New Site for Graphics

So my personal hobby blog was starting to grow into a graphic arts site and I was running out of space here for everything and it was getting hard to keep organized. Graphics were just starting to take over. I have too many hobbies. So I split my site into two (it's happened before) where all my graphic stuff is now on a new blog called Thistles & Twiggs. I moved a lot of free stuff over there including some Cricut cut files. But I turned a lot of it into ETSY files too so I would have some inventory without giving away the farm. So if you got all the free stuff that was here before I converted it, consider yourself lucky! I probably will add more free stuff when I get time.

So I've been pretty quiet most of the last few weeks because I've been also working on the new blog live but nobody knew it was there kind of thing. So now it's linked to several places. If you're looking for some free graphics they are over there now. And while you're there, you are welcomed to look around but my ETSY shop probably won't be live for several more days. I'm still checking, double checking and tweaking files learning as I go. Let me know what you think.

I've also spent the last few weeks polishing up and packaging my graphics, designing file templates and building an ETSY shop. I was being urged to do it and honestly I have been really, really hesitant. I consider myself retired and don't want the hassle of handling all these details... BUT I decided to give it a try and see what happens. Grandma Moses didn't start painting until she was 80 so hopefully I still have plenty of time to try something new so Twiggs made me do it.

First time I saw him I thought, "Why is he dumping out good booze?" And then I noticed the bottle was cologne and he was making the flowers smell better. OK so I started to like him and so I named him Twiggs! 

It might look like all this was instant but I've been amassing an archive of graphics for a couple of decades and recoloring them in my spare time. And I used to do graphics design and web programming for a living. But I did have to learn a few new programs on the fly to pull it all together this quick... plus put in a few 14 hour days to boot. What else have I got to do besides chase dust bunnies...  (now you know how I came up with the name for this site)... Thank God I still have some skills that I can use at my age.

Well, that's my story and I'm sticking to it! Check back in a few days and my ETSY shop might be hooked up by then. 

Teacup Flower Pop-Up 3D Card

ANOTHER BLAST FROM THE PAST

This is a re-post from my original post from July 2019 on my old site because I think they go pretty well with my new teapot templates. I no longer update that site. I've merged it with my other crafts on this site. The card folds flat into approximately 5" x 7" depending on how many flowers you put on it. 

The teacup can be made for 6, 8 or 10 sided (optional) to hold your cutout flowers. Just score on the heavy lines to make a six sided cup. It is so simple to make, the instructions below show you how. Just click on the printed instructions & pattern page below to enlarge it, then right click on the full sized page that pops up and 'save as' or 'save image as' to your desktop. Then just print it out and make templates out of cardboard pieces to cut them out by hand. Attach the flowers on the cross pieces for a 3D look when the card is opened.

I have also put a file on Cricut if you want to cut the file out that way. Search for the SVG file in design space called 'Theresa's Tea Cup'. There is also a permanent copy of the instructions in the 'FREE Templates'  tab above.

    

SIMPLE INSTRUCTIONS

for assembling the teacup:

Cut out and score the cup.

Fold the floating insert into a V and attach as shown.

Attach a piece of foam tape to the bottom edge and apply
glue to the rest of the tab. It is the bottom of your cup.
Center it on the doily and stick it down as shown.

This is how your cup looks from the top when open.
Attach flowers to the insert pieces for a 3D look.

Bend the back of the cup bottom edge toward the foam edge so it will catch and stay open. And just squeeze the cup to uncatch it to fold flat. That's all there is to it. Just decorate the card with your prettiest flowers and send! Enjoy! Here are a few of the teacups I've made with my pattern for a little inspiration.

How to Make an Accordion Tunnel Card

I've been calling these zig zag 3D cards but I've recently seen them on the internet called 'accordion tunnel cards'. You can look them up online by that name and pull up some more examples of these type of cards and how to make them. I've run across several sources as far back as six years ago. Every time I see a new card type introduced, I go do some research and see what I can find online because honestly, it's probably been done before with a previous generation of crafters. So this is my take on this technique.

I was recently asked for a tutorial on how to make one of these so I will attempt to make it simple. I don't have the setup for videos or a good speaking voice and my hands look like I scrub pots for a living. I do know how to take pictures and type. So here goes. 

