Free Download; Calendar page for September 2012

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Today I would like to share a free download with you. A calendar page for September 2012.

Free Download. Calendar Page; September 2012

How to Use

• Click on the image to open the calendar picture to full size.
• Click on File, then choose landscape option for paper orientation.
• Click Print

To Change the size of the calendar

• Click on the image to open the calendar picture to full size.
• Right Click and choose ‘Save As’ from the list of options.
• You can print it as, is or open a Word Processing programme and insert the image. (Once it is on your machine.) This will give you more control of the final size of the calendar page.

Feel free to tell your friends about this offer and forward them a link to this site. If you missed this month’s calendar page you can find it on the Calendar Downloads page.

Let me know what you think, of these calendar pages. If comments suggest this is popular…it just might become a regular feature.

Best wishes and thanks for reading, see you soon

Billie

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Floral Birthday Card

Welcome Back

Today I’d like to share a picture of a card I made using Serif’s Craft Artist programme.

Floral Birthday Card

I do like the versatility of the programme and that you can be just as creative as if you made the whole thing on your desk from the various elements.

With Craft Artist I chose papers, elements which I altered and duplicated so there is a lot of scope for adding your own mark to projects. When times are lean and budgets are too, digital kits are a fabulous way of making you pennies go further. They even offer a free trial of the software and some of the digikits are available for free. So trying it out doesn’t have to cost you anything but the download time.

Hope you give the programme a try, its amazing. I still love my inks and getting messy but I am also a fan of digital crafting like this too.

Best wishes and thanks for reading, see you soon

Billie

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Tutorial: Birthday List with Craft Artist software

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For those of you who like to make New Years Resolutions, and those like me with bad memories. Perhaps you want a quick n easy way to remind you when birthdays are coming up. A short tutorial today, that is quick n simple to do but should help you to remember the birthdays of those you cherish.

Birthday List with Serif Craft Artist

You Will Need

• Computer
• Serif Craft Artist
• Digikit: Season of Giving
• 160 gsm card stock
• Printer

Method

• Open Craft Artist Program
• Go to Blank Projects and select your paper size, I wanted A6 so I went to the custom section and typed in the dimensions there.
• From the digikits choose: Season of Giving
• Add the ‘Gift log’ from the embellishment section of that kit, by doing a single click onto it, you could add the whole digi kit if you wish or just the specific items you want. Also add a material in the colour of your choice.

You will now see a blank page on the work area of Craft Artist, this is where you put the items you want to print. On the left of your screen, the items you added from your digikit will be in the tabbed sections marked; Backgrounds, embellishments etc.

• Drag the gift log picture from the embellishments tab area, on the left, onto your blank page. As you ‘drop’ the embellishment will stay on your page, you can move it around, or resize it, till it is where you would like it to appear.
• Next go to the materials section and bring over a piece of material. Click on the SCISSOR tool, then choose PUNCHES and the square punch to cut a narrow strip from the material. Place the strip of material over the words Gift Log and drag on the corners of the piece of material until it fits the area you want.
• Go to the TEXT tool at the top of the page, click it once, then click on your page, this activates the tool. If you go back to the top of the screen you can select from any font on your computer. Type the words ‘Birthday list’ on top of you material. When the text is selected like this, you can also drag the corners of the box around it, to resize the text larger or smaller. Move the text to where you would like it on the page by dragging it there using your mouse.
• Click save and then print onto your chosen cardstock.

You can create this project any size. The original is for you to list all the birthdays on one page. If you have lots of people to buy for, an alternative would be to make a separate page for each month. Like this one.

Birthday List with Serif Craft Artist.

Hope you can follow this tutorial ok and I’d love to see what you make, do leave me a link to your projects with your comments. If I can work out how to add pictures from screenshots, I’ll try to share more complex tutorials with Craft Artist.

