How to Make Stickers

AND FIX BAD PICTURES 

I love making cards and stickers from old vintage graphics in the public domain. But what I love most about making them is fixing them. I have a theory that most people avoid the public domain images because they are dark and look bad, and maybe they don't know how to make them look better or cut them out. So I will show you how to cut them out and digitally enhance them. We start with a public domain picture. EEEEK! It's dark and looks messed up. 

I'm going to turn this picture into some cute stickers I can use with my cards. Go get GIMP if you want to follow along. You can take any picture and cut out just about any object to make stickers with. First we have to fix the color. It's too dark. On the GIMP menu select 'color | levels | adjust color levels' for this window. Then when it looks right just click OK.

It should look like this. With just that much, we've already improved this image 100 percent.

:

But let's do a closeup of that face. The printing looks off. YIKES! We're going to have to fix that. It looks like the printer plates didn't match up right and the ink colors were print misaligned. Poor kitty!

So now we need the smudge tool again to try to nudge those colors closer to where they need to be and soften all those black dots that would have been blended into the colors if they were printed right. So using the smudge tool just go over the harsh lines and start moving the colors close to where they look better. Remember with this tool, you can push color into other areas and dilute them. Play around with it enough and you will get good at it.

This is what takes some time to fix bad scans or printing errors on public domain images. But it will be worth it when you're done because you will have a one of a kind graphic with your copyright on it and it will look pretty. After some blending, your picture should look something like this.

It still looks a little freaky but you have moved the colors closer to where they belong and gotten rid of those harsh black dots for a smoother look. Use the zoom tool to get close up and to back away so you can work on the whole image.

Eventually you will reach this point where it looks about the best you can get it. Don't be afraid to use the paintbrush on a 4 or 5 setting to add whiskers, pinkness to the nose, highlights and color to the eyes. Yours should be looking something like this or better, depending on how much smoothing and painting you did.

Looking pretty good now from a distance and that's all we want for this. It's never going to be perfect and you're never going to be satisfied with it completely but you have to know when to stop. Remember if you make a mistake to use 'ctrl + z' to undo any mistakes you might make. Now it looks smoothed and refined. Fix any colors, shadows and lines that you want before saving.

Depending on your program, removing the background can be pretty easy or somewhat time consuming. The magic wand and the right setting will select areas that you can remove by hitting the delete key on your keyboard. 

It gets a little tricky on these older prints because they are printed in dots and the dots are not especially connected. So when you select an area to delete, the results will depend on the quality of the print and your settings. You will have to play around with the settings for each print. Sorry but there is no easier way to do it that I know of. Honestly, other programs are much better at selecting and deleting backgrounds than GIMP is, but you can still do it although you may have to work a little harder for it.

You could use the lasso tool to select areas but for me that tool is a lesson in frustration. One wrong click and your patience will expire. Use the eraser tool if needed to completely remove the background. Now you have a cutout on a transparent background like this. Export it as a .png to keep the transparency. If you export it as a .jpg at this point, it will default to a white background. Transparency in a graphics program shows like gray checkerboard until you export it. The background will be clear when you post it or combine it with other graphics.

TIP: If something is not working in GIMP you just may need to 'select | none' from the menu because if anything is selected in your program on any layer, it will not let you proceed until you 'select none' and then reselect the task you want to do.

So now we should have the kitten and shoe on a transparent background like this. The .png will display whatever color background you put it on. The shape has been cutout and saved as a .png because that is the format for transparent backgrounds. You could make a whole 6" x 9" sheet of these resized smaller to upload as a Cricut 'print then cut' file and let Cricut do the work for you OR you could put a bunch of these on an 8½" x 11" sheets in various sizes and print and 'fussy cut' them out by hand.

There you have it. And that is why graphic artists charge for their work. It takes a little time and skill to make these pretty things but you can do it yourself if you have the desire. And once you learn it, the skills carry over to most all other graphic programs. The tools are basically the same in all graphics programs with a few exceptions. 

Could it be better? Definitely, and maybe yours will be. Every time I look at it, I see something else I wish I had fixed because as an artist with a critical eye I'm hardly ever satisfied with the results. I always think I can do better. BUT like I said, you have to know when to stop. 

Enjoy your new found skills and enjoy the free kitty cutouts!

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!

Improving the Vintage and Damaged with GIMP - pt 2

So this is where we left off. We brightened up the card, filled in a background color on our torn card and cleaned up the torn edges. Now we're ready to replace some missing flags.