First you will need two cards printed in any pattern you want and you want them a good weight, not flimsy. And you will need a 5" x 7" card back or you can just cut another card in half and use that as a backing. I used an Anna Griffin kirigami card from a pack I had and two leftover cards from an album kit. I'm really trying hard to use up all my leftover cards and pieces on making new stuff.

You want to put together 5 panels but first you need to cut out the centers of both folded cards in any shape with an X-Acto knife with a sharp blade. Using a pencil and a ruler on the back of the cards, mark and cut out a 3-1/2" X 5-1/2" rectangle in the centers of the cards. So that leaves you 3/4" frame all around each card. 

Make the corners any way you want. I just rounded these. Cut out the first one and just use it as a template for the rest.

Put the  card together with 1/2" x 5" strips of plain paper folded in half. Glue them to the front of the panel, and the fronts of the cards. They will be hidden when the card is folded together. It should look like this all put together with all the front sides showing. Make sure your card fronts are upright and that the pattern is going in the right direction so that nothing is upside down.

And you want to mark the center of the tops and bottoms of each card. After you cut the centers out of each panel, you will need to cut up to the middle of each top and bottom frame so the cards will overlap and interlock for your zig zag. I marked and cut them on the backs just like this.

Cut the lines as shown only half way through the frames. I'm using a pen so you can see where they are here but if you use a pencil, your lines won't show on the card. (I'm going to paint over mine on my finished card).

Turn your card to the front. Since we have marked and cut the slits a certain way, we will need to curve and put the two right side cutout panels into and through the left cutout closest to the back panel first as shown. You will have to bend your card a little, but that's O.K. Keep going until the cut marks line up for the two panels closest to the back. Slide the cut marks together and fold it down.

Of the two panels that you want to match up, just remember that the panel with the outer cuts has to go into the panel with the inner cuts to match up right. It should now look like this:

Now you will bend the panel on the right side and push it through the left cutout once more. Outer cuts go into inner cuts. Match up the slits and fit them together. 

Now you have a card that you can see the layers through, and it will fold flat. So just decorate it! You can put a writing card panel on the back if you want space to write a greeting. It's just that easy.

Now I will just add some flowers etc. and finish my card. This is not so mysterious now. You could make up a bunch of them pretty easy and use any decorative punches for the corners that you want.

Enjoy your card making. Zig Zag cards are nothing new, they've been around for years in various forms and various names. To learn more about zig zag cards just search YouTube or Pinterest for them. There are all different kinds of zig zag / tunnel cards. ENJOY!

Making Graphics for Free

YOU CAN GET THIS:  

FROM THIS:

OR THIS: 

for free - but... it's not as easy as it looks. First in my favorite graphics program the GIMP (you can use any graphics editor like PhotoShop, GIMP, Elements, Canva etc...) I can cut out, flip it, recolor it, re-size it, duplicate it, add a bird wing and generally clean up the image. Now the cupid image above is copyrighted by me. It's my version. I can use it, give it away, sell it or whatever I want. I can print it off and use it as many times as I want. I can even print multiples on cardstock, cut them out and use foam tape to stick them together to make as many dimensional stickers as I want for my paper projects.
.

RESOURCES

Most all graphic artists have a collection or private "archive" of vintage graphics they use that are pulled from the public domain (and other resources) along with maybe some they've paid for the rights to use from different sources. All graphics in the public domain are royalty and copyright free for use by the general public. You can download them for free and print them out at will. You can keep them digital but if you want to use them on card projects you will need a printer. 

It helps greatly if you know what term to search for like Godey's Ladies Books, World of Fashion, Vintage Trade Cards, or just the term 'vintage ephemera' is sometimes enough. You can search on particular artist's names like Ellen Clapsaddle or A. Dreissen and pull up many wonderful postcards, calendars, greeting and trade cards by them. You can learn the history of some of these wonderful artists while you're at it, like the tragic ending of Ellen Clapsaddle's life. She was one of the best card and postcard artists there ever was! You can find out what trade cards were and discover a whole collection of these precursors to modern advertising before television was invented which was simply 'word of mouth' by a simple printed card that you shared and showed to others. 

