Sanzi Craft tools workshop Sept 2012

I had a wonderful time at the Sanzi Craft tools workshop and we made a number of projects. The card below is made from a spellbinders die and uses black paper that is adhesive on the back. The inking of the card gives some great dimension as does the threaded ribbon which was coloured with the distress inks.

 This next card is a metalic sheet that has been sanded after being embossed. Simple but very effective.

 This card below the black has been embossed with sack well I always call it sack as that is what sacks used to be made from when I was a little tacker too many years ago.

 This book below is awesome and is cut from the Spellbinder Creative pages dies. The little piece on the front opens to reveal a message and inside as you see below are the tags that go into the book. The book started off as plain heavyweight card which we coloured with distress inks stamped and used pearl mist on. there are little leather straps to hold it together and metal pieces also cut from a spellbinders die and it is bound with a bind-it-all.

 This card is another die and when it opens it pops up to reveal a platform. This can have a photo or more elaborate bits on it.

 This is playing round at home with some cats I cut out on the cricut from the Meow cartridge and playing with some of the dies I have I put this little card front together.

I went to the Stampinup Heartfelt event in Auckland and we learnt a lot of new techniques and were lucky enough to have 4 projects to do as well. This is a little box with wee cards in and is made from the StampinUp tag die. I have used the flower die to make the flower and have used a dalia in the incolour  gumball green for the centre

 On the cards I use the score ing board to score lines vertically and diagnolly to make a pattern and then stamped them.

This is a note book and we covered it so it has a front on it. the front is embossed with the scoring board, and the flower cut from a SU die and a clear button used for the centre. The stamp set is a new SU one. Check out the catalogues on my other blog here.
 

Thank you card

Thank you card made from spellbinders dies. An extra project from the Sanzi Craft Tools workshop.

Flip flop box

I came across a flip flop box and thought it was a cute little box. It is actually quite a big box for putting something in. I made it from an svg file and this is it plain no decorations. Its 5 5/8^th inches long so would hold quite a bit of whatever you wanted to put inside.

Little Yellow bird

The bird and branch from spring cottage is lovely but when I got a call to say Madge from Madge’s Creations found it difficult to cut the layer even at 4 inches I was intrigued and decided to give it a go. I was on a blog recently where someone had redone a card because they didn’t like the way it turned out and had commented that there was a decoration on the icon that they had cut in vinyl as it was so intricate. When I cut the layer to the bird at 3 inches I could see what was meant as the tail feathers are less than a millimetre in width. I found when using the Cricut cake machine if the line to be cut was narrower than the depth of the icing then it would not cut well. I also found that this applied to some extent with paper cuts as well on the Cricut’s hence if you are doing something very thin and intricate then by kiss cutting vinyl you will get a better cut. Now having some vinyl in my stash I decided to do just this and you can see that the yellow bird has a blue vinyl layer and if you look very closely you will see that the area between the tail feathers is about the width of a thin pencil line. Now the yellow bird with the brown head I cut the layer in brown cardstock. The layer cut s as 2 separate pieces so as the brown head cut fine I put this on to take the photo. Now having discovered that the vinyl cut well for the layer I decided to use a thin cardstock paper I have in my stash called “scrapbook Paper” by Grant Archival called Photguard which is a firm paper not a cardstock. This paper I layered on my mat and cut the layer with settings of speed 3, pressure 3, cut 1 and blade depth of 3 and it did cut the layer (as I held my breath) Setting on the Cricut or any of your die cutting machines are very important and so is size to get the best cut. Now if you want to do this bird at a 2inches then I would suggest you do it in vinyl. Another thing to remember is the way the Cricut sizes objects. When you put the icon  on your mat it could be sized at 3 inches but does this mean the bird is 3 inches long or 3 inches high. In the case of the bird it is 3 inches long not 3 inches high. If you do not have an e2, Gypsy or Imagine then you can download Cricut design studio free trial or go onto cricut.com and check out Cricut craft room and when you place your icon on the mat you can see how big it will turn out. Also Cricut Craft room is free so if you have the cartridge you can design on Cricut Craft Room and cut where you want to on your mat by hooking up your computer to the Cricut. The Cricut attaches to a usb port with a cable like a printer cable.

Now about the branch- I cut the branch at a height of 2 inches and this gave me a length of just over 3.5 inches as opposed to the bird at 3 inches which cut lengthwise 3 inches but the height was 1.75 inches. Now I know this can be very confusing but I do suggest you play a bit with Cricut Craft Room and see what it does for you after all it is a free program. Now with the branch I cut the flowers out and just glued them to the branch haphazardly and some of the smaller ones I layered onto the others which give the flowers some depth. Inking the edges of the flowers would give them more definition again, but I was just playing with these to try them.

Strawberry baskets

These are strawberry baskets from the Spring Cottage  cartridge. They cut out to measure 2x2x1.25 inches from putting them on the mat at 5.5 inches. The strawberries were cut at 2.98inches, 2.8 in and 2.6 inches to get as many on the mat as I could.. I have just tied the top leaf with Sew Easy fancy floss. The baskets I embossed with a sizzix folder and the strawberries with the small dots folder then I used a ink pad to colour the dots on the strawberries black and inked the basket with SU night of navy ink.

Mama cat take the hint

About 3-4 weeks ago a small dark tortishell cat decided to come into my home, in she waltzed through the cat door and helped herself to a feed and sat down and cleaned herself. I thought at first she was my cat as I have a very fat dark torti cat I inherited from someone who could no longer have her and she is almost the same colour except that Beauty is a very fat cat who looks like "cheshire cat". Well as the little cat appeared to come from nowhere and had already visited my daughter next door and none of the neighbours owned her and se had picked my place to come to I decided one more cat wasn't going to make much difference I only had 2. Well as she seemed to have a problem scratching I decided to take her to the vet and well yes there will be a few more pussy cats soon. She has obviously been dumped as we live in a rural area some 350 metres off the road. Well after finding out she is not a baby like I thought but probably 5 years old and she is soo cute and fluffy well how special to be chosen to be the home of such a cute wee thing. Well now te vet said she would have 4-5 kittens in about 2 weeks but her 2 weeks is up and she doesn't look like she is ready yet so after making her a special box I covered it in very bright paper. Not sure its not too bright but she is still habiting the box a lot of the time. Well I thought I might give her a hint so I made some cats from the Cricut Meow cartridge. you have to look quite close as it is very busy paper but they did turn out cute.The clock is just to let her know 'its time!'

the Lion cage

 I was looking at doing a bird cage but then the thought popped into my head to do a circus theme to match the fair ground circus theme, I have done the ferris wheel. Now I'm not sure that actually goes together but I do have a haunted house that will be added to this lot as well. Well my bird cage got fatter and shorter and I just couldn't get the thought of lions inside it out of my head so I decided to make it into a lion cage. I used the star from the centre of the ferris wheel and made the 'fire' in the centre of red glitter paper punched leaves from the SU bird punch. The lions are from zoo animals and stand up because I have added a circle to the bottom of their feet. The top of the cage wasn't quite right but that was because I forgot to change the angle to glue it on but as with all metalwork I just gave it a squeeze and a poke and made it go up and down and quite like my delapated lion cage. The bottom liner has stars embossed on it and is pearlised in gold giving the bottom a sandy look.

Baby carriage from Bundle of Joy

I loved the baby carriage from bundle of joy svgcuts.com and one of the things I have at home is a mold of a sleeping baby that you can make with icing. I did this some time ago and have had them packed in plastic boxes and today decided one needed to take a ride in the baby carriage.