Old-fashioned Pixels

So for the first time in this century (actually since 1996) I rang in the New Year without a cigarette. I would have crafted straight through midnight if not for the fireworks (we're only about 3 miles north of Baltimore's Inner Harbor) that woke up my dog Allen, who then needed immediate love and attention. I wouldn't have it any other way!

I quit smoking 7 weeks ago, and I did it with the help of cross stitching. I found myself a few projects and found it really helpful in keeping me busy.

So...I've been cross stitching all weekend. I made this simple pattern based on a rubber stamp design. I stamped the stamp itself in SU! Whisper White on black paper.

rotated 90° counter-clockwise

The "stitching" on the border of the card is actually a SP & Co. stamp; I used Memento Tuxedo Black ink.


Inspiration/Challenges:
CAS Colours and Sketches Challenge #4: Sketch
Allsorts: Black and White
Hotshot Crafts: Clean and Simple




Here are some other designs I made this weekend:

I couldn't find a free pattern for these Space Invaders characters, so I made them (thanks to the document grid in InDesign). I'm not sure what I'm going to do with this piece yet...

I designed these myself too, so that they would fit in these 1x1-inch bottle caps. I cut circles from magnet sheets using a Sizzix die and glued them onto the bottle caps to make magnets.

These patterns are available as PDFs; just shoot me an email if you want one or both. (CGsaysSomethingLoudly [at] gmail [dot] com)


And here are a couple of projects I made for Christmas Gifts:

My Mother-in-law's favorite movie is The Wizard of Oz, so I made this for her for Christmas. I got the pattern for this at Sewing Seed, and I plan on making the whole set this year. I found the frame for like a $1 at my mom's church's Thrift Store.

This was a gift for my mom; she mentioned how lovely white-on-red fabric would be, so I found a free pattern for a Coeur Fleuri. I colored the wooden frame with red Tattered Angels glimmer mist, and added liquid pearls on the front & sides. I covered the hoop closure with white Silk Crush ribbon from May Arts, and a plastic red bird charm from Popalicious Too (I received it in a blog candy).

Not bad for 7 weeks, huh?! So far, 2013 is looking good!

Thank you for visiting & Happy New Year,

Jen's Sunshine Blog Hop

Many thanks to everyone who participated in the Hop! The Winners can be found HERE.

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Welcome to my stop on the Jen's Sunshine Blog Hop! I've had the pleasure of working with Jennifer at Pile It On, and boy does she keep everyone's spirits up! So Jen, this is for you and for all the Sunshines in my life!

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Paper Makeup Stamps & Party Time Tuesdays Challenge Blog proudly presents 

"Jen's Sunshine" Blog Hop

Today we take time to honor our friend and fellow crafter Jen Scull.  If you are here hopping with us, then I am sure you know Jen is battling breast cancer.  She has been fighting this nasty disease since February.  On behalf of Jen, we thank you for being here.

I made a Magic Picture card with an SVG file I made:

Original inspiration for magic picture cards: Extreme Cards & Papercrafting
Magic Card tutorial: SplitcoastStampers
My SVG file for Magic Picture Card: free download at 4shared.com

We ask as you hop along with us, please consider donating at least $1 using the paypal donation button at any stop along the way.  Your donation will go directly to Jen. Thank you.

It wouldn't be a hop without prizes.  To see a full list of the prizes up for grabs, please visit 

Paper Makeup Stamps

and

Party Time Tuesdays Challenge Blog

To be eligible to win a prize from our sponsors, collect the hidden letters located throughout the hop.  Once you spell out the secret phrase, please email Jenn Cochran at partytimetuesdays@hotmail.com.  This will get you entered to win one of several fabulous prizes.

This hop will remain open till Tuesday Sept.4th

Winners announced Sept. 7th

Happy Hopping!

