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Made another set of advent jubblies with the most lovely rococo paper (okay – not authentically rococo but the design is very late baroque looking). Who’d have thought they would look so good?!
This is a set for somebody who has been through the wars a bit these last few months and just a little something to give her a little lift.
Bye for now
H x
Thought I’d post a very quick toot-toot – and it really is quick – on how to create a shiny, foil effect in Photoshop. I took some pictures of autumn leaves and other stuff and was playing around in Photoshop and hit on a simple way to give my images the shiny foil look – like in the thumbnails above.
And that’s it! You might want to Bevel & Emboss (also in the Layer Styles palette) and you might want to play with the Chrome settings but these are the basic steps.
Oh – and if you want to know how to give the edges a fake postage stamp sort of look, that’s dead easy, too:
For a little more realism, you can apply a Drop-Shadow in Layer Styles.
Ha! Hours of fun… off to play about some more!
H x
Hello there mateys!
Well, all is still , all is bright…. but did you know there are only 39 days to Christmas? Will soon need to start looking lively!
The Christmas cakes are doing nicely with their weekly tipple of brandy so they’re ready to get marzipanned by the end of November/beginning of December.
Have made more Advent Jubblies than I can shake a stick at so they’re all ready.
One of the two big ticket items for Mr. Singingtree’s Christmas is bought and tucked away and am planning on ordering the other from Amazon next week to avoid the Christmas crush. His stuff is nearly ready.
Am going into Dub next week or the week after on a mission to get EVERYTHING (bar the food). It’s a tall order, but if I can do that, I won’t have to go back until well into the New Year. That way I’ll avoid the armies of pointy-elbows tactically deployed, ie, rib-jabbing, by sale hunters in a frenzy for half-priced hair sprays and suede slippers.
I have also been sorting through the boxes of craft stuff I have – and am using it up. No more keeping anything for best or some special occasion (strangely, nothing ever seemed special enough!). To be honest, I have stuff I’d forgotten completely. Well, no more. I know now there are things that I covet in a hoardy, gloaty, troll-and-treasure feast-my-eyes and count my gold kind of way. Really unhealthy.
About this time last year we had a couple of car boot sales to get rid of rubber stamps (bags of them), stickers, cards, embossing boards (remember the Bookatrix and the other boards that followed? Them!, Some cutting thing where the blade was in a round mount and you followed a cut out stencil… can’t remember the name but there were sets of stencils (and, of course, I had lots of them)…. light boxes…… crayons…. glitter gel pens – sold them in 10s for a euro!…. punches…. peel offs…. scoring boards…. craft mags (they cost about 6 euro each here – was selling 10 for 5 euro) the paraphernalia of the more-money-than-sense crafter.
I still have much more than I will use so am going to try to fit in a car boot or two this year as well. I actually feel a bit disgusted with myself that I have bought so much and not used it. Such a senseless waste.
Take the craft magazines, for example. Full of adverts and step-by-step-make-things-with-new-products articles. I buy them to read on the train when I come back from Dublin (can’t buy them locally) and am generally disappointed in the content. Yet, I could go online, browse around and find pretty much the same content without the ads and product promotions. I’m looking for inspiration not more junk.
I have been much better this whole past year though and no longer impulse buy. I tell myself I’ll get it next time I’m in Dublin and when that times comes round I’ve usually forgotten what it was so couldn’t have wanted it that much in the first place. It really works for me.
Maybe there’s a twelve-step programme out there for craft junkies like me!
Anyhow, I came across a lovely little video tutorial on Happybirdscraftinghaven.com – search for her sparkly ribbon angel ornament tutorial. Takes just a few minutes to make and costs next to nothing – a couple of short bits of wired ribbon and a bead, mainly. I bet you’ve got more than enough in your ribbon stash to make a mountain of these angels. Go on, use it up!
Here’s mine:
Do have a go and also check out the Happy Birds site – she has lots of lovely, inexpensive crafting ideas. Just sweet, neat and clever.
