CraftyMelinda.com

Birthday Card Inspiration

Good morning crafty friends,

Thank you for taking some of your crafty time to stop on by today! Designers Madison and Melin have a few birthday inspiration cards to share with you!

Madison created this card for this month’s IFTL recipients.
Please consider taking the time to join in this month!
CLICK HERE for all the details!

Cartridge Used: Birthday Bash

PCW File: This month’s IFTL FREE Birthday Bear Digi

You can get the details on Madison’s Blog.

Don't forget to head over and grab your free IFTL digi
and create a card for this wonderful cause!
FREE during the month of August!

I created this card using papers from the DCWV Celebration Stack. The little cupcakes were even cut out of one of the pieces of paper! They made the perfect embellie!

Products Used

PCW File: Clown w Balloons Digi *SNEAK PEEK* Available this Saturday

DCWV Celebration Stack

Purple, Red and White Cardstock

Twine from The Twinery

Stickles

I also followed along the sketch for this month’s
EK Success Border Punch
Cupcakes Fussy cut from a piece of the DCWV Celebration Stack paper.

DCWV Stackaholic Template Challenge

DCWV Stackaholic August Template challenge. Courtesy of Page Maps.

Products Used

PCW File: Girl Bear w Cake DS

DCWV Celebration Stack

Purple, Red and White Cardstock

Misc. Yellow Ribbon

Stickles

I also followed along the sketch for this week’s
Mojo Monday Blog Sketch 305 Challenge

Products Used

DCWV Celebration Stack

Purple and White Cardstock

Prussian Blue Chalk Ink

EK Success Photo Corner Punch

Misc. White Ribbon

NOTE: That gorgeous cake is from one of the pieces of paper in the DCWV Celebration Stack. I just cut it out and used it as the focal point of this card.

Thank you so much for stopping by and sharing your crafty time with us! Be sure to come back tomorrow as designer Sandy shares some fabulous creations!

Cricut Artiste Hippo Die Cut Coloring How-To

Good morning crafty friends,

Today I am sharing another Cricutlicious Cricut Artiste Paper Piecing creation with you. It also includes a quick little “how to” on using Close To My Heart Water Color Pencils and Blending Pen to decorate your die cuts.

First: Here’s my Finished layout. It includes patterned papers from the DCWV Summer Stack and The Glitter Summer Stack as well as the Baby Girl Stack. All images and die cuts were created from the Cricut Artiste cartridge. If you haven’t purchased your set yet, you can gladly do so through my link: HERE. So let’s get started with the quick “how to”

First, I inked the edges of my die cut “palm tree fronds” with New England Ivy Ink from CTMH Enchantment Mini Ink Pad Set.

I took my Olive colored pencil from my CTMH Water Color Pencil set and drew a line down the center of my die cut.

Next I took my blending pen and “colored over” the pencil line. Getting the pencil line “wet”

When the pencil medium started “mixing” with the blending solution, I was able to begin to “pull” the color out and that is how I created the “veins”

In this shot you can see the finished one…lower right. I decided it was kind of light so I made the next ones a bit darker. Once the original one dried, I was able to “repeat” the process to get it even darker.

Here is a closer look at the finished “fronds” I used my white Chalk Marker to create the white marks. The New England Ivy Ink came from my mini ink pad set. These sets are perfect for decorating your die cuts in addition to a little stamp use. The “sponge” on these is softer making inking the edges of your die cuts more effective. I used my Saddle Ink Pad for inking the coconuts and the Autumn Terracotta Mini Ink Pad From The Enchantment Mini Ink Assortment.

Closer look at the title letters. I used my Copic Marker to outline the letters. They were cut from the DCWV Baby Girl Stack. The flowers were cut from plain white cardstock and then inked with the Autumn Terracotta Ink from the above ink set.

Here’s a closer look at the pretty paper. I was trying to show that it was pre-glittered and has a wonderful gradient. Sorry the picture just doesn’t capture how pretty it is.

Here’s a closer look at my little Hippo Paper Piecing. I had actually created a little shovel and bucket for him, when I was creating his pattern, but ran out of time to add it in….Maybe next time Smile

Finally, one last look at the entire layout.

Here are the products used to create this layout

CTMH Enchantment Mini Ink Pad Set New England Ivy and Autumn Terracotta	CTMH White Chalk Marker	CTMH Blending Pen

CTMH Water Colored Pencils	CTMH Saddle Ink Pad	CTMH Baker’s Twine-Paradise
DCWV Summer Glitter Stack	DCWV Summer Stack	DCWV Baby Girl Stack
Pebbles Basic Brights Chalks	Fine Tip Pens

Additionally, I used:
Blue, White, Gray, Golden Rod and Green Cardstock

Robin’s Nest Plumeria Dew Drops

Miscellaneous Ribbon and Button.

DON'T FORGET CTMH Has a New Cartridge and Stamp Bundle: Artbooking! This looks like some serious fun! Be sure to get yours so when I start to work on projects with it...you can work along!

PLUS...Order This Set and Get the Stamp Of The Month FREE

Well, I think that about covers it! I hope you will give the water colored pencils and blending pen a try! You can really add some wonderful touches to all your die cuts! Thank you so much for sharing your crafty time with me! Be sure to come back tomorrow for another great project!

Copic No Line Digi Stamp Coloring

Hello crafty friends,

Thank you for stopping by. Today I want to share about how to color digi stamps with a “no line” look. I had seen someone do this on a group I belong to and wanted to give it a try. They used Adobe Photoshop to do theirs, but I wanted to see what I could do in one of the programs that are a bit more accessible. So here we go…

First let me share my finished card with you. I created this card with yesterday’s FREE Digi in honor of this month’s IFTL recipients. If you are not familiar with IFTL, please, please take a moment to head over there and read all about it. It is so worth your while to join in. Whether it be to create cards or even a monetary donation!

So let’s get started with the “How-To”

1. I opened my image up in Microsoft Publisher. My version is 2007. You could also do this in Microsoft Word.

2. Click to select your picture. Then while your picture is selected RIGHT click somewhere within the bounding box of the picture. This will bring up a submenu. Scroll down and select Format picture.

3. Once you have done the above a format picture men box will appear. Click the tab at the top that says…picture. Under image control click the down arrow and select “WASHOUT” Once you do that, click okay!

You will be returned to your image and you will see that it is significantly lighter than the original black and white line art image.

I know you can BARELY see the image…but it is there Smile

Please also note that in the previous format picture box your contrast and brightness automatically changed to 85 brightness and 15 contrast. If this option is just too light for you, you can manually adjust these settings. Once you have the washed out image, all that’s left to do, is print it out and start coloring.

Here is just a quick comparison. The image on the left was colored with the “no line” image printing. The image in the middle is the regular black and white line art printing and the image on the right is the pre-printed image.

These next couple of pictures just show the progression of my coloring. It was a bit of a challenge to “stay within the lines” if you will, but on the other hand, because there were no strong lines, there was a little forgiveness for my bad coloring…lol.