You can get these wonderful vintage works of art by doing research online. Here are a few of my favorite resources:

Newberry Library     

The Graphics Fairy   

Far Far Hill    

Dover Publications

Hathi Trust 

The University of Pennsylvania online library and the Hathi Trust are a list of resources of online collections including Godey's Ladies book illustrations and World of Fashion where you can get vintage women's fashion prints for making your own paper dolls among other graphic resources. You can search for other collections through their search boxes and download copies like this one to work with for free.

and make your own finished images from them:

Dover publications have sets of books and cd's full of royalty free graphics you can get if you can find them. The best ones I have are not still in print but you might be able to get a good copy on Amazon or Ebay. Make sure the cd is included. You may also be able to find dover clip art books at your local library where they won't cost you anything to copy or use from the prints or included cd.

BUYING PRINT GRAPHICS

You can also buy and pay royalty/usage fees or graphics from other artists who re-do them from the public domain, re-size, re-color, cut out and clean them up for you to add to your own archive. You can print out other paper ephemera including scrapbooking papers online. All you need to know is how to work with graphics, a printer and some hard drive or external disk space for storage. Graphics and graphic formats can get quite large. Most digital artists will have at least one external hard drive where they back up their collection and routinely pull them off on disk storage to save and archive them and to keep them from getting lost during hardware failure. To consider, there are also cloud storage, terabyte and zip drives.

Some people still do search for actual antique postcards and ephemera from other sources (collectors) and collect them from other countries. But the modern world and use of the internet greatly levels the playing field for anyone who wishes to build a digital vintage library or their own archive if they choose to do so.

Do a search on Etsy for vintage printable postcards or other keywords for what you are looking for. You can sometimes find them or links to them on Pinterest. You can see it takes a lot of time to research, collect, organize and re-work these graphics. That's what you are paying for when you buy them from other sellers online or companies where they are already printed.

I've built my own archive of graphic images, patterns and papers from the public domain. I use them a lot in my projects because they make me happy. And they're free so why not?

More freebies. SNOW PEOPLE!!! 

Valentine Love Soldiers

I was pretty busy with the nutcrackers I made for Christmas and I liked them so much that I carried them over to Valentine's Day.

They have such funny faces that I just wanted to keep making them.

I made four for Christmas and I could have made more but I wouldn't have known what to do with them if I did.

Now that Christmas is over I have Valentine's day on the brain. I've been making little decorations and just thought they would look darling as soldiers for love.

I've never seen nutcrackers done up for valentines' day that I can remember. I got to drag out my heart bling and my red and pink sparkles for these.

I've been working on a few other little projects but not too much to brag about so far. I've also been doing a lot of reorganizing and cleaning out my stash of die cuts. I've had a lot of creative blocks so far so maybe it's time to just rest or do some old fashioned house cleaning.

But I'm still looking forward to Valentine's Day!

It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like...

...December thank God. We had the first new snow last week already. #TGID is all I have to say. We had a rough November here. People in my family were between jobs, the car broke down and needed a new alternator and battery and Jerry woke up last Sunday and couldn't walk. So... more vet bills on top of that.

Jerry

I can handle it all except the thought of losing Jerry is unbearable. Luckily the vet put him on steroids and he will get a little better in the short term. His spinal cord is being pinched because of a bad disc. He was not in a lot of pain except when he twisted the wrong way once or twice. He could not walk or move his hind quarters and his left front leg at all for about 5 days then on Thursday I put a towel under him and used it as a sling to try to help him get up and try to walk because he was scooting and dragging himself with one leg to get to the door. He wanted to go outside. He's such a good boy. I also got him up during the day and he could stand in one spot with support for a few minutes at a time. 

baby Jerry

Thursday evening he stood up on his own and started taking wobbly steps. He's getting his balance back gradually now. Good news but bad news comes with it. The long term prognosis is not good as his back and discs will get worse with time even with surgery. CT scan or MRI is just too expensive and the cost of this type of surgery is out of the question. Besides the expense, pain and recovery time, it will not solve his problem in the long term since he already has back problems and is 9 years old.

So, to prolong his life and give him a good quality of life, he has to lose weight, take supplements with chondroitin, glucosamine and fish oil. He might have to take meds also and it will get worse over time. But he's doing alright today. He doesn't like having to eat less because he's a foodie but he's gained so much weight from eating the dry cat food that he can no longer get to. I give him three little dog food meals a day now with low fat treats. 

I'm certain that whatever time we have left will be good times and we will enjoy them one day at a time and try not to worry too much about the future. One day at a time will be enough. Jerry is thoroughly loved and he knows it.