Feature a Friend {on Friday}

Happy Friday and welcome back to Feature a Friend!  I'm so glad you are here!  Today's post is a great one so get yourself a cup of tea and take a look at some of these great projects using stamps!  Our guest today, Hilde, is all the way from Norway and a dear friend of mine through the Scrapping Everyday Miracles facebook group.  Hilde is married with two boys ages 10 &13.  Her home is shared with her father-in-law and a number of pets: dog, cat and budgies. She works full time as an engineer at construction sites and spends her leisure time driving kids to activities, running this place called home and scrapping and make cards.

Hilde shares this about herself to help us get to know her better . . .

"I started my paper craft career as a card maker in 2005, but transformed to a layout scrapper a year later. My main scrap subjects are - quite naturally- my family, but I also scrap about subjects found in our everyday life – the pets, our friends, funny signs and anything that makes my day special. With two boys, my specialty is making masculine cards!

As life is busy, I hardly have time to sit down and scrap or make cards for hours, and this is reflected in my style: often simple I-can-do-that creations with plenty of white space or quite linear. But on occasions I get carried away and keep adding details as if I were paid by the number  J 

I’m on the DT at Cardabilities (http://cardabilities.blogspot.ca/) and Once Upon A Sketch (http://onceuponasketchblog.blogspot.no/).  I have been published several times and I still enjoy participating in challenges on challenge blogs!"

Here is Hilde . . .

My creative journey with Close To My Heart (CTMH), started a while back when I won a prize donated by Elizabeth. She was kind enough to sent me an idea book, too, and I immediately fell in love with the stamps. We don't have any CTMH consultants in Norway, but luckily we have internet so we can shop abroad :-)

One of the stamp set which really caught my eyes was C1459 Stitched Together. I'm too lazy to pull out my sewing machine to use on my layouts and cards, so these stitch stamps were perfect for me.

Card: example from CTMH

As I both make layout and cards, I though this stamp set would be a great all purpose set - and I was right - I have used it on layouts, cards and even canvases. I have a few ideas to share with you today, as well as a few tips too.

Have you ever tryed stamping on shrink film to make your own embellishments? It's so fun and easy!
For this card I made buttons by stamping with the circular stamp on transparent shrink film. If you want to do your own, make sure you make the holes large enough, or the thread will not pass.

I used white shrink film and the heart shaped stamp to make some of the embellishments on this canvas:

"God Jul" means Merry Christmas in Norwegian.

As you can see I have used one of the border stamps from the set around the edges . I have heat embossed them to make them stand more out, and I did that with the red large heart, too. When it comes to stamping on uneven surfaces, as on modelling paste I have used for this canvas, I suggest to not use the acrylic block:  just ink up the stamp, place it where you want the image, and press gently with your fingers. If you notice there are some missing parts of the stamped circles on my canvas, I have done it on purpose, applying randomly a second layer of modelling paste, after stamping.

My last example for you is a 12x12 layout.  I was happy to discover the border stamps could be used to make a continuous border around the edges (which is easier to do because they are clear stamps)! A few stamped circles as part of my design, gave the layout a uniform look.

"Fingernem" means Dexterious in Norwegian

It's not easy too see it's faux stitching, right?
I hope you have enjoyed this post, and that you have gotten some ideas on how to use stamps on your creations!
And you are welcome to visit my blog - I just love visitors!

Thank you so very much Hilde!  I love each of your creations!!  I do hope you'll stop by Hilde's blog and say "hi" - she has a lot of talent to share.  I'm so glad to call her friend and sister in Christ.
Happy Crafting,   

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Close To My Heart Digital

Do you wish you had more time to scrapbook?  Do you find yourself looking at scrapbook pages that others (maybe even you yourself in your previous life - lol) have made and think "I wish I had time to do that"?  I have great news for you!  I scrapbook and I think these things often!  That is one of the many reasons I love Close To My Heart's digital Studio J program!

Even though Studio J^® is fast and easy to use, it is helpful to know some great tricks that can make customizing your layouts even more exciting. Here are some Studio J tricks straight from our professional Close To My Heart artists:

1. Customize your background and texture paper. You can change the color and intensity of the background and texture paper included in whichever kit you choose. Simply select the piece of background and texture paper, change the color in the color selection tool, and increase or decrease the intensity of the color in that same popup box.  This is a great tool to use when you love a layout or even a paper pack but it doesn't go with your photos - so super simple to just change your favorite paper pack colors to match! 

2. Crop My Stickease^® quotes, titles, and tags. The cropping feature on the My Stickease images allows you to select a section of a quote, title, or tag to use as a border or other embellishment.

3. Create a customized My Stickease image. If you have a specific image in mind to use as an embellishment on your page, you can create a customized My Stickease to fit your theme perfectly. Simply add a text box, photo hanger, ribbon, ribbon slides, and Stickease to create the little suitcase! So easy! Be sure to crop or send elements behind other elements when necessary, and add several elements together for a unique look!

4. Select more than one element at a time. If you want to move several elements of your layout at once, simply click and drag your mouse around the elements you would like to select. Let’s take buttons, for example. After the buttons have been selected, you can click the icons in the popup box to choose to align the buttons vertically or horizontally if you desire.

5. Make faux washi tape with vellum text boxes.  I LOVE this idea!  To create the look of a piece of clear washi tape, make a small rectangular text box, filled with vellum background (this is the default color for text boxes). You can make the tape strips as large or small as you want, or even layer them for more emphasis.  

