A Stylish Christmas Coffee

Hello hello! Tabbatha here today! I’m continuing on with the fabulous Christmas cards that the ladies have been showing on the blog. 9 days left until Christmas Eve (Julafton)! I can’t believe 2013 is over, I swear it just began. :)

For my card today I wanted to show off the fabulous I Love You More Than Coffee digital stamp that Anice has made for us. It will be available under the Digital Stamps section of the Funky Hand site – and trust me you’ll want to grab it! Although the digi stamp is all about coffee, complete with a great sentiment, I chose to mask the sentiment and create a Christmas Themed 3D Paper Pieced Takeaway Coffee Shaped Card! Yup, I combined three techniques into this card.

Ok, so what are we doing today?

Well, glad you asked! Today I’ll be going over how you can create your own shaped card using a fab digital stamp using just a graphics editor like Adobe Photoshop. This technique works for pretty much any graphics editor or vector editor like Adobe Illustrator, GIMP (which is free!) as well as the super simple Trace, Print & Cut in Silhouette Studio.


To get this card created, I first sized and paper pieced the I Love You More Than Coffee digital stamp using the Stylish Tree downloadable backing papers. Since I was 3D paper piecing this piece, I paper pieced three different copies of the cup, making sure to mask the sentiment, and then fussy cut and glued together the dimensional pieces. To finish the top off, I printed and cut different Christmas themed cutting files I had from the Silhouette Store. You can easily stamp your own Christmas sentiment or image right there on the label though – that is the beauty of masking and digital images!

So…on to that nifty little cardbase thing.

Here is the how the card looks opened up (you’ll notice a color difference, that is because silly Tabbatha here forgot to get inside pics of this Christmas card, but instead I’m using the previous card I made). :)


The idea is to trace the digital image, duplicate and flip it, combine and then stroke. This leaves a great outline that can be easily printed out on cardstock and cut with scissors!

Step 1. To get started, Open a copy of the I Love You More Than Coffee 1 PNG file, this is the one that has a white image on a transparent background. Size the image to a width of 8.49 cm, making sure the Maintain Aspect Ratio (the chain) is ON.


Step 2. Using the Magic Tool (left hand toolbar) select the transparent area outside of the image. You will know you have a selection when you see dancing ants around the border.


Step 3. Once you have the selection go up to Select > Inverse, this will select the cup itself (make sure there are dancing ants ONLY around the cup). Create a New Layer and fill the layer with black.


Step 4. This is where we make the card base. Duplicate (Copy/Paste) the solid black image and move it so that it sits slightly overlapped to the left of the first black image. This might be easier by first making a New File (A4 size) and copying the black cup into it. Make sure the duplicate is selected in your layers menu then go to Edit > Transform > Flip Horizontal. (Just imagine my cup outlines are actually completely filled in with black!)


Step 5. Now we need to merge the two black images. Again, making sure that the cups are overlapped as much as you dare (I left a slight opening on the top, but you can close it up). Select the two black cup layers and Right Click > Merge Layers.


Because the two images were filled in with the same color, this “Merge Layers” acts as a Union (which is the control in Silhouette Studio & Adobe Illustrator).

Step 6.  Now, we don’t want to print out a solid black cardbase, so select the layer and click the little fx button (Add a Layer Style). First apply a white Overlay, then a Stroke in black (I have a stroke of 3 in the screenshot, however I would go thinner when printing so maybe a 1 or 2 and possibly in a different color depending on the cardstock).

Additionally, you want the cardbase to be slightly larger than the digi image itself. I resized the cardbase by simply overlying (in Layers) the digi and Ctrl+T (Edit > Free Transform Path).


This is the finished product, placed on an A4. Once the image is printed, cut around the solid black lines, using an exacto knife for the inner opening. Fold along the dotted line.

The Finished Product

Here is the finished product again! It was such a great project and I LOVE the I Love You More Than Coffee digital stamp – so versatile!




Don't forget to link up any projects that you have made using Funky Hand products!

Quick Stylish Tree Gift Cards

Hello there! Tabbatha here today to finish off my tour of Picasa 3 and show you how to add some yummy papers and save them into an Album for a particular project. Not only that, I have a tutorial for very cute and quick gift card holders. :D

So without further ado...Picasa 3 has a function that is called "Albums", these are Picasa-only folders that you can easily add items from different local folders to. I mostly use my Albums to create folders that I plan to upload to Online Galleries, such as Google+ Photos. In fact, this little trick is totally not my brain child, but of fellow DT member Sam! Also, if you sign in to Picasa, you have super easy way to sync anything just by clicking a little blue button on the upper right. Just be careful you don't sync and publicly share your digis or papers - only completed projects!!  :)

On the left hand of the Picasa window you will find a list of all all the Collections and up at the very top you'll find your Albums.

The Sync to Web button can be found in the title space in the main window of your Collections. If it is blue, then it means you are syncing.

When picking papers for your project, make sure to click on the "Hold to Selected Items" pin down there in the Selection Tray. For my gift card project I wanted to use some beautiful, Funky papers from the Stylish Tree Downloadables. I had thought about using some Christmas digis as well, but didn't put them on (as you will see later).

Once you have your papers in the Selection Tray, click on the little book in order to add them to an Album. Here, I've created a new Album called "Funky Hand Inspiration". One thing I make sure is that this album is NOT synced, again, publicly sharing digital stamps and papers is not allowed - only complete projects! 

So..at this point I have all my papers for my project selected and in an Album. After they are printed out the gift card making can begin!

Now that the paper is printed, this is what we'll be making!

Supplies needed: 

1 12x12inch cardstock of coordinating colors 

 4 sheets of coordinating digital papers from Stylish Tree Downloads

Double-Sided Tape

A cutting tool - here I'm using my Fiskars

And a scoring board (Scor-pal shown)

Liquid Glue (optional)

Embellishments

All of my measurements were done in inches due to the fact that my Scor-pal is in inches, sorry Metric Buddies! 

Step 1) Cut the 12x12 cardstock into strips 2.75" wide by 8.5" long. 

Step 2) Score each strip at the 1.5" mark and again at the 5.5" mark. Fold at each crease mark, using your bone folder to make the creases nice and crisp. What you'll end up with is a top-folded card. 

Step 3) Cut panels for the gift card. You will need a 2.5"x1.25" panel, a 2.5"x3.75" panel and a 2.5"x2.75" panel per gift card. For my set of 5, I had 15 panels in total cut. 

Step 4) Adhere the panels to the cardstock. This can be done a number of ways, double-sided tape, liquid glue or you can sew them in place like I did. I should note that I first applied a piece of double-sided tape to the middle of panel first (very very far away from the area I was going to sew) in order to keep the panel in place.

Step 5) Close up the card by putting some sort of adhesive on the lower panel's two sides and closing it up. You can then hide those pesky inner seems with washi tape! I picked a beautiful coordinating washi tape to cover the inner seems. It helps keep the sewing thread in place so that it doesn't unravel, as well as make it look pretty sharp on the inside. You could sew the sides together as well, I just went for a panel look instead. :D 

Step 6) Embellish to your hearts content. I didn't finish embellishing these little guys, but I made sure to add a nice Large button of a sorts that I could tuck the folded top flap into to keep it closed. You could use twine, magnets, or even velcro for that same purpose.

I know that this is a rather lengthy post, but I really love how the gift cards turned out and wanted to share how I did them, plus how I used Picasa 3 to keep my selected papers at hand. :D Thanks for stopping by and remember to link up any project you have made with Funky Hand Products below!

Cheers! /Tabbatha