It's a Creative World

Tyger Tyger Burning Bright

Tyger Tyger Burning Bright

Hi .... Dolly here.

 

I know that there are a fair few digi scrappers who enjoy the creative inspiration that is on here every day. (And isn’t it amazing that there is inspiration of so many different kinds every single day!!!! I am so chuffed to be a part of the site where so many girls share their creativity. I for one have learnt so much.)

So, for the digi scrappers out there …. and for those who don’t digi scrap but would like to or those of you who would like to use a sketch for anything they want … this is a post for you.

One of the quickest and easiest ways to create a page in no time at all is to use a sketch and/or a template.

Papers scrappers out there, you will no doubt find sketches really useful when you want a bit of inspiration. It is a great way to kick start the old mojo and make a great page.

Digi scrappers can use sketches too, but they can take it one stage further and use a template. Templates are quick and simple to use and a lot of the ground work has been done for you so you just need to add your own papers and photos. Templates are usually psd files, as this one is, and make scrapping in limited time a real breeze.

There are lots of tutorials out there to help use learn how to use templates if you don’t already know – just google for them.

I created this template in Photoshop Elements and it is a quick easy one to use. I hope you have fun with it. Either download the template and use it digitally or just use the idea like a sketch and make a paper page.

 

You can download the template  HERE

 

This is a page I made using that same template.

 

 

The papers and elements I used are all by Dawn Inskip (apart from the journalling block)  from her store at Pickleberrypop and the gorgeous tiger, resting after a long photoshoot, is Tamir.

 

I hope you have fun using the template or the sketch and create some fast fun pages.

 

Dolly x

Simple little gift idea

Fridge Magnet Gifts by Scrapdolly

I saw these cute little fridge magnet frames in The Range just before Christmas and they made such cute stocking filler gifts. They are perfect to pop into a card and send through the post – a cheap, light-weight gift that shows you care.

 

 

They range in size from 3 ½” x 5” right down to 1 ¾” x 2 ½” and the prices go from 49p to £1.49.

There are all sorts of things you could do with them. You could actually fit a small cross stitch design inside if you were very careful. You could stamp and colour an image on card and then even add embellishments onto the frame itself to give added dimension.

 

 

 

You could put a photo inside or, you could do as I have done, and fill them with little digital scrapbook pages.

Yes, me banging on about digital again!

 

 

I made miniature digital pages using PSE 5 and then printed off the images on high quality photo paper and popped them inside the frame. They look very dimensional, are practical because they wipe clean and were just a neat way of giving an inexpensive

but thoughtful gift.

 

 

When finished pop it back into its little bag and it looks like such a special little gift.

 

I can see them appearing on fridges all over the country.

 

 

 

 

I can’t wait to see what you all come up with.

Quick and simple calendar idea

Digital Calendar by Scrapdolly

Happy New Year everyone!

It’s not too late to make that must have addition to your desk. There is nothing like having a homemade calendar with pictures you have taken to enjoy all year and this one is so quick and simple to make. It’s simple and it is digital. Now, paper scrappers, don’t switch off yet … bear with me. You never know!

For those of you who have never tried digital scrapping, here is a fab tip for 2010. Try out digi scrapping by using a trial version of a program and see what you think. The calendar was made using Photoshop Elements 5 and, believe me, you don’t need to be an expert to use the program. There are free trials of Photoshop available on the internet, so you can have a go and see if you like it.

Whilst you may be like me and never give up your paper and glue, I can guarantee you will find digital work fun. There are so many cool products to use and many kits and elements are available, for free, on digital sites around the world. However, a word of warning. Once you are hooked you will find limiting yourself to the free stuff is not an option. You will want to buy some of the fabulous kits out there.  Imagine, you never run out of the letters you need, you have papers in just the exact colour you want, your elements coordinate perfectly and ….. you can use the products again and again and again. Now if you are like me, that is the real bonus. No more holding a sheet of paper and worrying that, if you use it, you won’t have it to use again.

I made the calendar small enough to fit on my desk. It stands in a CD case and takes up very little room.

You could just as easily make a thick cardboard base and bind it along the top with a bind it all or ribbons and have a simple flip calendar.

Making anything less than A4 means you can print it out yourself at home, although there are plenty of places you can have digital work printed. I printed the pages out on archival card. I have an Epson printer and use Epson Archival Matt paper for digital printing. The quality is superb and the card is the best I have found. You will need to find what is best for your printer. As a general rule of thumb, the same make paper as the printer is usually the best option.

The cute little calendar blocks are by Dawn Inskip from Pickleberrypop http://www.pickleberrypop.com/shop/manufacturers.php?manufacturerid=42

I loved the fact that you not only got the calendar blanks but also the mask so you could fill the block with the paper or pattern of your choice and make it really coordinated.

