Tea Bag Folded Cross

Teabag Folding is a great technique and can be used to make a fabulous cross shape for Easter, Baptism and Sympathy Cards.

Here are the main steps to making a cross using teabag folding. You will need 5 teabag folding tiles (I'm using tiles from the It's A New Day Teabag Folding Kit by Toucan Scraps)

1. Fold the teabag folding tile in half along the diagonal

2. open out and turn over
3. fold the points that are not on the fold line in to the middle to meet on the foldline

4. repeat steps 1 - 3 for the other 4 tiles

5. arrange the shapes as shown below

6. stick to your project using double sided tape or stick glue etc.

Colouring a Daffodil -Step by Step

This is a step by step colouring tutorial for a daffodil that I wrote for another site last year, and am now free to share it with you all today.

The Daffodil is a digital stamp by Toucan Scraps.

I have used Tria Markers from Letraset, these are alcohol based markers. Colour numbers Y418, O929, O949, 0567, 0346.

1. Coat the petal in a very pale yellowy offwhite [Y418]


2. Whist still wet, go over the top in the areas you want shaded in a slightly darker colour [0929]


3. Add a little pale orange [0949] to the places where the petal tucks behind another or the trumpet.


4. Go over the top of the entire petal again with the lightest colour [Y418] to blend. Repeat with all petals.


5. Allow to dry

6. Coat the entire trumpet with the palest orange [0929]


7. Whilst still wet colour the trumpet with the next orange [O949] leaving only the bits you want to be highlights.


8. Use a bright orange [O567] to colour the main areas of the trumpet


9. Go over the top of the entire petal again with the lightest orange [O929] to blend.
10. Allow to dry
11. Colour the stamens [O346]

Altered Journal Using Mixed Media

Hello everyone, I hope you hare having a great creative start to the week. Mixed Media is a fabulous mish-mash of lots of different craft and art materials and techniques, and it can even include digital. It's loads of fun and I have to be careful if the kids are around or they take over. I used Mixed Media to cover journal recently, and I'm going to walk you through what I did to create the front cover.

Materials

• A Large Spiral Bound Note Book
• Water Colour Paper, Brush and Paints
• Doily
• Butterfly Rubber Stamp and Alcohol Based Markers (Tria by Letraset)
• Tissue Paper
• Glue
• Thin Black Cardstock (or thick paper)
• Glitter Yarn and Thin Ribbon
• Out Loud Digital Scrapbooking Kit by Angie Young
• White Card Stock for Printer
• Scissors
• Curved Edges on Fiskars Shape Templates
• Wooden Embellishment

The Painting Bit

Taking two tubes of watercolour paints I put some in a pallet and added water to make a wash. Then starting from the top of a sheet of water colour paper I painted a blue wash, and from the bottom a yellow one. The meet in the middle and merge slightly. I made the top and bottom darker by over painting.

After the paint dried I cut the paper to size to fit the front of my journal.

Then I placed a doily in the top right corner.

Taking paint directly from the blue watercolour tube I dabbed it around the corner of the doily to make a pattern.

I repeated this in the bottom left using the yellow paint.

When the paint brush overlapped the blue section on the doily it mixed to make a green. I finished the paint left on the brush to print a circular design in green using the centre of the doily.

Adding water to the brush I painted a wash across the remaining white area of the doily to finish colouring it.

The Butterfly Tag

This was the digital part of my artwork. I put the blue journal tag from Angie's kit in my software and placed the red butterfly on top. Then I copied the butterfly in the space next to it. I printed the images onto white card-stock.

I cut out the tag ignoring the butterfly wings and cutting straight across them. Then I cut the wings from the second butterfly image.

I stuck the wings on to the tag directly above the printed butterfly image ensuring there was no glue on the wing tips. After the glue dried I used a pencil to curl the wing tips.

Putting it all Together

I inked up a butterfly rubber stamp with Tria Markers and printed a row of butterflies along the left hand side of the paper.

The Fiskars shape templates come with curved edges. I pressed the edge down on top of some tissue paper and tore the tissue paper along the shaped edge.

