicely into the top edge of the box - have a quick check before the glue has dried completely, then if you find the fit isn't snug enough, take the cereal packet piece off quickly and cover with another square of paper - that might just be enough to make it work

It looks a bit dull and boring at the moment, but I'm sure you'll think of a way to brighten it up :)

I've made a couple of other boxes in the same way - these have both been shown here before, but hey, I might as well show them again

This one uses the same Labels 26 die as the one above, and the papers are from the Christmas 2013 "Silent Night" download collection

This next box is made the same way, but I've used a nesting heart set of dies by MFT Die'Namics to cut the shapes. These papers are from the gorgeous "Winter Wedding" download collection

They are fun to make and easy too - and of course Funky Hand papers make it really simple to get exactly the look you want.

I hope you'll have a go - and if you do I would soooo love to see your boxes, so please don't forget to let me know

Happy Crafting