Society of Stampaholics

Jennifer McGuire's Holiday Thinking Inking

Oh, yowza, yowza, yowza!!!

    

Jennifer McGuire's much-anticipated series Holiday Thinking Inking class has commenced over at 2 Peas!!! 

This is the first week in an eight-week series, and these tutorials are the best thing going EVER! She provides three cards a week with an instructional video and excellent PDF handouts (with pictures) to download. These are listed as challenges, so if you want a chance to win some product, head on over! Oh, and this time around she's going to be offering some free digital images for download (like that super cute reindeer above!)

And did I mention that it's absolutely FREE?

Can't beat this deal with a stick!

I really loved her Thinking Inking class last summer, and this looks to be just as good, so....

RUN! (Don't walk!) RUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUN!!!

How to Resize a Digital Picture

In the interest of making my life better, (and yours, too!) I think it would be good to share with people how to resize a digital photo. This is a very easy thing to do and a very important item to have in your skill set - especially if you regularly upload pictures to the 'Net or send them via email.

If you don't know why size matters, read on.

Any image you want to put online will look dandy at 72 dpi - it only stops looking dandy if you try to print it. (Rule of thumb: 72 is good to view - like that rhyme I just made up?) A photo at 72 dpi allows you to use a file that is relatively small. Smaller files are good because:

1. They load faster (Who wants to wait for a huge picture to load? Not your viewers, that's for sure!); and
2. They take up less storage space (less is more when you're dealing with online galleries that limit your available storage space).

So it's really in everyone's best interest to have smaller files. 

If you know enough to get your photo uploaded onto the Internet, you probably already have a photo editing program. Adobe Photoshop Elements is what I've been working with for the last ten years - very user friendly - can;t say enough good about it.

No matter which program you use, however, they're all set up with the same basic organizational logic.

BUT BEFORE WE DO ANYTHING... please remember it's a good rule of thumb to never edit your original photo. Open your original photo ("Halloween Card" for this example) and save it as something else ("Halloween Card copy"). If you always perform your edits on a copy of the original, your original will always remain protected and safe.  

Okay, on with the show!

In Photoshop Elements select File > Save For Web. This opens up a box which allows you to choose what size you want. As an illustration, the Halloween card I posted earlier today originally clocked in at 28M! (Can we say HUGE?! I forgot to change the settings on my camera.)

When I choose Save For Web, I get a new window which shows me my original photo and my new version side-by-side. The new version defaults to "low" - in this case bringing the file size down to 317k.  I can also select "medium" which increases my file size to about 800k. I can go to "high" but why bother? Low is a teensy, tiny bit more pixelated than my original photo, and medium looks exactly like my photo.

Here's the photo (size 317k):

And here it is at 800k:

As you can see, it looks just dandy at either size! But it will load ten times faster and take up much less space than 28M.

By the way, most photos I take of cards are much smaller. I usually set my camera to its "good" photo setting when I take a picture of my projects - which means that most of my pictures are usually 1M - 2M - which means they usually end up being about 100k - 200k once they've been resized for uploading onto the Web.

I think Picasa (a fabulous and free program - click on link to download) may automatically resize your photos when you upload them to the Internet, but I haven't used Picasa in years, so you might want to do a test drive. (If anybody can verify that, please feel free.)

Irfanview is another free internet download that definitely will allow you to resize your photos. Although I have never used it, it comes highly recommended.

If anyone knows of a better way, faster way, etc, please leave a comment and I'll update this post.

Hope this helps!

Just a Little Dye Technique

This is a really easy technique that I should have shared at Easter, but it got lost in the shuffle. I'm writing about it now because of my card for the June CCC:

The ribbon I used is super cheap bias tape that's been opened up and ironed flat. The bias tape was originally white, but I dyed it using leftover Easter egg dyes. I did a whole bunch of these after we finished with the eggs, and it's really easy.

All you have to do is make the dye according to the packet instructions and then start to play.

Some things you can do:

• Straight-up dye job using just one color - the longer you let the ribbon soak, the darker it will become.
• Multi-dipping. (What I did above). You dip a portion of the ribbon into one color, then you dip the next couple of inches into another color, etc. You get a nice variegated look. (Make sure you squeeze out the excess water before going to the next dipping color.)
• Go for a tye-dye look by bringing rubber bands into the picture.

Squeeze out all the excess liquid when you're finished dying. You can either hang your ribbons up or lay them flat - just make sure you put down newspaper first. 

After the ribbon dries, I like to press it with a hot iron. I don't think this sets the dye - I just don't care for limp bias tape! For added body, use iron-on fabric stabilizer. (The card above uses just plain bias tape without stabilizer.)

Although Easter egg dye packets are not currently available, you can get them again next Easter (and if you wait until the after-Easter sales, you'll get them for a fraction of their already cheap price). You can also use Ritt dyes - which are available all year long at places like Walmart and JoAnn's. And if you really want to get radical, make your own all-natural dyes.

IMPORTANT: Use all-natural fabrics as dyes don't work well with synthetics. 100% Cotton, silk, wool and linen take dyes like buttah. (I'm not sure how well synthetic blends of these fabrics will take dyes, but you can give them a try to see how well they work.)

Hope you try it and have a good time!

CARD SUPPLIES:

Paper: Bazzill, ColorMates; Ink: Memento, ColorBox, Copic Markers, Hero Arts S5433 (background) ; Other: gems, bias tape; Tools: Fiskers border punch, corner rounder.

A Little Stamping Trick for Backgrounds

I learned today's tip at the last Stamping Convention here in Indy, and what a keeper it is!