6. Stretch one photo across multiple photo wells. If you have fewer photos than photo wells, instead of deleting the excess wells, try scaling the picture to a larger size and then copying the picture to other photo wells and matching the photos up until they align with an almost seamless image. This trick works best with photo wells that are adjacent to each other.

7. Create ruffled ribbon. Select “Ribbons” in the drop-down menu under the Embellishments toolset. Choose ribbon tab and rotate the tab so that it is vertical on the page. Then layer several tabs on top of one another, sending every other one to the back to create a ruffled look.

8. Create a jagged border with text boxes. You can create a jagged border simply by rotating multiple text boxes about 45 degrees and making them the same color as the background. Put these boxes on top of a long, rectangular box of another color, and you’ve got a jagged border!

9. Change the background of your layout. Sometimes you may like the photo and journal arrangement in a layout, and yet want to change the background colors. Because photos sit on top of everything else, this is easy to do. Simply pull a journaling box over the space you want for a different background and fill it with a color from the color selection tool or a patterned paper from the Papers toolset. Then, send it backwards until the photo wells are on top of your new background.

Bonus Trick! Use keyboard keys to make embellishments. Did you know that some of the best tools for creating custom embellishments are the basic keys on your keyboard? It’s as simple as typing into a journaling box with no background color. Use periods to make a polka dot pattern, angle brackets to create a trendy Chevron look, overlapping pound signs to make burlap, question marks to make rope, and so much more!

Ready to try out some of these tricks yourself?  Head on over to Studio J - create a FREE account and play!  Remember this month I have a contest going on over on my facebook page for a free Studio J layout (and the odds are really in your favor right now - lol)!  Create a layout on Studio J, take a screen shot of your layout, post your screen shot on my facebook page and be entered to win!  Contest ends October 31st! 

Don't forget that October is the perfect month to give Studio J a go because for every 9 layouts you create, you’ll get a 10th layout for FREE!

Happy Scrapping,
 

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Close To My Heart & Cricut Craft Room (Part 3)

On Monday I shared with you a great article on how to use the free program Cricut Craft room and the Close To My Heart cartridges.  For the set up instructions please see the article HERE.   Today I'm going to share with you how to make the border on this super cute scrapbook page using the Close To My Heart Art Philosophy Cartridge and Cricut Craft Room.
 

All Boy page

Want to create a border that spans the entire length of your 12" page? It’s easy!

1. In Craft Room, change the mat size to 12" x 24" under Machine & Mat tab on the left of the screen.
2. Drag your selected border to the mat and rotate it so it is vertical.
3. Change the height of the border to 12". It will automatically change the width proportionally unless you click the aspect ratio button between the width and height measurements.
4. Whether you have a 12" × 24" mat or a 12" × 12" mat, you can use this function with a 12" × 12" piece of paper. Simply place the border as close to the top of the Craft Room mat as possible, but not exactly flush with the top.

5. Cut the piece following the prompts on the computer screen and Cricut^® machine.

To create the title with the letters joined together to form one piece instead of individually cut letters…

1. Drag your letters to the mat
2. Overlap portions of each letter to connect them
3. Use the Weld feature to join the letters together seamlessly.
4. Cut the piece following the prompts on the computer screen and Cricut^® machine.

There are so many possibilities to explore in the Cricut^® Craft Room using the versatile Art Philosophy and Artiste cartridges from Close To My Heart! If you have any questions about using Cricut^® Craft Room, visit www.cricut.com where a Cricut^® employee will be glad to help you. Be sure to get your Art Philosophy and Artiste Cricut^®cartridges today in order to create with them in this new and exciting environment!

The Tag in this layout can be found here - they are super cute on layouts but I love using them as gift tags as well :)  

Happy Crafting, 

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Close To My Heart & Cricut Craft Room (part 2)

Yesterday I posted a great article from Close To My Heart on how to use the Cricut Craft Room (a FREE program) to create a gorgeous butterfly card!  For the basic set up instructions see that post HERE.  Today I'm going to share how to make this birthday card using the Art Philosophy Cartridge and Cricut Craft Room.

Birthday Greetings card

Here’s how to create the bracket frame as shown in this Birthday Greetings card:

1. Drag a card base from Art Philosophy cartridge and size it to be 9" wide and 4½" high.
2. Add a 1½" bracket frame (from the Basic tab) to the center of the right side of the card. So far, all of the shapes have been placed in Layer 1. You can add additional layers using the Layer feature located toward the top of the screen, directly above the mat. Each Layer will be cut from a separate sheet of paper and is indicated by a different color on the screen. Using the Layer feature allows you to fully design your Cricut^® shapes before cutting any pieces.
3. Add a second Layer by clicking the plus sign. Click and hold the Layer 2 tab and drag the tab to the left so it is first in the row. This allows you to see the second Layer on top of the first so you can visualize your finished project. Drag a 3" bracket frame to the card base and position it over the 1½" frame. Then, still using Layer 2, add a 1½" bracket frame in the center of the 3" frame.
4. Maneuver the Layer 2 frames so that they perfectly line up with the Layer 1 frame. Use your keyboard arrows for exactness.
5. Cut the pieces following the prompts on the computer screen and Cricut^® machine. Layer 2 will be cut first, so be sure to load that paper first. Then load a new sheet of paper for the Layer 1 pieces.
6. Embellish the card as desired.

 

Tomorrow I'll share how to make a scrapbook layout using this great tool from Cricut!

Happy Crafting, 

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