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I'm entering my card into the following challenges:

Charisma Cardz - lace

Come and Get It Challenges - 3D Flowers

Eureka Stamps - Anything Goes
My Crafting Channel SVG Challenge #4 - Anything Goes + an SVG file
My Heart Pieces Digital Stamps Challenge - Your favourite colour (Love yellow! It was the color of childhood bedroom, and also how I painted my study in the attic)

Thank you for visiting,

Altered CD and easy homemade beads

One of the nicest things I've done for my creativity was joining the "Off the Page" group at the Stampin' Dymonz Scrap Shack. I really just joined to see what people came up with, but this is a really active group and you get pulled right in despite yourself! The first project I tried was the "Altered CD/DVDs" theme:
It's just a thing, although I might remake it as an actual clock. I made the clockface stencil in SCAL (there's a download link to the SVG in my supply list below), and cut it on the Cricut directly onto adhesive masking paper. Wow, that works so well. I stuck it on the CD and painted it with acrylic paint. The stencil came off easily, and I like the effect of the actual CD showing through. I used my Crop-O-Dile for the holes and edged the CD with shiny purple nail polish. I hand-printed a favorite song chorus onto the center:

"Only time can write a song that's really really real;
The most a man can do is say the way its playing feels;
And know he only knows as much as time to him reveals."
Richard Hell & the Voidoids: lyrics / song

I didn't have any embellishments that worked, so I made my own! The beads and center were all made with opaque polymer clay that I colored with Copics after baking. Here's a quick photo tutorial of how I made the spiral beads shown in the top photo:

That was really quick, wasn't it? If you don't want to have to take the beads off the tool, you can bake them on wooden skewers; just soak the skewers in water first. Then just bake them: about 15 minutes at 275F, or according the the package directions.

Tools: Crop-O-Dile, oven (to bake clay), SCAL & Cricut
Other: Ranger acrylic paint (thanks Stampin' Dymonz!), Elmers gel pen, Copic markers, ZipDry glue, Inkadinkado masking paper, tulle, Sculpey polymer clay, nail polish
Stencil: download SVG file (please let me know if you do, by commenting; and I'd love to see your projects)

Hope you like tent cards!

I cannot get enough of tent cards! I had so much fun making my first one for the Scrap Shack cardmaking group that I turned right around and made this for the current Tellen's Place challenge.

One of the requirements is to use a TPD image, but they have lots of freebies...plus good prices. I had so much fun making this card with their freebie that I bought Mary & Bev, which I've already used for another tent card! I had tons and tons of fun coloring this, and the flags, and think I'll make lots of this card.

I'm also crushin' on the color combo of kraft-and-pink. Tying the string onto those hand-cut banners took some doing, but it was so worth it.

Inspiration:
Digi stamp: Gift Mandy by Tellen's Place Designs

Supplies: Hammermill and Recollections cardstocks, Memento ink, HP printer & ink, SCAL & Cricut, VersaMark watermark ink, Stamendous embossing powder, Marvy heat tool, bakers twine, ZipDry glue, MS scissors

Copics: BV04, BV000, BV00, B23, V17, RV04, V06, RV42, RV11, RV23, E000, E17, E02, E50, E47, YR00, YR01, E35, E37

Download my Tent Card cut-file template (please leave a comment and let me know you're using it. And I'd love to see any resulting cards!):
.scut2
.svg

Update 5/27/11: Wow, I won!!! More info here. Thank you everyone at Tellen's Place!