Hel x
My first new Christmas card of the year is nearly finished! It was just so much fun to put together! The little cabin is a pop-up so it lies flat when you close the card then .. ooh la la… open the card and the cabin pops up! The cabin is cut from paper printed with text from The Velveteen Rabbit (the story is out of copyright and available from the Guttenberg site), a story about a little toy rabbit who is loved, lost and then turned into a real rabbit by a beautiful fairy. A bitter-sweet story with a sugar plum happy ending just right for Christmas.
The card lining is prettified (ok, made more aesthetically pleasing – but which is easier to say?) with a design cut from small circles. It is just sooo nice!The ‘Let It Snow’ was made with a Photoshop brush I designed a while ago – printed, cut out and covered with glossy accents. The holly was made using a paper punch and given the glossy accent treatment also.
Here you can see the little cabin getting squinched - Youch! but it’s okay, it’ll pop right back up again when you open the card!
As always, I leave the front till last. It’s my least favourite bit. Anyhoo, I designed a fancy edged mat to set off the brown card and cut it in more Velveteen Rabbit paper and stuck that down. If you’re eagle-eyed, you’ll notice some stitching on the inner square – just a little additional detail for interest.
I haven’t quite finished though…
And still haven’t quite finished yet! I have coloured in little Lily and I have written up the instructions to make the pop-up cabin so can now offer the full set of files for sale:
The pop-up cabin card kit includes:
The cost is 7.00 Euro. Payment is via Paypal which will convert the cost to your local currency. The electronic files will be sent to your e-mail address when payment is received.
Pop-Up Cabin card kit: (€ 7)
Please note you will need a cutting machine that can cut GSD / SVG formats, eg, Craft Robo, Silhouette, Cameo, etc.
Thank you for looking
Hel x
I HAVE been busy! It’s been so hard stifling the excitement of Christmas but now we’re into November, I can start giving in and enjoying it! I’ve made a couple of sets of Advent calendars modelled on the Calypso ice lolly carton (or the sour cream container, I think, in the US). I like that they’re so easy to do – mine are made with rectangles of paper 105 mm x 155 mm rolled and glued down into long cylinders.They were flattened and glued at one end then crimped, filled with sweets and chocolates. Then they were turned 90 degrees and had their other end glued and crimped.
After crimping, I also used pinking shears (though other decorative scissors would be lovely) to give the ends a zilly-dilly zig-zag edging.
Each one has a ‘fortune’ inside, just like a fortune cookie except mine are taken from famous quotations. Oh – and each one has a solid chocolate Father Christmas inside (nearly typed that as ‘Fr Christmas’ – can tell I’m in Ireland!).
I designed the numbers in Illustrator and printed them onto Safmat and cut the square scallops they’re mounted on with my Crafty Rob. I stuck the Safmat numbers on each of the scallops and then stuck them onto each carton with a fat dimensional.
The Silent Setter came out of retirement to neatly set a hole at the peak of each one to thread some cord through so there would be something to tie and hang them up with.
I made these a little differently. I scanned in the beauuuutiful image from a Christmas carrier bag I had from many years ago and converted it into a Photoshop brush. I converted the numbers, also created in Illustrator, into brushes as well and printed the whole thing off then made the cartons up. I added a row of tiny pearls (bought on a string from a haberdashers) and a sprinkle of white sugary glitter. This set has a liqueur barrel inside each one – and the person who will get this set will enjoy them very much!
Here they are! I am on the look out for a nice ornament tree or photograph tree to dangle my advent set from but haven’t found any in the shops. Have seen some on-line but would have to take out a bank loan for the shipping! In the meantime, I gathered some twiggy branches, sprayed them with a glossy varnish with a silver sparkle and lit them up with a cheap battery-operated set of LEDs.
The number set is very handy to have – there are two, in fact. Did a round set (harder to cut out by hand!) and another, centred in a square. The outer line of the square is my guide to cut just inside. I made sure to align the rows and columns up so that cutting is easier as you can cut a number of lines at a time.
They are available to download, in one package for 5.00 Euro. Please note that the image on the white cartons is not for sale.
The package includes:
Download here:
Advent calendar number set
(€ 5)
Payment is made via Paypal. Currency conversion is through Paypal.
Your electronic files will be sent to your e-mail address when payment is received.
Thank you for looking
Hel