If you look close at the postcard you will notice there are six bunnies and six flags on the front row and nine bunnies with only seven flags on the back row. And that one flag needs a corner too so we'll replace it. In all we need to put three flags back in there. We will take one from the back row and put them where I think they belong. So first let's open our bunnymarch.xcf (or whatever you named your) file in GIMP and duplicate the layer. Now that you know how, I don't have to show you. Selecting and working on the top layer only, we will use the square selection tool to encompass a flag so we can copy it:

Then we will select a flag to use. Once we have it selected with the pole attached to it, we will cut it out of the layer using 'Layer | crop to selection' from the drop down menu. This will cut away everything from the top layer except the flag.

 

So put your cursor over the flag we just cut out and move it to the missing section, lining it up with the top of the pole as shown. Since there is not a separate pole for this flag we will just extend the one that's already there or you could make another pole if you wanted. I hit 'Select | none' and then I select the bottom layer to remove all the dotted lines so I can take a good look at the flag. It looks like this now.

OK. So we need another flag that already has a pole. We don't have to cut out another flag since we already have one we can duplicate. So just make sure the flag layer is selected and duplicate it. Then drag it over to the line up with the pole that doesn't have a flag. And while you're at it I will show you how to resize them so they don't look so 'cookie cutter' perfect. 

Now we have nine bunnies on the back row and nine flags. but as things get further away they should look a little smaller so we are going to resize the last three flags a little and drag that farther one behind the one in front of it. 

On the layers, grab and drag the top layer underneath the middle layer so the last flag will be behind it. This is where you duplicate another flag and move it over the top of the flag that needs a corner since you already know how. Now it should look like this:

Now we're going to resize them so they look better. So from the icon menu select the Scale tool or use 'Shift + S' to bring it up.

Just touch the dotted selection on that layer and it will let you grab and resize each flag. To only resize one side instead of resizing proportionally, just unlock the lock on the sub-menu that pops up with that tool.. 

Once you get all the flags where you want them just merge the visible layers 'Ctrl + M'. Now you can use the smudge tool to refine it a little.

You might want to fill in a point on a flag or extend the flag poles a little. The smudge tool lets you drag out a color into another area, smooth out imperfections and refines the picture. You can adjust the size of the smudge brush just like other brushes. Experiment with it a little and you will see a difference. Don't forget to save over your original editable file with all your hard worked improvements. You can also export this in other formats. If you want to put it on the internet you can export it as a separate .jpg or .png without overwriting your original file. 

And now you should have something similar to this. I would guess that it's pretty close to the original before it was damaged but if not, then it's pretty good enough. You would not guess that it's the same card unless you fixed it with your own two little hands. Now you know some secrets so you won't be the one who says, "How'd they do that?" because now you know how. It's not that hard and you can do it too.

But I'm not going to reinvent the wheel by doing a bunch of tutorials for the GIMP since there are plenty of them out there if you want to really learn the power of this program beyond fixing a few little boo boos.

And there you have it. All it takes is a little practice to get good at it. We saved and restored a postcard! YAY! Now you have skills you can use for all your graphics. And it costs you nothing but a little time to get it. 

OK so now I'm just showing off but by using no more than the skills you just learned (plus the eraser tool), you can even make yourself a bigger bunny army (to infinity) or just like this one and you know what that means, right? More chickens, more eggs!

I skipped right over St. Patrick's day (well there's still time for that) but Happy Easter card making!

Improving the Vintage and Damaged with GIMP - pt 1

If you've gone to some public domain sites and thought the free stuff was too old, dark or unusable for you then I'll tell you a little secret. It is. It probably was saved by someone who works at the library and doesn't know graphic formats or how to save them with the right specs. But, you can fix them if you have a graphic program and are willing to learn. I got this one from the public domain at the New York Public Library digital collections, but you can just right click on it and save it to your desktop if you want to. 

This is how it was stored in the public domain. This is what most of them look like when you download them. So they need a lot of work. It is a little 'fixer upper' alright. Part of it is missing. But I love a good graphic challenge so... the first thing I would do is brighten it up a little. GIMP is free so go get it if you want to follow along. GIMP is the PhotoShop of the Linux world and the program is open source so it's free. It's not just for Linux OS, there are Windows download versions of it too. I haven't used PhotoShop since 2006 but they are very similar in what they can do with graphics. 

***Remember, If you make a mistake in any program and you want to get it back, just hit 'Ctrl + Z' on your keyboard and it will take you back a step each time you hit it. So be careful with that or you could wipe out the good work right along with the mistakes.***

I'm assuming you have basic skills and can download a free postcard and find it again. So once you have installed GIMP you need to open the postcard from the 'File' menu so we can jump right in.

