Paper Pieced Lighthouse Card

In this tutorial I'm going to show you how I paper pieced this lighthouse with the help of some scrapbooking (or photo editing/ word processing) software.
I have used the Light House Digi Stamp by Toucan Scraps.

In my software I placed the Sea digi paper from the Peaceful Seas digi paper pack by Toucan Scraps. And on top of that I added the Lighthouse digistamp with white in png format.

I placed the digi stamp in png format (without white) on top of the light paper in the Worn Well digi paper pack by Toucan Scraps.

I placed the png digi stamp on top of the dark paper in the Worn Well digi paper pack.

I printed them out onto white card stock

I cutout the rocks, lighthouse and lighthouse roof.

I stuck the lighthouse pieces onto the white lighthouse, leaving the light section still white and clean. I used a glue stick.

I stuck the rocks down on top

After the picture was dry I attached it to a sparkly dark blue card blank from Anita's Stamps using double sided sticky tape.

To add balance I stick a strip of ribbon on the left hand side and a button on top using tacky glue.

Teabag Folding Tutorial

Tea Bag Folding is really easy, and looks really impressive.
In this tutorial I want to show you how easy it is.
I'm using the It's A New Day Card Making Kit by Toucan Scraps for this tutorial.

There are several different types of fold, I'm going to show the one I use the most often - The Kite Fold.

Cut out the square teabag folding tile (I used the single flower tile in the It's A New Day Card Making Kit)
fold the square in half down the diagonal

open out
turn over

fold the side corners into the middle fold to form a kite

For the card shown above, stick the kites together overlapping on the centre line to form a flower.

The It's A New Day Card Making Kit by Toucan Scraps includes 5 pretty teabag folding tiles. AND an e-book with detailed, easy to follow step by step instructions on several different folds, and on how to combine them to make many gorgeous card designs.

Digital Scrapbooking - Word Album Tutorial

Have you seen any those wonderfully fashionable, and really impressive looking word albums in the galleries?

Here is one I made about our recent family holiday in Devon. You can see the pages on my main blog here.

I used the Tell My Story ABC Word Album Kit together with various other products in the Tell My Story collection by Toucan Scraps. In this tutorial I'm going to show you how to do the letter pages to make up the base of the word album.

Choose the letters you need. For my album I used D E V O and N.

Select the front and backs for each letter and copy them to a new folder (we are going to edit the files, and you don't want to made edits to the originals). If you need a letter twice then get 2 copies (fronts and backs).

Start with the last letter (for me that is N)

Measure the width of the letter using the ruler guides.

If your software doesn't have ruler guides, then draw a little rectangle in a layer above the letter page the size of the letter and see how wide it is.

Now take all the other letters (fronts and backs), and crop them by this width at the straight edge side. Some software packages allow you to do this quickly using the canvas size edit feature.

Take the next letter (for me that is O), measure the width and crop the remaining letters (but not the one we started with) by the letter width.

Repeat until all the letters are ready.

Double check everything by putting all the letter fronts in one document on separate layers. Do they line up OK?

Next you are ready to add photos and embellishments to create a fabulous unique album to amaze your family and friends.

Scrapbooking Layout Walk Through - 4 photos

This is a step by step walk through on how I put this scrapbooking layout together. If you have a go at following this, let me know so I can come and admire your layout. This tutorial can be followed by both traditional paper scrapbookers and digital scrapbookers. If you are a paper scrapbooker, please don't stick anything down until I mention to do so.

Here's my layout. I used the Peaceful Seas Digital Scrapbooking kit by Toucan Scraps.

First step

Choose your background card-stock or digi-paper

I'm using my favourite page size - 10 x 8 inches. You go with your own preference.

Choose a second sheet of paper and place a wide strip along the left hand edge - to just under 1/3 of the width. Paper scrappers - you can stick this down at this point if you wish, or wait until later.

Choose your main photo and lay it to the bottom left. This is one of my husband.

Choose 3 extra photos. They could be closeups or action shots to tell the story or add to the theme of your layout. Mine are action shots in sequence. Crop them to circles and lay them down the right hand edge.

To make the photos stand out we are going to mount them. Choose some card-stock/digi-paper and crop it to a little larger than all the photos.

Choose some note paper, or crop a sheet of paper to a rectangle. This is for the journaling and will be tucked under the main photo at an angle. Play for a bit until you get the angle how you like it.

Add your journaling. Digital Scrapbookers - don't use black for your font. It doesn't look natural. Instead, use your colour picker tool and take the darkest colour from your layout/photos and use that.

Paper Scrapbookers - it's time to line everything up and stick it down now.

Digial Scrapbookers -add a drop shadow to everything. (I like to use opacity 50%, blur 2, distance 1.5, angle 135 for papers and photos.) And line it all up till you are happy with it.

Next. We are going to add a title to the top left hand side. I have cut letters out of the blue paper.

And now for the final touches. Some embellishments. I've added some shells to the bottom left to add some balance, and another shell with a bit of ribbon to link the note paper and right hand photos.

Paper Scrapbookers - Stick everything down.

Digital Scrapbookers - add drop shadows to your elements, a little larger than for the paper but not too much.

Please do let me see your layouts.

Tall Card using Digi Papers and Scrapbooknig Software

I'm going to show you how I made this card that I posted on my main blog earlier in the week.

I used a store bought tall card blank (Daniel found me loads in a bargain box). And 2 of the It's a New Day Digi Papers by Toucan Scraps. I used a scrapbooking package to crop the digi papers and add an ink saving trick. And a ribbon and button for trimmings.

First the digital bit
Set you page size to the paper you will be printing on (metric A5 for me).
Crop the Leafy paper to 6.6 cm x 18.3 cm (about 2.6 x 7.2 inches)
Crop the Hummingbird paper to 6.0 cm x 17.8 cm (about 2.4 x 7.0 inches)

Now for the Ink Saving Trick
Most of that leafy paper will be covered over by the Hummingbird paper.
Draw a solid white rectangle centrally on top of the leafy paper at approx 5.8 cm x 17.5 cm (about 2.3 x 6.8 inches) - this is just a little bit smaller that the hummingbird layer.

Print
Cutout
Stick the hummingbirds on top of the leafy layer using glue stick or double sided tape.
Wrap a small length of ribbon round this about 4 cm (1.6 inches) from the bottom.
Add an embellishment to the ribbon. I threaded the ribbon ends through a button, then tied and trimmed the ends.

Stick centrally on the card blank using glue stick or double sided tape