Card Making Tips Techniques
A-Z of Crafts
Colour Guides
Tips
Colouring in Peel Offs
Scribble over your peel offs ( in this case gold
but it could be silver or multi coloured) with
acetate/peel off colouring pens to change them to
any colour you like.
This was done with Imag-e-nation's own
brand of acetate/peel off colouring pens.
12 colours in a pack costs £5.99 but currently offered in
our eShop at only £2.50
Recipe for Gold, Silver & Copper Fonts
Go to where you format your font colour and in custom you should get 3 boxes come
up Red (R) Green (G) Blue (B). Just put the numbers quoted into the boxes and that will
be the colour of your font.
Gold = Red 192 Green 168 Blue 104
Deeper Gold = Red 165 Green 138 Blue 82
Silver = Red 151 Green 151 Blue 168
Copper = Red 205 Green 115 Blue 0
Kindly submitted by PeeJay
________________________________________________
Wombling
We've named this after the Wombles who, you'll recall, recycled other peoples' cast
-offs.
Card makers are ingeneous at finding things to add to cards and, for example, recently
lots of card makers reported buying Chrismas tree decorations from a DIY chainstore
because they could be used as card embellishments
Changing Naff to Nice
This cracker idea (pun intended) comes from Nichola and Sue
Supermarket christmas crackers are, say, £1 for 6. Really poor plastic gifts and look really
cheap
However... look at them another way...
£1 buys you 6 "make your own cracker kits". Take them apart carefully and you have snaps,
tubes (no need to be using loads of loo roll before Christmas!), hats and jokes (you might
want to sort your own jokes out though, they are a bit poor, even for cracker jokes).
All you need then is your imag-e-nation,(sic) a bit of crepe paper, a ribbon maybe
and gifts
of your choice to insert.
What an opportunity to personalise the joke, gift, verse etc
(The same concept can be applied to Christmas cards. Because of the handmade look,
made fashionable by crafters, cheap Christmas cards and gift labels, made in China, are
available with 3-D embellishments. Remove the embellishments for use on your cards.The
envelopes are a bonus)
Other "Womble" ideas are invited.
Recycle all the nice shop-bought cards you receive
Many of the cards sent to you will have design features that can be cut out and reused
using double sided mounting foam. Even the verse can be reused. Cut round the
verse in a
speech bubble style or use decorative edged scissors and then mount it inside your card
with double sided foam
________________________________________________________
CLICK Here for lots more tips in the iSpace Craft Community
_______________________________________________________
Peel Off "Waste Not, Want Not"
To enable you to get the best value from your peel offs use the negative of
your sticker by pressing low tack masking tape over all the bits that are left.
press down firmly, check to make sure all of the bits are on the tape then
transfer to your project by pressing down again firmly until all the pieces are
now on your card.
Kindly submitted by Shaunoch
Spray glitter hairspary on your projects to a) fix them and b) make them sparkle
Kindly submitted by Glitterizer
______________________________________________________
What is Pergamano?
Go to their website www.pergamano.com
_________________________________________________________
Downloadable Backing Papers
http://groups.msn.com/CarolsCards/coordinatedindex.msnw
http://www.uwrapit.com.au/catalogue/birthday.html
http://www.epson.com/cgi-bin/Store/PrintLab/PrintPatterned.jsp?BV_
UseBVCookie=yes
There's many more in the Free Printables section
________________________________________________
Templates
http://www.wsdesignsonline.co.uk/
www.bydonovan.com
www.stampaddicts.c
There's many more in the Free Printables section
______________________________________________
A few tips:-
I have an embroidery machine that works without thread so I use this for paper
pricking. You could also do this with an ordinary sewing maching without thread,
simple sew over a drawn design
The next tip is a bit cheeky. I go to the local DIY shop and get samples of paper and
borders; these are great for backing papers and layering and matting; also when they
have their sales buy a few cheap rolls. Look for embossed pearl type papers; these are
great for wedding cards etc
Jan from Stevenage
___________________________________________________
Embossing
Dee
When using embossing powder you usually need to brush off the powder with a brush
BEFORE using the heat gun. The tip is get a hankerchief and put a little talcum powder
in it and tie it up like a puff. Then dap it onto the card before you stamp it so when the
embossing powder is added
it only stick to the ink from stamp and not the card static.
I hope this makes some sense to anyone I thought it sounded a great TIP.
Anne-Marie
Hi, This sounds a lot cheaper than the way i bought one. I was told you needed an anti static
bag so i asked at my local craft shop who ordered me one and when i got it home it was only
a little 3 inch by 2 inch bag with talc in. Cost me £3.99 too! rip off. But it does work.
Get the stamping done fine first time every time
crafteekitten (aka Helen)
The talc in a piece of cotton fabric does work, i just keep forgetting to use it!! Also stop the
powder from sticking to any grease on the card from your fingers.
saffie
Talc in an old sock works as well and so does using a tumble dryer sheet
on the card first.
________________________________________________
How to Create a Template in Word for an A6 Card Insert
Short n Sweet- Glitterizing
From the ‘File’ menu select ‘New’ and open a blank document.
From the ‘File’ menu select ‘Page Setup’. A box should open up similar to this…
Click on the ‘Paper size’ tab and set the paper
size to A5 and Orientation to ‘Landscape’. Click OK.