March Madness Blog Hop Day #1

It's my first ever blog hop! A word from our sponsor:

Welcome to the Stampin' Dymonz Scrap Shack's Mad About Paper Blog Hop! Our theme for this hop, besides being Mad About Paper, is Sports -- it is March Madness for the Scrap Shack as well as for basketball after all!! Some of the divas have creations with a sports theme. Some of them have simply created out of their favorite medium - paper! This hop shows our madness for all things paper! The hop starts at Stampin' Dymonz's blog, which can be found by going to www.StampinDymonz.com. It ends with NikkiP's blog, found at nikkimopapercrafts.blogspot.com. Along the way we have Lynetta, Cynta, Jessica, JoAnn, Christina, and Tammy who have beautiful creations to share as well. Don't miss out! If you got to this blog hop from any place other than the beginning, go back to the beginning and work your way through. There's lots of inspiration to share and these divas have created some magnificent projects! Don't forget -- this is a two-day blog hop! Creations will be posted both Saturday, March 19th and Sunday, March 20th. Stop back by both days in order to see all of the beautiful work -- you too will be Mad About Paper!

Here's my Day One project: March Madness Wishes!

Basketball-inspired Easel Card. Inside:

You should have arrived here from JoAnn's blog. Tammy's blog is the next one on the line up and you can reach her blog by clicking on her name below. If you have problems with the link, her blog's URL is in parentheses after her name -- just copy/paste it into your address bar.

I hope you enjoyed my project and the hop so far! Don't stop hopping until you get to the end -- there could be blog candy along the way that you don't want to miss out on! Any of the divas participating in the hop may offer some, but the biggest thing you'll miss are the great creations and the greater inspiration for your creations. Have fun!

Stampin' Dymonz (www.StampinDymonz.com)

Lynetta (CraftyNetta) (craftcreationsbynetta.blogspot.com)

Cynta (cynta.blogspot.com)

Jessica (customcreationsbyjessica.blogspot.com)

JoAnn (thecreatorsworkshop.blogspot.com)

Christina (cg-says.blogspot.com) <---You are HERE

Tammy (fromme2upapercrafting.blogspot.com)

NikkiP (nikkimopapercrafts.blogspot.com)

Don't forget to come back tomorrow for Day 2!

About my card:
I must admit that I don't follow college basketball, but I have enjoyed a few March Madness evenings in past with my dad, a former player & coach. All I remember about the game is that it's, at its best, a team sport. Of course, there's no feeling like making a basket yourself...or so I've heard! So I decided to challenge myself to make a March Madness-related card for this blog hop. Ooh, I had fun!

I recently rented a woodgrain acrylic stamp from Raisin Boat, and it just felt right to use in this context. The darker piece is simply black on brown; the lighter piece was stamped in two tones of chalk inks. The letters and the inside frame were designed in SCAL, and cut on my Cricut from a basketball-textured scrapbook paper. The inside frame wasn't as easy to design as I might have hoped, but I can definitely see using it again. I'm also offering it as a free SCAL file; see the download link at the bottom of this post. Please let me know if you use it!

The sentiment piece is atop a couple of white foam tapes pieces that I colored with the same black I used for all the edging.

Digi stamp: Use Your Head by Tiddly Inks
Woodgrain stamp by Raisin Boat
Supplies: Recollections cardstock, Memento ink, ColorBox and Versamark chalk inks, ZipDry glue, MS detailing scissors, Cricut & SCAL, Lithos Pro Black typeface (for cut letters), HP printer & ink, foam tape, Copic Markers, Sakura glitter pen

Download circle frame SCAL cut file

Last-minute Greetings

This week's Aud Sentiments and Allsorts challenges pretty much sum up how my house looks right now: Happy Holidays and Last Minute Christmas!

My creative life was changed forever when I discovered the world of origamic architecture, and it was further changed by my discovery of the pop-out pencil holder at Extreme Cards & Papercrafting. Using her template, I created my own version in SCAL. I had precut 7 yellow houses on my Cricut, so when I realized I needed some special cards for family all I had to do was glue on some pretty paper! The little cards on the front are hand stamped and punched; I also made small yellow message stickers for the inside.

Supplies: DCWV, Martha Stewart and Recollections cardstocks, gStudio silicon stamps, Stash brads, CraftSmart ink, Fiskars scissors & punch, Cricut personal cutter, SCAL2 software, Offray ribbon


Happy Holidays! You can download the personal use only cutting file for this card here.
If you do, please leave a comment to let me know. And I'd love to see photos!