I layered up tissue paper and the doily along the left edge of the painted paper

I mounted the artwork on black card-stock. Using a black Tria Marker I inked up the edges and sprial bound edge of the front cover. The Cover was then stuck down using double sided sticky tape before adding the tag and a wooden embellishment.

As a finishing touch I tied some ribbon and glitter threads to the top 5 spirals.

This journal was so much fun to make, and I decorated some of the inside pages too (see previous tutorial). Have fun decorating your own note books and journals, and don't forget that I love to see anything you make inspired by or following instructions from this tutorials blog.

Digital Transfers

I love altering notebooks and art pads to create personalised journals. As well as the covers it's nice to decorate some of the inside pages too. For this journal I wanted to put some digital brushwork on the pages, but I can't put them through the printer. So I created some digtial transfers to use instead.

What I Used

* A pack of iron transfer sheets for light T-shirts at our Ryman Stationers Shop.

* Digital Image and Word Art Brushes by Angie Young from her Out Loud Bundle.

* A note book

* An Iron

* Cotton Cloth

How to make digital transfers

* Set-up a page in the software the size of the transfer sheets you will be using (A4 for me)

* Layout the digtial images and wordart on the page leaving space between each "transfer" for cutting out etc.

* Group all the images together (or merge the layers if using Photoshop or similar)

* Flip it round so you get a mirror image.

* Print

* Leave it to dry thoughly for at least an hour

Applying the digital transfers to a journal page.

* Cut around each transfer

NOTE If you haven't ironed on paper before, get a scrap piece of paper. Iron it with a medium hot dry iron (switch the steam off) and check for paper crumpling or discolouring. If the paper is still the same, try slightly hotter. You want to have the iron as hot as you can without it distorting or discolouring the paper.

* get your iron ready

* place some cotton cloth beneath the page you are putting the transfer onto

* put the transfer on the page, printed side down.

* iron firmly, moving the iron slowly for a few seconds.

* allow to cool completely then peal off the transfer paper

Have fun.

Photography - The Eye vs. Camera

Sabrina's back with some more photography wisdom for us today and an experiment.

Did you know that your eyes can see an estimated 2.3 to 10 million different colors! Is that amazing or what? Actually current research does not know exactly how many colors the human brain and eye can see and interpret. A couple of weeks ago we dove into the rule of thirds but I started thinking about that and from my studies most people do not start out with rules right out of the starting gate, so I have decided to take a few steps back and lay some groundwork for you.

As you begin your journey into photography it is important to note that what your eye perceives and what your camera sees through the light sensor are two totally different things.

The human eye receives light and hits the retina where it begins being processed. The retina is located at the back of the eye and consists of light-sensitive cells called rods and cones. These cells are mainly located in one part of the retina called the fovea and are responsible for processing the color and sharpness of what you are looking at, then sends the information to the brain.

A camera works in a similar fashion because as light strikes the lens it gets directed to a small area just like the fovea called the image sensor. The image sensor then processes the information and sends it to your digital cameras’ on board computer. From this point the computer then generates a preview on your LCD screen and writes the information on your media card when you press the shutter.

So far the eye and camera process light in a similar fashion right? Well the biggest difference in the two is that the brain processes light with “memory” and experiences and the camera processes the data it receives with predetermined equations, etc. Am I starting to lose you? No worries, here is an experiment for you to try.

Take a sheet of white paper or a book and begin reading it in a room with traditional light bulbs, incandescent for example, after you have been reading your book for a few minutes move to the light of a window. Note that there are different types of light because incandescent blubs and natural light do not have the same “temperature” or color. However, when you move your book from the different types of light the “white” page never changes colors! That is because your brain knows from experience that the page on the book is supposed to be white and it will correct this in your mind. However, a camera cannot learn experiences and can only capture what it is told too or has been programmed to capture. In this example if we wanted the page of your book to be white we would have to manually correct for White Balance but we will get into what this is in a later post.

Therefore, as you are taking photos do not be surprised if you take a shot that does not look exactly as you had originally pictured it. The eye and the camera may start out with a similar process but the end result will never be the same. Our challenge as photographers is to capture an image as close to what we really see as possible. Until next time happy shooting my friends!

Thank you Sabrina.