Happy Crafty New Year

Good afternoon, I hope your holiday season was filled with laughter, family and lots of fun.  I had an amazing holiday season, from Thanksgiving through the New Year.  Despite all of us having some sort of cold and some point during that entire span.  I was able to visit my parents in the south for Thanksgiving, go on an amazing 7 night southern caribbean cruise with my husband and two oldest, spend the Christmas holiday with my husband’s parents and then New Years nursing some serious head colds!  It has been fun, but it is time to get back to crafting!

Most of the U.S. crafters who are part of CHA (Craft & Hobby Association) are in California this week checking out all the new goodies manufacturers have come up with.  It is funny, I remember watching Carol Duvall on HGTV back in the late 90’s and she would always do a feature on the annual CHA show.  It has to be an amazing experience to go, with WAY too many people, but still, I think my introvert personally could handle a little over load to see all the wonderful new tools and supplies!  Maybe some day.

On to my project for this month (yup, I hope to do this at least monthly)!  I have an added gift also for all you ScanNCut lovers!  I would like to share with you, provided I can figure out how to add it to this blog (if not, post a comment and we can figure out how to get it to you – It will be uploaded into the files on the FB group ScanNCut Applelover53)!  Let’s get started, it is a Valentine’s Card.  And this blog will not go into the specifics on how I designed the card, I have learned all that I know from watching Ashley Morrison’s You Tube channel at Applelover53.  She is definitely worth checking out if you are interested in learning all that your ScanNCut or ScanNCut2 can do.  She has some wonderful tutorials on how to use the FREE canvas software that allows you to make any design you want or convert svg files into fcm files.

I started this project in Brothers Canvas software.  I used basic shapes and just edited them a bit to create the desired effect.  I started with a heart shape and filled the heart with a multiple of small hearts, which I deleted the cut lines in the centers to create to flapping hearts.  I then used the big heart outline and created in inward offset and outward offset of the heart line to create a frame.

To create the card, you should just make two because the negative from one heart can be used for the background of the other, cut two of the hearts with the square (each in different pattern or plain papers) and cut two of the frames.  Another piece of pattern paper was cut to be placed behind the heart with the flapping sides, so create visual interest. I used WeRMemory Keepers Next Level embossing folder on the background portion of card to create beautiful dimension (the negative area).   Apply the background pattern paper to cover the hole created by the negative area and then the embossed paper to a standard base card top folding (I did cut down the background by 1/8 of an inch on each side to create a tiny border around the card) using ATG dry adhesive.  The heart with flapping hearts were adhered using liquid glue after I used a gently pulled each flap towards each other.  Apply glue sparingly so you don’t have it oozing out on the sided and be sure not to glue any flap areas down.  For the heart frame, I ran the die cut through my Xyron stamp maker, this way I knew I would get good coverage.  This took a bit of patience to place, I started at the base and worked my way up, the frame is tight, and I had to use a craft pick to lift up some of the heart flaps as I worked my way up and around the curve.  The sentiment is from The Stamps Of Life December 2015 Card Kit Club and a banner die (also available from TSOL), which I heat embossed using white powder which I added some Elizabeth Crafts micro-fine glitter to. The sentiment was adhered with some KoolTaK clear dimensional tape.

Finish off the card as you see fit with sentiments inside or leave blank to write what you wish.  Thank you for reading.  I do appreciate anyone willing to read my babble.  I am a person that loves to create, engineer and work with numbers, not so much on the writing part.

If you enjoy what I created, but don’t feel you can create it, I do have a few for sale.  I will have several Valentine’s Day cards available on my etsy shop in the next week (if they are not there already).  So please check that out at BarbaraAnnCrafts (etsy.com/shop/barbaraanncrafts). Comments are ALWAYS welcomed and you can find me on instagram at BarbaraAnnCrafts.

 

 

Happy Thanksgiving Wall Art

This was a time consuming venture, or so it seemed, probably because I had to do little pieces at a time due to my son and his nap schedule.  Oh, but the final results, I really love.  I used several different machines to achieve all my leaves and different types of paper.

First I started with my Fiskars Fuse using the 0108 die of a leaf.  I cut and dry embossed this in 4 different colors.  I then took one of just the cut images to my Brother ScanNCut (snc), scanned it in so I could manipulate the size.  Unfortunately I could not imitate the texture from the embossing feature of the 0108 leaf die.  With my snc I was able to save the shape of the image and then size to my liking and I continued to cut out additional leafs from the same 4 colors of cardstock.  I used heavyweight cardstock, this was old stuff I had in my stash from over 10 years ago so I really could not tell you where to find it, but I know it has to be at least 110 lb.  I love the snc so much because I was able to use scrap paper, adhere to my cutting mat, scan in the paper and then utilize all the odd shapes scraps I had to get so many leaves.  As you can see, I did not skimp on the leaves.

I also cut several leaves out from a product called Vertigo, made by ImagineCrafts.  I used the pebbles,prism, rattlesnake and breeze.  I cut these shapes out with my snc (deep cut blade 5.5, speed 1, and pressure 3 – might have to wiggle a bit to get out after cut) as I did not have great success cutting them with the Fiskars Fuse because the material is rather thick.  I cut one regular size of each so that I could use the embossing plate that came with the Fiskars Fuse 0108 die. And another three a bit smaller. These leaves can easily be colored with any permanent marker (I used Bic Mark Its).

I then cut several leaves out of random dark colored card stock I had on hand at various sizes using the snc. I coated these leave with a green pigment ink and embossed with various fall embossing powders I had on hand (copper, orange, green a bit of yellow, red and gold).

I had a small scrap of Doodlebug Sprinkle Vellum in orange so I used my snc and cut several of those also (standard blade 5, speed 2, pressure 2).

Now I had to make my “Happy Thanksgiving.” I opened up Canvas on my laptop and created my sentiment. I welded hanksgiving together after dividing the entire word Thanksgiving and individually moving one letter at a time to the next and welding as I went along. Later I went back and put “i” dots in place and grouped the entire word, Thanksgiving, together. I knew my burlap canvas was 11 x 14 so I rotated the words 90 degrees and enlarged. I might have been able to squeeze on my 12×12 matt but I went ahead and enlarged my work area to 12×24. I then cut the stencil out of clear contact paper (I did a test prior to cutting to see how vinyl stuck to the burlap canvas, but it would not stick, so decided to do the stencil route). The plan contact paper, or shelve lining in clear, worked great (although it would have been nice to have color to see where I was putting the stencil). The contact paper adheres nice enough to the burlap to create a crisp line when stenciling. I cut the contact paper the same I would have done any craft vinyl, stand blade 2, cut pressure 2. The down side to contact paper is it is thin, took some careful handling to remove from backing and get onto burlap canvas, had a few minor tears but because of the sticky aspect I was able to fix. I also had to place the centers of “a” “p” and small spaces in between some of the welding hanksgiving. Again, because the contact paper is sticky, this was fairly easy to do. Again, would have used a colored contact paper but I only have clear on hand, I use it as my transfer paper for vinyl projects, so much cheaper!
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Now paint the stencil! I used black acrylic paint and a foam brush. I did NOT brush, do the traditional dabbing motion to apply the paint (or pouncing!). Remove stencil and additional center pieces carefully. Let dry!

Now it is time to adhere all the leaves. I set all my leave out around the canvas, did a rough placement of the big leaves first. I used Ranger Multi Matte Medium to place most of the leaves. I did have to use my hot glue gun to adhere the vertigo leaves and anything that attached on top of the vertigo. And that it! So simple