Scraps From My Heart

Welcome to Crafting 101 — where the best artists in the Blogosphere share with you the basics of rubber stamping, paper crafting and scrapbooking. We’ll even teach you how to use that Photoshop program you have sitting under your desk right now! All this for the bargain price of FREE! Read on… Best of the Blogosphere Crafting lists. Remember these lovely little boxes don’t show up in Google Reader, so if you can’t see them, click on over to my site and they will magically appear. (When you see the boxes, there is a small “read more” in the bottom, right hand corner… click it and you can see the list with pictures as a web page!) All the Best Tutorials: How To Videos: Tips You Shouldn’t Miss: Templates To Help You Make Stuff: Photoshop Tips and Tricks: Please remember that my site is powered by YOU. Please comment here if you’d like me to read your blog or if you have seen some amazing blog art that I’m missing! Thanks!

While at the crop at the Scrap Shack in Frisco, I got to see two new Cricut storage solutions! Both ideas were brand new to me and I hadn’t seen them anywhere on the net so I asked Tammy and Miriam if I could post these ideas and they agreed! Those girls are the greatest! Above is the custom created Cricut cartridge storage which comes with the new red & black Crop In Style binder, ALL the product info sheets blown up and in color for every cart on the market enclosed in clear page protectors, the hard acrylic sheets to hold the cartridges, and the clear pockets for holding the overlays and booklets. Miriam loves this solution because everything is together and at hand - 1 container for it all! This retails for $79.99 and holds 80 cartridges. Go here to see more pictures, get more information and to order: Memory Lane Tammy came up with another great concept for storing the cartridges and overlays which is the flip up Plano boxes shown here. She removed every other flip up section and then placed the overlays directly behind the cartridges. She keeps the booklets in a separate snapware plastic box. I found the flip up boxes for sale HERE at Bass Pro Shops. I think the model you want is 3714, costs $14.49 and holds 16 cartridges.

Have you seen the infomercial for the Cricut? If not, you can view it HERE! They do some unusual things with the Cricut on the infomercial such as etching glass and cutting out appliques. For those of you interested in quilting also, check out the infomercial to see them make a piecing. Also know that it is a little more complicated than it initially appears (isn’t everything??). Because of the complication, Psychomoms.com has compiled a list of tips for cutting fabric with the Cricut. Click HERE! to see all those tips!

Free 3600×3600 overlay. DL Here

For months you’ve wondered how to make those pretty stripe patterns on the digital papers you use for scrapbooking. Here is a very easy way to do that. First, open an image. 350 x 150 should work fine. I used a white background, but you can experiment with any color you want. Pick the selection tool from the tool bar and draw out a vertical rectangle. The marching ants will move around the edges. Use your flood fill tool (the little bucket) to fill with a color. I chose blue for the first stripe. Go back to the selection tool and start all over. Make a rectangle again, but fill it with a different color. I made mine yellow and made it skinnier. You can do it any way you want to, and the best way to find what you like is to experiment. Go across until you have as many stripes as you want. The stripes need to completely reach both top and bottom. If there is even a sliver of space, it will show up as a break in the final pattern. To help with this, when you have made all the stripes you want, get your selection tool and drag inside the image near the edges but not right against them. CTRL C to copy, and then CTRL V to make a new image. This assures you that you’ve cropped out any breaks at the very edge. Save this as a JPEG into this directory: Local Disc C:/Program Files/Corel/Patterns. It is ready to use without having to reload the program. To use: open a new document, size of your choice, pick a pattern fill, find your newly made pattern and fill! Here is the end result from the quick stripe pattern I made for this How To.

Fun little tutorial for Paper Craft Planet - it’s S’mores mix, in a jar.  I just love the little Peeps, peeking out of the sides.  You’ll have to go HERE to the Paper Craft Planet tutorial area to see the directions! Here’s a close-up of the lid.  I painted it white and then dipped it in blue glitter.  The directions for baking the s’mores bars are hiding inside the card, on the lid. The butterfly is from Molly Stamps’ Wings on Things set .  I colored it to match the paper and used eyelets to tie ribbon through the body.  For my fellow Molly Stamps’  design team members:  I NAILED this challenge!  Bring it on!  Let’s see your Wings on Things Cards and let’s see those eyelets!  The gauntlet has been thrown!

In the previous post I talked about wanting to makeover some of the pages. I spent some time working on that this afternoon. I really wanted to redo the pics/frames, but I didn’t feel like starting fresh with the pictures. The pages is busy, but hopefully this is its last draft. I am very pleased with this page! So much better than the first. Whew!

A couple of weeks ago I talked about staying true to your style. I saw a great example of WHY that’s so important today when I was looking through some of the 2008 pages I created. I have pages I haven’t printed that have pics from July of ‘08…this is unusual for me. Ha! Anyway, when I was looking through the digital pages to see what needed to be printed, finished, etc., I came across some pages that I’m not too crazy about. I remember right around Christmas-time I was doing a lot of digi, but I remember rushing through it, like I thought I *had* to get it done. I guess I was on some mission to finish 2008. It’s really obvious to me that I was in some kind of rush and not really making the most of it. I was in “performance” mode and not really enjoying it. I think it’s so weird how I can take something that’s supposed to be enjoyable (a hobby) and turn it into slave-driving work. Oops! This is a page I created around that time, but I never finished it, until today. I like this page! This was a page I created during that time that I also really like. There’s texture, layers, and the pictures are a main focus of the page. I realize that’s my style. I like lots of layers, texture, vibrance, etc. This page lacks vibrance, texture, or any fun. Hahaha! I know…I’m getting down on myself, but I wanted to show a page that lacks my love and enthusiasm for scrapbooking. I don’t think I’ll be able to send this one off to be printed until it looks like I was having fun creating it. I have pages that I don’t particularily care for, but I am leaving them alone. ha! This page…honestly…looks like was thrown up on by the brush pallette. Hah! It needs a makeover. So be true to your style. Don’t rush. This should be fun!

I’ve really been on a hybrid kick the last few days. It’s been a lot of fun! But…there are some things about it that are bothering me a bit. I noticed that the colors are different from the original design and what’s printed. I think I’ll go back and look at what I have created on Photoshop in the past and what I had printed professionally and see if there are differences there…I don’t think there are. It’s hard to tell on this blog, but when I look at the completed project and compare it to what I created in Photoshop, there’s a big difference with some of the colors. The original Photoshop design. This was inspired by Rhonna Farrer . I really like her bright and fun designs. Despite the color differences, I am having a lot of fun with hybrid…a little too much fun! Ha!

This was the second hybrid page I created yesterday of my sister Katie. This part was created in Photoshop. I saw some ideas on Rhonna Farrer’s blog that I really liked. One idea was the damask pattern blending behind Katie. Again, there are some differences between the Photoshop and the completed project because of the printer and taking pictures. This is the completed page. I love the butterflies! When I was creating the first part of the page in Photoshop I imagined the butterflies and I couldn’t wait to get to that part. I had so much fun making this page! At first I had this page created without the word ’sweet’. My eyes told me that I needed to fill that spot. So I went back to my Photoshop design, played around with fonts until I found this one and then I printed it on some transparent paper.