Once you have the graphic open, expand the top menu to then select 'Colors  | Levels' and drag the Input Levels window scrubs with your mouse. Drag the far right one toward the center until it looks good (usually close to the high point on the graph chart) and you may have to drag the center scrub a little to the left too. Then if it needs a little contrast just drag the far left scrub toward the center. Play around with it until you get what you want. And when you're done, it should look like this:

So that little bit made such a big difference. It looks a hundred times better now and that may be all you need to do to most of the public domain graphics you want to use. But... this one is damaged and missing a couple of flags that we need to put back in. It looks like somebody took a bite out of our postcard.

So, the first thing I do to fix that is go to the far right column in the program and find the layers box where it shows you all the layers. On the bottom of that window it has an icon that looks like 2 little tv screens. click it. 

Now you have two layers that look the same. Select the top layer in the window with your cursor because we'll be working on that layer first. 

Next, set the background color. so we can fill in that missing piece. So first, (1) select the foreground color then (2) select the color picker and then (3) click anywhere on the yellow background of our postcard. Now your paintbrush and bucket are filled with the background yellow color of the postcard.

The easy way to fill in that missing chunk is to flood the background bottom layer with the paint bucket. So select the bucket on the tool window. 

Then making sure the bottom layer is selected in the layers window, click anywhere on the bottom layer of the postcard to fill it with yellow. 

You can turn off the view of any layer just by clicking on the eyeball for that layer. So click on the eyeball for the top layer to see the all yellow bottom layer. All yellow? Good. Now select the eyeball again on the top layer to turn it back on. And make sure the top layer is selected in our window.

So most of the public domain graphics are saved in .jpg format. This is a lossy format and will degrade with each save. The idea graphic to have is a .png, not only because it is 'lossless' and doesn't degrade in quality (meaning more data doesn't get stripped off) with each save but you can have transparent areas. So we will need to give the non-transparent .jpg a transparency layer so we can select and remove just the white part. We can do this with each layer we select. But we just need to do the top layer. So from the menu, go to 'Layer | Transparency | Add Alpha Channel'. 

Then select the magic wand tool and the settings shown here to select the white part of the postcard by just clicking on it. It will show marching ants around the selection. Just hit the delete key on your keyboard to remove it.

Now we have an all yellow background we can work on. But we need to clean up the edges and debris. So go to the paintbrush and paint over any dark edges carefully. You can also remove any spots or discolorations on the postcard too. You can paint over the lettering or any part of the card so be careful. 'Ctrl + Z' is your friend if you make a mistake.

Once you are satisfied with the looks so far, hit 'Ctrl + M' to merge the two layers into one. You can also find this command on the drop down menu under 'Image | merge visible layers'. This is what you should now have. So if you've come this far, congratulations! You just learned a lot of fixes in the GIMP and are well on your way to making your own usable graphics for free.

You just got a taste of what it's like to be a graphic artist and now you know how to fix a lot of mistakes in most photos and postcards for your own use. Even though it's perfectly acceptable to use the card in your projects just the way it is, you might be a bit of a perfectionist like me and want to fix it even further but this post has gotten so long I will break it into two. The next post will show you how to add the flags back in for a completed finished card so...

Save this file in an editable format so we can pick up where we left off tomorrow with it and re-open it in GIMP again. I'm saving mine on my desktop where I can find it as bunnymarch.xcf. The .xcf extension is the GIMP format for editable files like the .psd is the editable format for PhotoShop. 

Of course the GIMP also gives you the option of saving it in the PhotoShop format too so you could go either way with 'save as' for your original editable file. It will also save with many other format extensions with the export function. The GIMP will even create a multi page .pdf for you using each layer as a page if you want. And it will also open .pdf files too.

You can get the GIMP from this link here: The GIMP . I've been using it for many, many years until now I'm more familiar with it than I am PhotoShop. You can learn it if you really want to. Or you can buy your graphics from other artists on Etsy or get them already printed if you prefer. And don't forget the free resources. There are sites that show you how to do just about everything for free and even give away good graphics you can use.

So tomorrow's post is part 2 and I will show you how to put those flags in the background and restore that postcard so those bunnies can march off to squeeze those eggs out of all those chickens and so that all the Moms can sweep those rotten eggs out from under all those beds the week after Easter! Well maybe not this year. It might be plastic egg time.