I meant to share it with y'all back in March and then totally forgot about it (there's a shocker). I had wanted to make a video, but the planets are refusing to align. It's really so simple that a video would probably be overkill, anyway, so let's get this cat out of the bag the old-fashioned way, shall we?

If you've ever stamped a background stamp (or a large stamp or a photo stamp) and gnashed your teeth at finding an uneven or splotchy image, be happy - that's about to become a thing of the past!

Here's what you do:

1. Lay down a padded stamping surface that's about 1/4" to 1/2" thick. (I tend to use a chunk of my old telephone book or one of those wine-colored stamping mats. A magazine would also work.)
2. Ink your stamp generously.
3. Apply your stamp to the paper of choice, but DON'T LIFT UP THE STAMP!!! Stack another like-sized stamp or wood /acrylic block on top of your inked stamp and firmly apply pressure.
4. Now remove the pressure, but don't pick up the stacked stamps yet. Count out ten seconds.
5. Remove your stamps and see what a perfect and beautiful image you have created!

The cushion of the pad beneath the paper coupled with firm and even pressure allows the ink to be evenly distributed across the entire stamp. The ten seconds allows the paper to properly absorb the ink. (A bonus here is that if you let the paper have the ink, you will have no ink remaining on your stamp when you remove it. Makes clean-up much easier!)

The demonstrator showed us this technique with both glossy and regular paper, and it worked a treat. I got to do it with the glossy card stock at the time, and it came out perfectly. Since then, I've done this many, many times on my Ninah, Beckett and Cougar white cardstock, and I get gorgeous, complete coverage with no bleeding (despite the ten-second application) every time.

I urge you to give it a go!

A Card and a Small How To

Here's a card I made for Spouse for Father's Day (potentially) or maybe just for making the choice every day to stay married to me. :~D

I don't usually use alphabet letters as shortcuts for words, but I just didn't have any room here. I can't tell if it will make immediate sense, but I'm hoping it will eventually be clear. (hee-hee!)

SUPPLIES: Hero Arts CL318; VersaFine & VersaMark Dazzle inks; Krylon silver leaf pen; Martha Stewart ribbon (thanks, again Sue!); Junkitz buttons; Tim Holtz paper clip; Making Memories pewter letter charms; pop-dots.

SPECIAL TOOLS: EK Success border punch

HOW TO MAKE THE STAR TAG

1. Stamp onto heavy cardstock (using VersaFIne black ink) with acrylic star stamp from Hero Arts Clear Design Galaxy of Stars set (#CL318). Stamp two images.
2. Carefully outline one star (#1) with a Krylon Silver Leaf pen and cut out.
3. Cut out the other star (#2) and edge the sides of the star with a black brush pen.
4. Adhere Star #2 on top of Star #1. (You can use pop dots for lift between the two stars, but do Step Five first.)
5. Punch a small hole at the top with a paper piercer or small hand punch.
6. Thread through paperclip or fiber of choice.

A Simple Thank You Card & a Discovery

This was a very quick and yet satisfying experience! I made this card in under 10 minutes - I think it took longer for it to dry than it took to make!

Supplies: STAMPS: Hero Arts H3307, CL395, H5312; INKS: Hero Arts/Memories, VersaChalk; OTHER: Ranger Distress Stickles, Stickles, Hero Arts pearl. 

Sadly, the picture doesn't show the sparkle of the Stickles on the flower itself, but you can see it in person!

WHAT I DISCOVERED: Spreading Distress Stickles around in the background can give you a very nice, subtle effect - it's like getting an additional layer without adding any bulk. And I always like it when that happens!

TFL!

Easter Card with a Technique

The current Hero Arts blog challenge is Easter or Spring. I don't know what to do for Spring - I mean, they had Flowers last month, so it's not enough to just do flowers and have it count as a Spring theme, right?

Anyway, I had received a lovely card from Tami Hartley, and I decided I was going to try to suss out and reproduce the technique she used. I don't know if what I did was what she did, but it looks very close, and I love it! 

This technique is much more visible if you use it on a larger canvas - my canvas diminished a great deal after it came in contact with a Martha Stewart butterfly punch! 

A close-up:

You really ought to try this if you haven't already because it's very fast, and the results are yummy-delish!

How To:

1. You're stamping everything in layers - one on top of the next.
2. Stamp with a distressed shadow stamp using a light shadow ink. (I used Hero Arts/Memories - Peach, I think)
3. OPTIONAL or in lieu of Step #2: stamp a silhouette image using a light shadow ink. (I used Hero Arts/Memories - Sand)
4. Using a darker ink, stamp a handwriting image. (I used Ranger Distress ink - the darker purple whose fancy-pants name I forget.)
5. Ink edges of canvas with darker ink. (I used Ranger Distress in Chipped Sapphire and that dark purple again.)
6. Using embossing ink, stamp a negative silhouette image. In other words, the actual image will be the part of the stamp that is cut away. (I used Hero Arts K5340 - see below.) 
7. Heat emboss.
8. Rub various colors of ink over the embossed images and then wipe the excess ink off the embossed parts. (I used VersaChalk and some of the Ranger Distress inks.)
9. "Ooooh!" and "Aaaah!" as you strut around the table feeling magnificently talented and creative!    

Hero Arts Stamp K5340:

Supplies: STAMPS: Hero Arts H3307, K5162, Stampabilities; INKS: Ranger, Distress, Ranger Distress Embossing, Hero Arts/Memories Shadow, VeraChalk; OTHER: embossing powder, Mark Richardson pearls, Le Plume Marker; TOOLS: Martha Stewart butterfly punch, Tim Holtz ink tool, heat gun

Thanks for Looking!