Links

I highly recomend the Craft Artist Professional Program and the Photo Project software too. If you haven’t got the Craft Artist software yet, get in touch with Serif as I believe the PhotoProjects programe includes Craft Artist Professional and gives you even more tools.

• Serif Software
• Daisy Trail
• Craft Artist Professional
• Digikit: Season of Giving

There will be more projects from me using these programs, so if you want to join in, rush over to Daisy Trail and get some software and digi kits

Best wishes and thanks for reading, see you soon

Billie

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Favorite Products of 2011

Welcome Back

As the year comes to a close I thought it would be a good time to look  back at some of my favorite things of 2011. Today I’d like to share;

My favorite products of 2011

Like last time there are two products that stood out for me this year.

First place by a country mile is; Serif Craft Artist software.

Craft Artist Platinum Edition by Serif

I adore this product as it is so simple to use but has so much versatility and superb digikits. It has a lot of the features of products like Adobe Photoshop Elements but without the HUGE learning curve.

My wonderful husband gave me a copy of this and I’ve had so much fun with it this year and have collected lots of digikits. I love to use it to try out ideas and techniques and especially love that all the wonderful elements can be used over and over again, which when you are on a small budget makes a big difference. Serif have digi kits on their Daisy Trail site and some of them are even free Perfect when you want to treat yourself but the budget says no.

In second place; Brittany Birch knitting needles

Brittany; Birch knitting needles

Trying to knit with RSI is foolish! It hurts, but if you are mad enough to risk it, try these birch needles. I can only knit a row or two at a time and have to rest for some time between attempts but these needles are warm to the touch and so much kinder to the hands than anything else. Super smooth like metal no drag like plastic and they are nice and light to hold too.

How about you?

Those were my favourites of the year, but how about you, what product have you tried this year and now love? Would love to hear about it.

Links

To find out more about the items I’ve mentioned, follow the links below to their original posts.

• Craft Artist includes links to Daisy Trail from which you cam buy the software and digikits
• Brittany Knitting Needles

Best wishes and thanks for reading, see you soon

Billie

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Favorite Projects of 2011

Welcome Back

As the year comes to a close I thought it would be a good time to look  back at some of my favorite things of 2011. Today I’d like to share;

My favorite projects of 2011

I have two favorites;

First place goes to. Gift Bags.

Holly Gift Bags with handles and tags

This was a project I started only recently and its a favorite, as I can see a lot of potential for designing different styles and shapes with it as well as lots of different papers for it too.

A close second goes to; Hand Warmers

Hand warmer, with gift bag and instructions tag

This is a personal favorite with me, as thanks to RSI and bad circulation they are a simple project to put together but also using them makes a huge difference to pain levels. So a winner for several reasons

How about you?

What project have you most enjoyed creating or reading about this year? Would love to hear about it or see pictures of your finished pieces.

Links

To find out more about the gift bags and the hand-warmers here are link to their original posts.

• Gift Bags
• Hand-warmers

Best wishes and thanks for reading, see you soon

Billie

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Holiday Gift Bags 2011

Welcome Back

Today I’d like to share some pictures of gift bags that I recently made. This years Christmas card has a holly theme and I found the perfect gift bags in John Lewis BUT when I tried to order them online they had sold out of the size I needed. {sob}.  After a plea for help, my dear friend Lynn (Garden Pinks) pointed me to a tutorial that had printed gift bags. The tutorial was excellent but the bags themselves were not quite to my style, so as Tricia Morris would say, I made it my own, and here are the results.

Medium/Large Gift Bag. Christmas Holly 2011

From the tutorial I took the basic measurements and tried them out on paper, learned how it all went together then went to design some papers. Opened Craft Artist from Serif but in my own collection of digi kits I didn’t have any holly. Luckily my computer was online at the time, and after scrolling through lists of elements, I discovered that there was a digikit available that had THE most perfect holly. DH helped me download and install ‘Yuletide Joy’ digi kit and I put some papers and images together to make the bag.

