Guest Designer time! Welcoming Jakey :)

Hi! Jakey here, and I’m very honoured to be invited by the Creative World team to share a li’l technique of mine with you today. I’ve been playing with transparency – well, who hasn’t, eh? And I’ve had some fun making and adapting my own ‘ghost lettering’ to add to cards, layouts and other projects. Transparent letters can be quite expensive to buy – but they’re so easy and economical to make! Great fun too, and they give you a fab opportunity to get your hands grubbied up with paint and inks… now what could be better? So, to start with, you will need some supplies – but it’s almost certainly the sort of stuff you have in your stash already! You’ll need: Inkjet transparency sheets Assorted acrylic paints A pen that will write on glossy surfaces – a slick writer or gelly roll. Inks – chalk and/or alcohol Any bits you want to add… beads, glitter, bling, buttons… whatever. You’ll also need access to a PC or some lettering templates. I make mine in Microsoft Publisher, but you could use Word, or whichever DTP program you use normally. If using good old fashioned lettering templates, just place template over the acetate sheet and trace the letters! Cut out, and decorate – nothing could be easier. If you plan to make them with Publisher I have added some instructions here for you to follow. For the beginners amongst us, I have assumed no prior knowledge - so all you PC whizzkids, do not be offended please! Open publisher and choose blank page > word art (left hand side). Select highlighted box on top upper left, giving you an outline font. Type your title word. Select edit text and choose font >choose bold. Click text box to select and stretch word to the size you require. In edit text choose format text > grey > at 1 point. The reason you want grey is to avoid deep black outlines. You are going to cut these letters out and the grey outline is for guidance only. Cut just inside the lines, so your transparency letter is clear of any markings. (This, you may like to add back in later with a slick writer style pen for a freestyle look). Print title word out at desired size. Cut out and you're ready to play! Do remember to set your printer to ‘mirror image’ or reverse printing and to print onto the rough side of the acetate. This way, you can flip it over once printed, and the good smooth side will be the side that shows on your project. So - You now have your blank ‘ghost letters’, which you can grunge up, jazz up, colour up, doodle on – however your mood takes you! 1. The letter has been cut out and dry brushed with acrylic paints. 2. I’ve added some scribbled circles to the letter here. 3. Next I blobbed paint onto the circles. 4. Then added some doodling detail – and I’m done! Took minutes! A different style. Flowers and dots! And again, but with a bit of chalk ink smudged on the back – who says you can’t do freestyle lettering? Lol! Read on for some tips on having fun with these versatile letters – but why stop at lettering? Print out butterflies, birds, flowers, stars… anything you like! Paint them, doodle on them, add glitter, bling, alcohol inks…. your imagination is your only limit! A few tips for enjoying these versatile letters/shapes! The transparency will accept acrylic paint very well. Paint on the back (rough side) for more durability. Or paint on the front and scratch some paint off for a grungy look. You can completely cover the letters with paint or dry brush as I have here. Use a slick writer to doodle outlines, circles, flowers, dots or stars… or whatever you want to go on them. Write on them, add glitter, buttons and beads… Alter the colour with alcohols inks, or stamp over them using stazeon inks for a permanent finish. Why not paint first – then stamp over? You really can do so much with them – and can customise them easily to fit your project. I’m sure you can think of lots more ways to use this technique. Just remember to have fun whatever you do! Happy Scrappin! Jakey xx A HUGE thanks to Jakey from the Creative World team - there's a little something on it's way to you in the post!! ;)

Altered Wrapping Paper

Hello, it's Joy here again, bringing you some messy play. This project was an accident... I decided to ALTER wrapping paper after I wrapped the present - so very messy and freestyle! But if you want a tidy version, you could alter and then wrap. ;0)

I started stamping using black acrylic paint. The stamps in this picture are Stampers Anonymous, Artgirlz, Autumn Leaves, Heidi Swapp, Blonde Moments, Rambling Rose, PSX, and Cats Life Press stamps.

