Hand Stitching a Card

I did this tutorial for La-La Land Crafts for tutorial Thursday and I forgot to put it on my tutorial blog here, so I'm popping it here now to make it easy for you to find.

First of all you'll need to gather your equipment. 

You'll need a piercing tool (make sure it's narrow enough to fit in whatever you're using as your piercing guide), a piercing guide (this can be a piercing template or a ruler with holes, the one I use is by Tim Holtz), a piercing mat (the one I use is by Memory Keepers), if you can't get a piercing mat you can use an embossing mat, but you'll need to put an old magazine or something underneath it to protect your table. You'll also need scissors, a sewing needle with a reasonably large eye, glue or double sided tape and Top Stitch thread (if you're using regular thread you'll need to double up at least to get the same effect, I would really recommend top stitch thread),I use Guttermans. You can use plain white or cream, but I love to use colours as I think it adds a nice touch to my cards.

Work out your card design and cut all your pieces, if you're distressing and or inking the edges, you'll need to do this before stitching.

Now glue your patterned paper to your backing card. You'll want your glue or tape only in the middle, this is just to hold it while stitching, your stitched will actually hold your layers together and you won't want to be trying to stitch through glue. Let your glue dry thoroughly before starting to pierce. 

For straight lines, line your piercing guide up with your paper and poke through the holes with your piercing tool, holding your guide in place with your other hand (I couldn't do this here as I was operating the camera!)

If you're piercing a shaped piece I recommend piercing any pointed bits first and working in sections, you'll need to work freehand and just eyeball your spacing, don't worry if it's not perfect, it's much less noticeable on a shaped card.

Then stitch your card, using back-stitch as shown.

If you've never used back-stitch before the diagram below should help.

Make sure you sew through your threads at the back a few times to finish off, you don't want your stitching coming loose once you've glued your card together, and that's it! It does take quite a while to do but I find hand sewing quite relaxing, for me it's just another enjoyable part of crafting. 

 Here's my finished card

and here's another example of some of my hand-stitching on cards.

I hope you enjoyed my tutorial and it has inspired you to give stitching your cards a try, and do ask me if you have any questions or you're not sure of anything here.

Linda : ) x x 

How to add a Candy button to your side bar

Very quick tutorial from me to explain how to add somebody's Blog Candy pic as a button on your side bar.  I don't know about you but when I started I had no idea how to do this and googling can bring up some very confusing answers! Anyway......

1. Copy the link to the blog
Copy the pic and url in question by just right clicking and choosing 'copy image URL'
2. Go to 'Layout' on your blog
3. Click the 'Add a Gadget' option on your sidebar where you want the pic.
4. Scroll down the list to this :
Image

Add an image from your computer, or from somewhere else on the web. 
By Blogger 
and click the blue + button

5. Add a title if you want, you don't need a caption.
6. Paste the link to the blog that has the candy (don't forget to get rid of the extra http:// if you end up with one), in the link box.
7. Click the small 'Shrink to fit box'. This ensures that whatever the size of the pic it won't end up covering your bar.
8. Click save...and you're all done!

You can use this same method for adding badges etc.

Hope that helps and that I haven't confused anyone! :) xx

Book Card Tutorial

WARNING - This is a step by step picture tutorial, it has many photos and may take some time to load.

STEP 1:

Cut your base card 12.5'' x 7''

(this card is a little larger than my previous book card and you can adjust dimensions to make smaller as you wish) and score 5'' from each end.

STEP 2:

Cut the following pieces from the same card stock:

4 pieces @ 5'' x 7''

2 pieces @ 2.5'' x 7''

You'll want to trim a tiny sliver from the long edges of 2 larger and 1 smaller piece (this is so that the inside of your 'book' will close properly.

Now cut the same from your chosen design paper.

Ink all the edges of your card stock and paper with distress ink. I'm using Vintage Photo here, but you can choose whatever suits your design paper and style.

Now glue your paper to your card stock.  You should end up with 6 pieces in all 4 larger and 2 smaller, make sure you keep track of which 3 pieces are for the inside!

STEP 3:

Now glue your outside pieces to the outside of your base.

STEP 4:

Before sticking your inside pieces on, attach 2 lengths of ribbon with some tape.  You can see here that I've also attached my metal book plate to the outside so that the fastenings will be hidden on the inside.

STEP 6:

Glue on your inside pieces, covering the ends o your ribbon and make sure you can easily fold the book into a closed position.

STEP 7:

Finish decorating the outside however you wish.

 STEP 8:

Cut 2 pieces of card 6.5'' x 11.5'' and 2 pieces 4.5 x 11.5

Lay your first piece of card lengthwise across your score board and score at 1'' intervals, then turn your card over and score at 1/2'' intervals. Do the same with the other 3 pieces.

Now fold them concertina style. You should end up with 4 pieces like this.  Brush them with your distress ink.

STEP 9:

Run some glue along the groves of one of the longer pieces of card and fit each groove into the edge of another groove on one of your smaller pieces.

You should end up with and L shape like this.  Do the same with the remaining 2 pieces.

Now glue and fit the 2 L shapes together using the same method.

You'll end up with something that looks like this.

STEP 10:

Glue or tape the edges of this frame and glue down onto the inside of your 'book'.