Each page follows the same format and uses coordinated digital elements from a range of designers. A lot of the products are by Dawn Inskip, but I have also used products from Peppermint Creative, K Pertiet, Sunflower designs and many others.

Trying something small like the calendar is a great way to start digital scrapping. Go on – give it a go.

Digital Stamps

I LOVE getting inky and gluey, in fact crafting for me is an excuse to get grubby and covered in glitter. So the thought of a grub like ME going digital might seem strange but Digital stamps give you the best of BOTH worlds!

I discovered Mo Manning's digital stamps through a friend's blog. Maurie J Manning is an illustrator of children's books and her style is just GORGEOUS- apologies for gushing! Her drawings of children capture so perfectly the joy, beauty and innocence of childhood!

So a digital stamp- what's that then?!

Well once you've chosen the stamp you want to purchase (I have a VERY long wish list!) all you do is pay through Paypal on the website.

Soon you receive an email with details of how to download your stamp- so that's it- no waiting for the postie to bring your goodies!!

Digital stamps are like any jpeg they can be resized in a photo editing program, which means you can choose a size to suit the card you have in mind! You can print out as many copies as you like too!

Print out the digital stamp ( I like to use fairly heavy weight, quality cardstock such as Crafter's Companion box weight cardstock) and then colour away!

I was worried that the inkjet ink might run with my Copic Pens but I've had no such problems- the cardstock you print on is probably the most important factor! I've not had any problems with water colour pencils either!

The colouring in is my favourite part! Here is Bella and her dog Bronte all coloured in (with Copics) waiting to be made into a card.

 

Her is Talia the beautiful fairy who loves bubbles!

Happy crafting!

Love,

GlitteryKatie xXx 

Digi Decoupage

Hi From Jakey

Today I want to share another idea for a cute little gift that won’t break the bank.

You’ll need a regular sized terracotta pot, and holder.

White acrylic paint

Some printed and cut out digi images

Napkin podge, or similar

A couple of lolly sticks

And a potted primrose – usually only about 60-75p

First you need to paint your pot and saucer. I find several light coats are best.

While the pot is drying, and in between coats, print some pretty digi images and cut them out. Normally for hybrid projects I’d print them out on card, but for decoupage, plain white paper is better.

I used Kate Hadfield's

Sunburst Alpha

Spring Flora Doodles

available from the Lilypad

Using napkin podge, stick the images to your pot and smooth out any bubbles gently with your fingertips. It’s pretty fast drying to you might want to mark where the images are to go first.

Print the sentiment onto card and cut it out. Ink the edges if desired. Glue a lolly stick across the back of the sentiment for stability, and another one in the opposite direction – this will go into the soil of your plant to hold the word above the flowers.

Pop the potted plant into the holder and add the word – and you’re done!

You could use shellac or clear varnish to coat the pot but I didn’t bother and the whole thing took no time to make.  Might be a nice Mother’s Day gift, or Easter pressie for a special Nan.

Thanks for joining us today!

Love Jakey

and the creative team.

 

 

 

 

The last page of our A to Z Journal....

Can you believe we have actually finished this project? It just seems like yesterday that we launched the A to Z Art Journal project and a whole year has passed. We hope you have enjoyed it as much as we have.

And what have we learnt from this year long adventure?

Caz says - "I will NEVER do double pages again"

Lemon says - " I have learnt a lot about my daughter, she contributed a lot to the journal and changed quite a few things."

Di says - "I will not bind the journal up front - it is so much easier to work with a single page rather than a book! And its easier to photograph or scan"

Here are our pages:

Lemon book of growing up

After browsing all two pages of the dictionary this seemed the most appropiate for my daughter....I hope she never looses her ZING

Di Book of my life

The dictionary tells me that zany means - "Comical because of incongruity or strangeness; biZarre." Well I guess that's me! biZarre so my life must be Zany... And my DD caZ is Zany too!

A message from Di:

As we arrive at the end of the alphabet, I must confess that I have enjoyed the journey so much that I commit to making an Art Journal for my dear sister Linda. Maybe I can share bits and pieces of this new journey next year. X

Caz

For some reason or another I can't seem to upload my page. I will try again tomorrow (saturday). This is what happens when you leave everything till the last minute!!

And finally Karen Leahy (AKA Scrapdolly) has sent her Z page already!

Finally, Z is NOT an easy letter so here are just a few suggestions:

• Zealous
• Zeal
• Zoo
• Zip
• Zany
• ZZZ's
• Zesty
• Zippy
• Zutter

And if you want to see loads of strange words starting with the letter Z - try here

http://www.crosswordsolver.org/definition/Z

Thank you for joining us on this wonderful journey.  To mark the end of this project the fabulous Kate Hadfield has created some rather festive digi goodies for you to download absolutely FREE.