I then blended lumiere paints all over the page, outlined and coloured letters with Sakura glaze and souffle pens and used 3 dimensional paint to make swirls and dots.

Rambling Rose swirl for some magic...

Stampers Anonymous stamp.... love how well the glaze pens and paint worked on this one to make it pop

Cute little PSX stamp, Heidi Swapp ('friend') and Cats Life Press stamps. See how the gorgeous green souffle pens highlight the stamps even with squiggly squiggles?

Artgirlz fabby house stamp and word stamps, markers, gel pens, 3d paint. gel pens make that house pretty funky!

That's it for today. EnJoy playing XXX

Very quick cards - playing with fonts!

Hello! It's Jo here, coming to you from a very wet part of the world, just about managing to keep my feet dry! I am not the world's best card maker, I'll freely admit, but I do like to make cards for special occasions, and I certainly appreciate getting home-made cards. If I'm making cards, it's usually at the last minute, which means that anything that can be produced quickly is good! Here are three very quick cards that I've made, all a variation on the same theme, which is using a mix of fonts to produce a more interesting end result. For this first one, I've used some bright, stripy paper for my background, and matched the 'fill' colours in my text boxes to the colours in the paper. I've used a different font for each word, and printed the text on glossy photo paper, which just lifts it a little bit. From the top, the fonts I've used are: Rockwell Extra Bold, 2Peas Duck Duck Goose, Bauhaus 93, Action Is, and Mom's Typewriter. For this next one, again I've used scrapbook paper (Blonde Moments) for the background, but this time used only muted colours. From the top, the fonts are: LB PlainStamp, 28 Days Later, and CK Grunge. And for my third card I wanted to go bright and zingy again, and I've used some more stripy paper, and a font that, ordinarily, I would avoid like the plague as I think it's so widely used in 'professional' documentation, Times New Roman, but when it's 'rainbowed up', I really like it!! So, three really quick cards. Have a play around with your fonts, and next time you're card-making, try a little experimentation!

Button Heart

I imagine that a lot of you are like myself and have LOADS of buttons lying around; well here is a quick and simple project that will use some of those spare buttons. The base is a 4x4 inch deep edge canvas, painted to the colour you want. Draw a heart shape on a piece of painted/coloured card and cut out. Using Glossy Accents (or any other strong clear drying glue) start to place the buttons round the edge of the design, I used all different sizes and pale colours in mine. When you have filled the centre of the shape you will find that you need to put buttons on top to fill in the gaps, keep going until you are happy with the result. Hope you have fun with this project. Trish xxx

Altered Bags

It's Maria and Joy here today, bringing you two projects on altered bags. These are great fun for adding a bit of personality to your bags.

Maria used Making Memoriess Boho Chic Lauren cardstock, sticker and brad. Prima blossoms and buttons all edged in Milled Lavender distress ink.

Maria is going to use hers as a portable sewing kit to keep in her crop bag.

Joy used a clippykit bag, adding in ATCs from friends and from her own collection.

Joy topped off the bag with memory frames and charms.

We'd love to see your altered bags, so please leave us a comment with a link. :0)

It's Monday.....

....and that means we have a little more Use Your Stash inspiration for you! If you're anything like me you can never throw anything out before seeing if there are bits on it you can use first :) I am most like this when it comes to throwing out clothes, I have to have the buttons off shirts, the lacy bits of bras, pockets off jeans and sometimes I love the pattern of something so much I have to keep the whole thing! But then these 'bits' sit in a drawer taking up space and I never sem to use them! Sound familiar?? I'm sure it does! :D So today I am challenging you to go dig through your stash and find that bit of fabric or lace, or jeans pocket and use it on a LO! Here is mine! A LO of my DHs son in a moody surfer/sk8er boy pose. I used one of his billabong shirts that was destined for the bin!! Chopped it up and stitched it to my cardstock, added some grungy stamping and some metalic rub ons that pick out the blue on the fabric enhancing it! A simple yet effective LO, and very cheep!!

