Serif Affinty is EPIC

Welcome Back

Will write more another day, but just a quick hello and to say how EPIC the Serif Affinity software bundle I was talking about the other month is. I purchased during the launch offer, and was lucky to get some add ons this month when they were on 50% off. There aren’t the words for just how amazing this software is.

I used to use Serif Craft Artist, which stopped working after a number of windows updates. Sorely missed it but didn’t have the funds for subscription based options. Then I came across the Affinity suite. There is Photo, Designer and Publisher. Ohh its soo good.

In the past I would gather digi kits and then assemble various projects with pre prepaired digital artwork. This time around, I’ve been using this new software to make planner page layouts, and so much more. There are tons of video tutorials on You Tube and I’ve taken images of sketches I’ve done on paper and will be using those in my own stationary and other items.

With the tutorials on You Tube, there is a way to make repeating patterns, so paper creation is a starter, theres a way to create a style from a jpeg, which means texture photos of rust, etc could be used on so many things. My mind is litterally blown away by the possiblities of this software.

I have been creating some art with it, and its so good. Im using it with an X-Pen ArtistPro 13.3 Graphics display tablet, which is also wonderful. Its all a different approach to things this time around, but its very exciting.

Links

If you want to find out more, here is the Serif site https://affinity.serif.com/en-gb/

Here is the add ons section https://affinity.serif.com/en-gb/store/

Come see a great video called bringing sketches to life in affinity designer and Photo with Frankentoon https://youtu.be/0H5MztBZ9X4

Happy Creating everyone

Best wishes and thanks for reading

Billie

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A soothing video if you are feeling in a February Funk

Welcome Back

In the UK, there is more daylight each day now. There are signs of spring, with bulbs sprouting daffodils, grape hyacynth and more. Yet not all of us, are feeling like we are bursting with the joys of spring, are we? So if you are feeling in a February Funk, with a lot of stress and anxiety, then I’d like to share these two You Tube Channels, that I have found soothing to listen to. May they help you wind down, rest and restore, in a noisy world.

There are shorter options too. Please don’t listen whilst driving though.

Healing Vibrations; The most relaxing Music, 10 hours of sound bath

Check out these soothing channels. Healing Vibrations and Guided Vibrations

The same person creates content for both these channels.

Healing Vibrations Sound Bath, without spoken word,

Guided Vibrations, which have a spoken word meditation, along with the sounds.

They also have a website HealingVibrationsMedia.com which shows links to where you can stream and download their content. There are links to all these channels from the buttons below. Please leave me a comment if you found this helpful.

Healing Vibrations

Guided Vibrations

HealingVibrationsMedia.com

In time content changes and links aren’t always still available, so here is the main channels page, in case other links aren’t working https://www.youtube.com/@HealingVibrations

May the day be as kind to you as possible.

Best wishes and thanks for visiting, see you soon

Billie

Introducing Liberty Grove Paper Arts

Welcome Back

Wanted to share this amazing paper artist and her You Tube channel, I was watching their demo of Hedi Kyle’s Diagonal Pocket fold, and just HAD to find out more. Turns out they have, lots of origami and box making videos on the channel too. Some of the videos are made by them others are collections of videos on the topics listed below.

Here are some links to the main channel and the other playlists. See if you find something you want to make too.

Liberty Grove Paper Arts

Boxes Playlist

Origami Playlist

Then I found this bookbinding channel called Vintage Paper designs. I’ll let you know more, when I’ve had a look round the site.

Vintage paper Designs

Best wishes and thanks for reading, see you soon

Billie x

Shashibo arrived and an update

Welcome Back

Have been working on updating a lot of pages and links, its gonna take a while. In the mean time, here is a button to take you to the about page, which has been updated and also includes a link to the other places you can find me around the web.

About

Shashibo

In other news, whilst watching You Tube the other day, I saw someone demo an amazing puzzle/toy/fidget toy, call it what you will but it blew my mind in a good way. Its called Shashibo and is made by Fun in Motion toys.

Seriously, You Tube that word, or Magic cube, for the most fascinating demos. The word means shape shifting cube.

Amazon had a deal on and I chose the Blue Planet one. Then, it was SOOO cool, I admit that more have been ordered as you can make even more shapes when you have more than one.

I struggle to settle and with the racing mind of anxiety and dyslexia throwing lots of ideas at the same time. Finding it helpful to have something to fiddle with can help me slow things down a bit. Love a fidget toy, how about you?

I’ll try to get a photo of mine, when the light is better. Until then, checkout these links

Fun in Motion You Tube Channel

Shashibo Blue Planet demo

Its like origami had a baby with a Kaleidoscope

Shashibo Shapeshifting box Blue Planet on Amazon

🧲 Caution tho, Shashibo contains many rare earth magnets. So if magnets are not good for your health condition, this isn’t one for you.

Another brand with another version is Geobender.

Best wishes, stay safe and thanks for reading

Billie x

Please note this post is NOT sponsored nor are any of the links affiliated. I purchased the product myself and enjoyed it so much, that I wanted to share its existance with you.