     

Simply click on this linkie dink and help yourself.  Not only can you snaffle the doodles but there is a discount voucher for you to use in her shoppie shop . 

The cReative giRls XXX

Our Jakey had some problems with the link on Mozilla.  If you can't get it to download drop us a line at acreativeworld@hotmail.co.uk and I'll whizz it over to you this evening - Maria x
 

Using digital brushes

Are you like me and love digital brushes but don’t use them as much as you should because you are not very good at digital scrapping? Below are a few simple ideas on how to use them.

I tend to buy a lot of my brushes from Designer Digitals and all the ones used here are from there. I am using Photoshop elements 4 but the principle will be the same for most software.

Open your photo and then open a new document that is an inch wider on both sides.

Click the icon that says “tile the windows” and using the move tool [the top one on your left hand palette] drag the photo onto the blank canvas, or you can make the new document A4 size and after you have moved the photo onto it you can just crop it to get the white area that you want.

Then go to layer…new…layer. You can name it “brush” if you want but I just left mine as “layer 1” as it was the only layer I was going to use.

Now you need to load your brush, it’s on the left hand palette about three quarters of the way down. You now have a new palette across the top. Click on the arrow next to the squiggly line, then little blue arrow, then on load brushes. This will take you to a browser showing which brushes you have loaded to your software, I tend to have all my brushes in a separate folder. Click on the one you wish to use. The brush I used was on the edge flourishes.

On the brush palette you can change the size of the brush to fit your photo by using the slide bar. If you the hover your mouse over the area you will see the outline of the brush to help you see what it will look like.

Now click on the colour palette and choose a colour that compliments your photo, then click onto the white canvas. You can also change the direction of the brush by clicking on “more options” and on the compass changing direction of it.

I used a frame brush in exactly the same way as above for a complete frame around the photo. The brush i used was frames with flourishes.

I used stamped sentiments to stamp a brush directly over a photo then open a new layer as before and then just stamp it where appropriate.

Don’t forget that you just use them on a blank canvas and then print them out onto cardstock, paper or a transparency and use as accents or background papers in your scrapbooking or cardmaking.

I hope this has spurred you on to use digital brushes.

lemon xx

A non fattening Easter treat for you

The girls at It's a creative world are so excited to be joined by the uber-talented Kate Hadfield today.

Kate has created these fabulous Easter digi doodles for YOU and they are absolutely FREE.

You can download the doodles by clicking on the Linky dink and have fun creating.

So, what are you waiting for? Get creating!!!

We at It's a creative world would like to wish you a very happy Easter.

Thank you so much to Kate.

A Hybrid Card ...

I love having the freedom of using both traditional products and digital products when making cards.  Today I have a card to share with you that combines digital paper and elements with traditional 'real life' rubber stamps and embellishments.

I've used one of the sweet Sugar Nellie stamps available from Funky Kits and coloured her with a combination of watercolour pencils, Marvy Le Plume brush pens and a waterbrush.  When she was dry I trimmed her white cardstock background and doodled and inked the edges.  I added a tiny diamond to her bunch of flowers to give her a bit of sparkle.

Once I'd stamped the image it was time to assemble the background.  I used a kit from The Shabby Princess and Photoshop Elements 5 as my editing programme.  I opened each piece of paper as a separate item and resized the blue to 14cms square and the green and the spotty to 12 cms.  I added an inked edge action from Atomic Cupcake to each piece and assembled my layers, adding the white border and remembering to add a drop shadow from the layer styles palette.  Two photocorners finished off the digital part of my card.  This is the document that I saved and printed as a jpeg image.

I added small brads to the photocorners, attached the stamped image with foam pads and added letter tiles (printed in Waterfalls font and then trimmed and inked the edges) to spell out the greeting.

(Shabby Princess digital kit, Sugar Nellie stamp, Creative Cafe brads, Atomic Cupcake inked edge action, Waterfalls font, Colorbox charcoal chalk ink)

Funky Christmas Cards

This week I have been playing with a really funky and modern Christmas Digital Kit and making some hybrid cards. There are hundreds of digital kits available to buy and download from the Internet and by printing the papers and elements on your home printer you can make fantastic cards and even better - because it's a kit everything matches so no need to spend hours searching through your stash for a piece of paper to go with the other elements.

I bought the Funky Fa La La kit from The DigiChick and I added some Doodlebug paperfrills, my favourite 'can't make a card without it' black and white striped paper from Pink Petticoat, charcoal chalk ink and a black pen for my doodled edges.

Once I'd paid for, downloaded and unzipped the files all I had to do was print, cut out and glue down to make my cards.
I used my charcoal chalk ink to ink around the edges and to give some added detail and stop them looking too plain I used my pen to quickly doodle a line all around the edge of the card blank. It's not really straight but that just adds to it's charm!

I challenge you to use a digital kit to make some cards this week!

Love from Andrea xx