You should now have a screen showing a blank page of A5 in landscape format
Once again go to ‘Page Setup’ from the ‘File’ menu
Click on the ‘Margin’ tab and set the margins as 1cm for top and bottom and 1.17cm for left
and right (1.25cm from edge of header & footer). Click on OK.
This allows for the insert to be trimmed with fancy edge cutters/trimmers/scissors because you will usually find that a true A5 piece of paper, once printed and folded and placed inside the card, is actually a little too large and would benefit from a ‘light’ trim!!
You have now completed the first step and have the base to create your template.
The next stage is to create a ‘Table’. To do this go the ‘Table’ on the menu bar, select ‘Insert’ and ‘Table’ from the drop down menu. You should get a box similar to this.
Change the ‘Number of columns’ to 3 and the ‘Number of rows’ to 1. If you want to you can check ‘Set as default for new tables’. Useful if you intend making several different sizes of template and don’t use this facility for anything else. Click OK
You should now have a screen looking
something like this…, which is the table you now need to work on.
Highlight the first section of the table and either select ‘Table Properties’ from the ‘Table’ menu or right-click and select ‘Table Properties’ from the menu that appears. You should get a box like this….
Click on ‘Column’ and change the width to 8.5cms. Click ‘Next column’ and change that to 2cms. Click ‘ Next Column’ again and change that to 8.5cms to match the first column. Click OK.
Your page should now look like this....
Now go back to ‘Table Properties’ and click on ‘Row’. Check ‘Specify height’ and make it 11cm with ‘Row height’ set to ‘At least’. Make sure that nothing else is checked. Click on OK
Your template (yes, nearly there!!) should now look something like this….
Now all you need to do is to tell each cell where you want to place any typing you do.
The middle cell is obviously the middle of the card and is the area you use to stick down – you don’t need to do anything more with this bit.
The left hand side I sometimes use to add a bit of clip art or writing and I generally have this side centred.
The right hand side is where you put your verse. I have this set to position from the top and then use the ‘return’ key to position it until I am happy. I prefer my verse/text to be slightly high of centre so that it looks balanced, but that is all down to personal preference.
Anyway, to position the text, click in the cell you want to format and then you can either select ‘Table Properties’ the ‘Cell’ tab and click on your preference for top, centre or bottom and click OK or……………
………… you can right-click over the cell, select ‘Cell Alignment’ and then make your choice from the little box that shows to the side.
Your cursor should now blink in the position that you have selected.
So that the lines showing on your screen don’t print (unless you want them to) go to ‘Format’ and select ‘Borders and Shading’ from the drop down menu. On the ‘Borders’ tab, select ‘None’ - click OK. Your page will now either have very light grid lines or will be completely blank. Either way your cursor will blink in one of the cells and you can move it from one cell to another by clicking with the mouse or using the tab key. If your page is blank and would prefer to see lines as a guide but don’t want them to print, go to the ‘Table’ menu and select ‘Show gridlines’. These show on screen but will not print!!
The only thing left to do now is to save it as………….. a template!
From the ‘File’ menu select ‘Save as’. A ‘Save As’ box will come up. Decide what you want to call the template and type this in ‘File name’ then select ‘Document Template’ from the selection offered in the ‘Save as type:’ box. Click on ‘Save’
You have now completed your template!!
To access the template for use all you need to do is to open it from the ‘File’ menu, select ‘New’
and then select your template from the choice presented to you under the general tab – make
sure you select it to create a new document unless you want to use it to create a new template –
in which case, select it as a template!!
You can do general inserts and save them as documents so you don’t have to type it out again
(ie. Plain ‘Happy Birthday’)
Once you have created this one you can go on to create more for different card sizes by just changing the measurements. Obviously you have to have a card to measure and some scrap
paper (well I find I need scrap paper!!) to work out the different measurements needed for the
cells.
Tips:
Always put the correct size of paper into the printer. If your template is for an A6 card put a
piece of A5 paper into your printer, if I’st for an A5 card, put A4 into the printer. If it’s a non-standard (custom) size, cut your paper to that size. If you don’t, the insert won’t print correctly.
Print off a sample before using expensive vellums or other paper, to make sure that everything
will fit the card and you’re happy with the layout. You will probably only need to do this once if you keep the sample – mark it with the file name you gave it and keep it in a file for future reference
Kindly Supplied by Peejay
LINKS TO WEBSITES WITH USEFUL TIPS
General Advice on Papercrafts- embossing, rubber stamping etc
www.papercraftz.comhttp://www.hgtv.com/hgtv/cr_paper_crafts_cards/0,1788,HGTV
_3290,00.html
Triple Embossing ( among others )
Docrafts have some good tips- the one on triple embossing is worth looking at.
http://www.docrafts.co.uk/asp/toptips/searchTopTips.asp
Click on the picture of the tip to have it enlarged and explained step by step
Paper Snowflakes
Here's a lovely site that does exactly what it says on the tin.How to make lovely snowflakes
fom paper go to
www.papersnowflakes.comTea Bag Folding and other projects
http://www.eclipsecardcraft.co.uk/projects.htm
_________________________________________________________________
Lots of good tips on www.kookykards.com
_________________________________________________________________
Got any Tips?
If you have any cardmaking advice, techniques, pointers or suggestions that you would
like to share with other Imag-e-nation cusomers, we would love to hear from you. Email
enquiries@imag-e-nation.com
Give us your name, location and details of your cardmaking tip or technique and we will be
delighted to add it to this section of the website for others to benefit from your wisdom!