Digital Art creators; Serif Affinity v2 Special offer

Welcome back

Well two posts in a week! I was updating the links on the art supplies page, and discovered a special offer [Special offer has ended now but its still awesome software], and that Serif have a whole Professional Creative Suite, called Affinity. The individual apps are Affinity Photo, a photo editing software. Affinity Design, to create your own art and logos etc, and Affinity Publisher, which will help you create stationary, books, magazines. You can get a 30 day free trial, ifyou want to try before you buy.

buy before 25 of January 2023, you can get 40% off! Individual program prices in the sale £35.99 or the whole suite for £89.99 👍 Full price of the whole suite is £144.99 [OFFER has ended but its still awesome software]

I’m excited about this as, previously I used Serif Craft Artist, but with all the windows updates in recent years, it was no longer compatable, and the product was retired.Since I’m coming back to crafting and hopefully blogging, I really miss it,so I was delighted to find out about the new Creative suite Affinity, as I was updating the old links.

❤ One of the features that got me to purchase was NO SUBSCRIPTION FEES! I flat refuse to pay subscription fees for something that due to health reasons, I can’t use as frequently as I’d like. I am ok with the way Serif approach things, buy the software once, and its yours.

If you choose to you can purchase additional packages for brushes and so on, to customise it to your needs. There are lots of tutorials on You Tube about the product. This is available for Windows desktop, Mac OS and ipadOS.

So if you love photography, or designing projects from scratch, or maybe you fancy making your own flyers, stationary, business cards, logos and so much more, I invite you to take a look at this software.

You can find a link to Serif Affinity on my art supplies page. Scrol down to Digital Art, when you are on that page.

Please click the button below to go there. I’m listing links this way now, as then its just one location to update information, if it changes over time. Please scroll down the list, to the Serif Section

Art Supplies

Best wishes and thanks for reading, stay safe

Billie x

PS: I am not affiliated to Serif, I was not paid in product or financially to write this.

Time to update this site

Welcome Back

Starting to come back to crafting, and this poor neglected blog, needs a LOT of updates to links and pages. Please bear with me, as its going to take some time to achieve this. I’m hoping to improve the navigation, with the top menu and changes to the side bar, to make a bit less TMI. That said, I don’t want to change the layout, until the pages have been updated and dead links removed.

Discard, then sort, then store.

Joy Rising

Marie Kondo

Kon Marie Method

Like all makeovers, its likely to go through a messy stage, and look worse before it gets better. I’m planning to do as much of the updates in private pages and only relaunch them when they look pretty, but if I press the wrong button, you might see stuff that is there one day and gone the next.

In the mean time here are ways you can identify, what I’ve updated, or what is a work in progress (WIP)

What’s new, what’s not and what’s broken

Since this will take a while, its my plan to go through page by page and test all the links.

• Pages will start with current and new content
• Archive section on a page, means no new posts there, but still a useful reference.
• WIP means the link has failed and will be updated as time allows.

This way you will have a way to be sure which parts of the site will have new content, upto date content, and the one’s Im aware of that need changing.

Pages Update’s Completed

Pages that are fully updated will be put in a list on this blog post, so you know which ones have been completed.

• About
• Art: Community
• Paper Making

The Next steps

Being realistic, there isn’t a quick way of changing every individual blog post. So I am concentrating on updating links within the Pages.

If you find dead links, in individual posts, help a girl out here, and let me know which ones aren’t working.

Going forwards, I’ll have pages for suppliers etc and from within posts, will just point people to those pages. In this way if information changes, it will just need updating in ONE place.

New Pages

There are some new pages, to look forward to; Books, Gallery, Community and Shopping. (not selling anything myself but links to shops) I like this theme, so its staying. This makeover, will be about, tidying up, archiving some places that are no longer active, removing dead links and bringing in some new links to freshen things up a bit.

Thanks to all of you who have stuck with me when I’m not posting much. Health issues, massively impact on what I can do and when. I’m doing my best, its just gonna take the time it takes.

Thanks for reading, stay safe and

Happy Crafting

Billie 🙂

Lets take craft to another dimension.

Welcome Back and Happy New Year,

How would you like to take your crafting to a whole new dimension? Here are some books to explore, if you would like to try; boxes, pop up creations and kinetic cards. Some are very visual kinds of learning, others more technical. We all learn in different ways so see which suits you.

Taking your creativity into the third dimension.

Recently found Karen Beirstein dies, and tutorials on You Tube and was fascinated. Having joined Craft World forum, and discovering new crafty pals to chat with and SOO much inspiration, some books about the subject are here.

Just getting started?

• The Practical step by step guide to Making Pop Ups and novelty Cards. A masterclass in the art of paper engineering. by trish Pillips and ann montanaro. ISBN13:978-0-7548-2078-9

These next ones are less about a finished project but more about HOW pop ups work

• The Elements of Pop-Up; A pop up book for aspiring paper engineers by David A Carter and James Diaz. ISBN 0-689-82224-3
• Cut and Fold Techniques for Pop-Up Designs by Paul Jackson ISBN 978-1-78067-327-1

Boxes and cards in 3D

Bear in mind that Paul Jackson’s books, are about showing the construction principle and practice. They aren’t books of ‘pretty pretty cards n boxes’, like you see in craft focused magazines or books.

Paul’s books, are absolutely brilliant to learn the principles so that you can make them your own and take them as a starting point for your own projects. This is what the author states as his intention with the books.

• Cut and Fold Techniques for promotional Materials by Paul Jackson ISBN; 978-1-78067-094-2
• Creative Packaging:One piece packaging solutions by Paul Jackson ISBN: 978-988-76087-5-2

So many creative ideas and structures to play with. If you are someone who tends to take packaging apart so you can find out how it goes together then see if you can remake it in other sizes for your projects, then these books are going to really appeal to you.

There are so many ways you could use your stamping and other art forms alongside these 3D forms to create something amazing. Have fun exploring.

Happy Crafting

Billie