STEP 11:

Finish by decorating the top of the frame to hide the nasty looking edges, here I've used some design paper with an oval cut out to make more of a frame shape.  This one is quite deep so you can give a nice baby present wrapped in some pretty tissue paper and then the book can be used for storing all those little baby mementos that you keep as a new parent. You can see here that I also added a little pocket and some pretty tags to the inside cover.

and here is the finished article.  If you would like to see more pictures of the finished book card,  and links to products used, pop across to my blog.

Hope you enjoyed this tutorial and found it helpful.

Linda :) xx

Magic Card

* WARNING*   This step by step tutorial is very photo heavy, so please give it a while to load.

These cards look very complicated, but I'm going to show you that they're actually not, they just take a little planning.  I don't use standard measurements for these, I tend to adjust them to fit what I'm using, image, paper etc, But I'll give you all the measurements I used on this card and then you can either use them or adjust them as you wish.

Firstly you'll need some basic card stock, I used a white fairly heavy weight, but a medium weight would work too as all the paper and glue makes it quite sturdy.  All my measurements are in inches as this is what my scoring board uses, but it shouldn't be too difficult to convert it to metric.

The photos are not my best and one is blurred because it was late and silly me didn't check the camera to see if I'd got a good picture before moving on lol, but you should be able to see well enough to get the idea.

STEP 1

You'll need to cut 3 pieces of card stock:

1 @ 6 & 1/2  x 7 & 1/2  This is the back

1 @ 6 & 1/2  x  6 & 1/2 This is the middle

1 @  4 & 1/2  x 8    This is the flap

You should end up with 3 pieces like this:

STEP 2

Lay the back piece with the longest length horizontally across your scoreboard (or whatever you use) and score at 1.5 on both ends.

Score the middle piece at 1 on both ends.

Score the flap on one end at  6 & 1/2  and 6 & 3/4

STEP 3

Fold along your scorelines.

STEP 4

Now use a punch or die to decorate the side edges of your back and middle pieces:

Your pieces should now look something like this:

STEP 5

Distress all your edges, front and back, including the folds, with your chosen colour of distress ink.  Here I've used Walnut Stain.

STEP 6

(Apologies for the naff picture).

Now you will need to cut pieces of your chosen design paper, the measurements for these will depend on which punch/die you used, but I'll give you the measurements I used for my card, you may need to adjust the measurements for the narrow strips, depending on how deep or narrow your edge decoration is.

I cut the following:

For the back piece:

1 @ 6 & 3/8   x  4 & 3/8
4 @ 6 & 3/8   x  1

For the middle piece:

2 @ 6 & 3/8   x  4 & 3/8
4 @ 6 & 3/8   x  1/2

For the flap:

2 @ 6 & 3/8  x  4 & 3/8
 You can then cut whatever layers and or frames you want on your card to suit whatever image and embellishments you plan on using.  Distress all your edges with the same ink you used on your cardstock.
You should end up with something like this:

STEP 7

 Now glue your paper to the front and inside pieces:

and the back and inside flap pieces.  Make sure you glue your paper to the inside of the flap so that it looks the right way up when you open it!

STEP 8

Turn your flap so that the front of your card is facing you, apply glue (or tape or whatever your use) to the top part of the flap as shown and glue this to the white part of the BACK piece (that's the largest part)

STEP 9

Attach the white parts of the back and middle parts to each other, this will also cover the flap from step 8

Your card is now complete and ready to be decorated. This is the inside.

and this is the front. As you can see,  here I haven't finished colouring my image yet.

Finally, here's the finished card!

I do hope this tutorial helped you, do have a try it's really not hard once you get started.  

You can see more pics of this card as well as details of what I used to make it on my main blog

Have a great day : ) x x

How To Make a Shaped Card

I've received quite a lot of queries about how I make my shaped cards, so as it's a pretty easy tutorial to do in pictures I thought I'd make it my first ever tutorial.

To start you will need an A4 size die cutting machine such as a Calibur, Big Shot Pro or eBosser (I have the eBosser personally, no winding, it's fab! ) and either the larger sets (XXL) of Go Kreate dies or Spellbinders Grand Nestabilities.  I use the 3rd size down from the largest to create a card that's around 6 x 6 inches (approx 15 x 15 cms).

You can make shaped cards with smaller dies and smaller die cutting machines, they'll just smaller in size of course, but the same principles apply.

Ok so apart from your die and machine, you'll need some card stock and design paper.  I use A4 card stock, I know some people use A3 and I do too if I'm cutting something like an oval shape, but I find I can get most shapes from an A4 sheet so that's what I'm using here.

STEP 1

Take your piece of card and score and fold it across the middle

STEP 2

Line up your die on your folded card so that all the die is covered except for a small piece at the top on the fold, it should look something like this, do check that there are no cutting parts of the die protruding from the edges except where you want to miss cutting the card at the top.

STEP 3

Attach your die to your card stock with some lo tack/removable tape, I'm using stencil tape here. This is to stop the card/die making any little movements while going through the machine.

Your card should look like this when it comes out.

STEP 4

Now you will need to cut a single piece of card stock and a piece of design paper the same way BUT this time cover the whole of your die.  

You should now have your card and the 2 peices you have just cut out like below.

STEP 5

Now glue your DP to your single piece of card stock and then glue the whole thing to your card.  It should look like this from the back, don't forget to do any distressing/inking/sewing etc before this stage.

That's it, you can now carry on and complete your card as normal.

In case you were wondering...this is what my finished card looks like.

I do hope you found this tutorial useful, take care and happy crafting.

Linda : ) x x