Vintage Magic Thank-yous

I'm totally crushin' on the vintage images over at Create with Tlc, but I try to limit my use of free images. Then I realized that I have a small stash of vintage-y images that I purchased from ClipArt.com last year. I was going to use them for Marion Winik's website, as they match the images in a recent book, but then just ended up keeping them for some future project. And here's that project! One of these cards is going to Marion, especially since I think that technically she might have purchased the images for the project, and the other is going to the wonderful women at Passager. I'm going to be including invoices, but hopefully these cards are cute enough to soften the blow!
Concept aside, I love participating in color challenges because they really get me thinking about patterns, textures and interesting color combos. I went to the fantastic resource of Scrapmaster's Paradise for the color choices for these cards. For the first one I used their color combo #73, but for the second I used their groovy color combo generator. I love that the generator gives you the option of choosing one color you know you want to work with; in this case, I chose green because I wanted to use my new Pine stamp pad. I definitely will be revisiting both of these combos.


Inspiration: Scrapmaster's Paradise Color Combo Challenge #73 & SP Color Combo Generator
Font: Speedball No. 3 by Nick Curtis
Image: Clipart.com
Rubber Stamp: Tiled Quad Cube by Stampendous!
Supplies: Recollections cardstock, ZipDry glue, Cricut personal cutter, SCAL2 software, HP printer & ink, Adobe InDesign & Photoshop, Offray ribbon, stash eyelet, Fiskars papercutter and decorative scissors, CraftSmart ink

Original inspiration for magic picture cards: Naked Mole Rat magic picture card by CPeep at Extreme Cards & Papercrafting
Magic Card tutorial: SplitcoastStampers
Magic card template for SCAL2 by cg-says

Paisley Birdies Card

I took a week's break from cardblogging and I feel like I've been away for months! I'll never get over the energy and talent out in the scrapworld...
To get myself back in the swing, I pulled out a paisley frame SCAL file I created early this year and used it to make little birdies. My mom saw the idea in PaperCraft inspirations and this was a really fun way to refresh my old pattern. Basically, you stick an eye on a paisley, and the result is really striking. For extra inspiration I turned to the Color Throwdown #114: poppy parade, chocolate chip, pear pizzaz, and so saffron. How can I have so much paper and never quite the color I want? But I do like how the colors come together.


Challenge: Color Throwdown #114
Original Paisley element: The Quilling Patch (thank you!!!)
Final Paisley frame and birdie elements: Christina Gay (If you would like this file, I'd be happy to share it with you. Email christina [at] saysomethingloudly [dot] com and I'll send you the SCAL file. And I'd love it if you could leave a comment and/or become a follower.)
Supplies: Cricut personal cutter, SCAL2 software, Recollections cardstock, ZipDry glue

New Beginnings Challenge

This weekend I found myself Crafting with a Purpose, the purpose being trying to get myself out in the crafting blogosphere by entering challenges. The word "overwhelmed" comes to mind...the last challenge I did, late last night, actually used scrap paper that was on top of what used to be my crafting table, and now looks more more like an art school paper-only dumpster. It amazes me, sometimes, how only half of my life can be organized at a time.
So happily, I'm caught up sorta on my weekend goals. Maybe I'll actually do some housework! Gee, I'm so lucky to have a husband who not only enjoys cooking, but feels that my crafting messes are part of a wild, romantic ride.
Anyhoo, I'm entering my new rocking horse card in this week's Allsorts Challenge, "New Beginnings". To be honest, the idea came from my awesome Mom; I wanted to make a baby card for some friends, but I was feeling overwhelmed by the possibilities, so I called Mom and we bounced around some ideas. The one the stuck was the rocking horse card: as Mom said, "knowing you, it will actually rock!"