After a play, I also worked out how to make a smaller gift bag from a single sheet of A4 card. I redesigned my layout to work in that format. I worked out where the scorelines would be so I could place my main image (holly) in the right place and in the later bags I’ve also added a seasonal greeting. LOVE LOVE the versatility of Craft Artist, there are plenty of projects that you can print out or just add background papers too. Once you get going though, the only limit really is your imagination.

Medium/Large and small Gift Bags. Christmas Holly 2011

Craft Artist is ideal for crafters of all levels and is really easy to use, great if you don’t have much room to craft in.

Not got Craft Artist yet? You so need it, if pennies are tight there is a free version of a cut down version of the software available and there are also some free digikits too. Treat yourself to a craft room on your computer, the embellishments and papers in the digikits are stunning, best of all you can use them over and over again, and you don’t need to find shelf space for all the stash

Links

• Daisy Trail
• Yuletide Joy

Really wish there was more light so I could film a video tutorial of how to make these. Autumn/winter in the UK though is very low light and I need very bright sunny day AND all the lights on to get something worth watching. Made lots of notes along the way, so there will be a video tutorial of this when the light allows.

Hope you like them and give Craft Artist a try, it’s so much fun.

Best wishes and thanks for reading

Billie

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How to make square paper in Me To You CD

Welcome Back

Last week I reviewed the Me To You (Tatty Teddy) CD and mentioned there wasn’t a crop tool and that although there were options for square project templates, some of the background papers I wanted to use were rectangular on the; All Occassions CD. Well I had a play and found a solution. So today I’ll share a tutorial for how to make square paper from the rectangular one supplied.

You Will Need

• A computer and a mouse or graphics tablet.
• Me To You CD with Docrafts digital Designer installed on your computer.

Method

This is simple, promise, it only looks long as I’m writing EVERY step. Just in case this is your first time with the program.

• Double click on your Docrafts designer to open the program
• Open your blank square page or blank square card by clicking on it from the on screen list
• On the right you see your discs, choose one and click on it. From the list of items on the disc, choose background papers. Pick the one you want to use and drag it onto your project.

When you first bring on a paper it is often larger than your project. Notice the brad like buttons on the corners and edges of the paper, you use these to alter the size. To stop the design on the paper (or image, the same goes for them too), from distorting you need to drag from a corner, any one will do. Lets use the top left corner to keep it simple. Drag by clicking on the ‘brad’ and while holding the mouse button down, move toward the right.

If your background paper is rectangular and you want a square then do the following.

• Say you want to keep a white border around the card and the paper is a mat. Drag the corner to reduce the background paper’s size. You will need to move the paper around on your project, until you have it lined up with the top, the left and the right hand edges.
• Click on  the OPTIONS tab. (It’s on the top right of the screen.)
•  At the bottom of the list in the options tab is a section called COLOUR OPTIONS.
• Click on the DOCRAFTS DIGI PUNCH ( It has a little butterfly on it).

If your Digi punch and other buttons are grey and don’t work. You just need to select your paper again first. Do this by just clicking on your paper, on your project, then the buttons will work

• After clicking the DIGI PUNCH button a new window will open. From the list choose BASIC SHAPES
• From the shape images, click on the square. It will have a blue box round it when you have clicked on it.
• Click on SELECT

There is now a pink square on your background paper, this is the punch. It will be in the top left of your paper.

• Look for the ‘brads’ in the corners of the punch and drag the bottom right corner down to the right. Do this until the right edge of the punch meets the right edge of your paper. As long as you didn’t move the punch from its starting point, this will now give you  a perfect square.  
• At the bottom of the page you will see the following buttons; Cancel, Inside, Outside, Done,
• Click on INSIDE then DONE

There you have it square paper

Links

Hope that helps you   Check out the Digital Docrafts site for their own tutorial videos.

Best wishes and thanks for reading, see you soon.

Billie

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