Please excuse the not so great photos of the LO, but it's so windy outside I just couldn't get the LO to stay still enough to get some good photos :)

Thanks for visiting!!

Caz

xx

The Wonderful World of Fonts!

Do you love using different fonts on your layouts?

There are so many to choose from aren’t they.

Today I’m going to list a few sites that I think are the best for fonts and also give you some tips on organising them.

Firstly here are the sites I like to use for my free fonts.

1001 Free Fonts

Dafont

Font River

SharkShock

Urban Fonts

Disney Fonts

ScrapnFonts (chargeable)

Create your own font

Free Scrapbook Fonts

If you are a Quickutz/Sizzix Fan then you can get fonts that match all your fabulous die cut alphabets, how cool!

Find them here

Quickutz

Sizzix Fonts

Now some of you may be a wiz with fonts but other people simply don’t know how to install them which is fair enough. I’ll try to explain very briefly how to do it.

The easiest fonts to download are TTF (true type fonts). These don’t need any unzipping or anything. You simply download the file, locate it and place it in your fonts folder.

Your fonts folder ‘should’ be in your control panel but may be different depending on your operating system. Click start and control panel. You should find a folder labelled Fonts in here but if not then go to Appearance and Themes and it should be in there. Some files are downloaded as Zip files which means you will need to extract the files from it with something likeWinzip and once extracted you would just do the same and put the file in your Fonts folder.

I hope that makes sense?

As well as downloading them there are programs that you can buy to help you manage them. The predominant ones are - XFonter The Font Thing AMP Font Viewer

I personally have XFonter and love it but you do have to pay for it although a free trial is available.

XFonter

X-Fonter is an advanced font manager, especially created for web-designers, graphic artists and font fanatics. In a simple user interface you can quickly find the font that you need. Even with thousands of fonts on your computer, with X-Fonter they're just a few clicks away.

• Supports TrueType, OpenType, Postscript Type 1, Raster, Vector Fonts
• Organize your fonts in custom Collections
• Preview and Use Fonts without installation
• Install or Uninstall any TrueType Fonts
• Search for fonts on any drive/directory
• Font Filtering by Font Family, Codepages and Font Style
• Adjustable Colors, Styles and Sizes
• Character map (ASCII and Unicode)
• Image editor with nice effects (JPG, GIF and clipboard output)
• Very simple and intuitive interface
• No extra DLL's required
• Uninstall option
• Compare fonts in Dual pane
• Print font overview
• Font Manager

Font Thing

• Browse installed and uninstalled fonts
• Browse fonts in subfolders as a single combined list
• View sample text and individual characters in your choice of colours
• Change sample text "on the fly" or easily switch between your own standard text samples
• View detailed font information
• Print font samples
• Associate notes with fonts
• Install or uninstall any number of fonts at once
• Load (and unload) any number of fonts for temporary use
• Copy or delete any number of font files at once
• Rename font files to avoid file name conflicts
• Filter fonts according to their type
• Group fonts into collections for easier management
• Use multiple font windows simultaneously for easy font comparison and management.

Amp Font Viewer This program is an easy to use but powerful font manager, which allows getting a quick overview of both installed and non installed fonts. It can install and uninstall fonts, and organize them in categories. Some of its features are:

• Supports TrueType and OpenType fonts (Windows 2000/XP required for PostScript OpenType fonts)
• Supports Type1 fonts (Windows 2000/XP required)
• Installation of fonts from a folder (one by one or from a list).
• Installation of fonts temporally (until the program is closed).
• Deletion of installed fonts.
• List of all installed fonts with several display options.
• List of the fonts from a folder with several display options.
• Several options for organizing fonts in categories and managing them.
• It can print a list of all or some of the installed fonts with an example of each font.
• Scratchpad area for testing the look of any font (installed or from a folder).
• Dual English/Spanish version.

Well I hope this has given you a little insight into the wonderful world of Fonts!!

Cath x