O. Yeah.
I found a free rocking horse cut file at SVGcuts, and liked it so much that I bought the set it comes from (thank you, Labor Day discount!). If you'd like the full SCAL file for this card, please email me (cgsayssomethingloudly [at] gmail [dot] com) and I'd be happy to share it (for personal use only).
Since I was making one of the cards for first-time parents, I wanted to add something a little...different. So I came up with "Rock On!" which tickles my bad-pun bone.

So You Think You Can Cut?

A few years ago, my mom really got into scrapbooking and cardmaking, and started giving me extras of things she bought. At the time, I was focusing on learning electronic design (web and book design, on a small level; I'm no graphic designer), and I honestly wasn't sure what to do with all the brads and paper and ideas. One thing I found out quickly was that nothing is as relaxing for a person working in creativity than being creative in a different way. After a day of staring at a computer screen and worrying about code and "true colors" and leading and tracking and what-not, there was something almost spiritual about cutting out paper and immersing oneself in glue.

This last Christmas, Mom gave me a Cricut Personal Cutting machine that uses a cartridge with digital "dies". I was a little unsure how I would feel about having to design within the parameters of pre-designed images, but once I cut out a perfect letter, I was hooked. And having pre-designed images always sort of reminded me of the freedom of writing in form: you sometimes find more creative freedom within strict parameters.

And then I discovered Sure Cuts A Lot (SCAL, or, as J calls it, "So You Think You Can Cut") and my life changed.

SCAL is a program that allows you to design your own images on your computer and then use your Cricut as a sort of USB printer. Provocraft, the makers of Cricut, offer their own program, but they showed no real interest in developing a Mac version and so I went the free-spirited, hackerish route of SCAL. Sorry Cricut, but I already gave my loyalty (and all my money) to Apple.

The SCAL platform is truly fantastic, mimicking the familiar Adobe-type design platform. It's a lot like working in Illustrator, especially for vector manipulation. You can use special .svg files, or just import an image and SCAL will break it into cut lines. Once you have the image in SCAL, you can manipulate it any way you want.

Oh, and did I mention that you can use any font? The possibilities are endless.

My cousin has the Silhouette personal electronic cutter, which never needs cartridges and uses its own design program. There's also a program called Make the Cut, but, again, SCAL is the most Mac-friendly.


In any case, I'm not an illustrator, so even with super-SCAL I needed some images to start from. Have you heard of this amazing resource called the "Inter-Net"? It's really something else. I just googled "svg scal" and found a gillion folks who generously share their cut files. I learned so, so much from those free files.

Here's an example of a card I made using files from SCALe-files, hands-down the top site for intricate, free cut files. I added the Chinese letters for "Summer Solstice." Here's the file if you want to make your own: http://www.4shared.com/file/yp2RmqA-/chineselamp_scale_cgsays.html

As I mentioned earlier in this post, you can also import images to use as cut files. I found that coloring books are an easy resource for line-based images. I worry a lot about Creative Rights and try my best not to use others' work as my own. Here's a fun example of what I did with a Doberman and a kitten (all I did was import the images from a Google Image search, separate the layers, and click "cut"):

To be honest, the kitten was much more difficult than I had anticipated. The Dobermans were a dream: talk about a scrapbook-friendly dog! But I figured that I'd be able to easily find a SCAL-ready .svg of a kitten, free or not. Maybe I just didn't look in the right places, but I ended up using another color-book image and re-doing the eyes so that they cut correctly. Since early summer is kind of kitten season, here's the free SCAL file.
http://www.4shared.com/file/oZkxtffq/kittenhead_cgsays.html

My favorite part of this card-making business is that it seems to be one of those universal languages, like cooking. On Mondays I send out a few cards to random acquaintances, and somehow I feel like I can accomplish whatever the week brings. And now I've found myself part of a real-life design team over at Too Many Ideas (thank you, Therese!) Every Monday for 3 months the team will present our takes on Therese's designs (PaperFacesDesigns).

Now to get back to cutting...