Technique Challenge: Paper Piecing

It's time for another mid-week challenge but before we get started let's take a look at the beautiful cards created by everyone with last week's color challenge.  To see details about their cards or to visit their blogs… please click on their names in the original post. Many thanks to all who played along with us this week!

Technique Challenge: Paper Piecing
This weeks technique challenge is all about paper piecing.  Paper piecing is a wonderful way to add color, patterns and depth to your card.  To help you learn the art of paper piecing, Tammy has prepared detailed step by step instructions with photos to show you just how quick and easy it is!  Thank you, Tammy, for the awesome tutorial and gorgeous card!  To see more of Tammy's beautiful artwork, please visit her blog, My Craft Central and while you are there don't forget to leave her lots of feedback!

To give everyone an idea of what we will be working on, here is a photo of the finished project.  You can see how I've added pattterned paper on the hat, top and pants adding lots of color and depth to this card.  The same patterned paper was used in each of the accenting circles in the backgound.

So, how do we achieve this awesome look!  First, stamp your image on neutral cardstock.  For this project I used white.

Next, stamp the same image again on your patterned paper.  I used the same patterned paper for all the elements in this card but you may choose to use more than one.  If so, simply stamp the image on each of the patterned papers you are using.

Now you are ready to cut out the parts of the patterned papers you want to add to the finished image.

Attach them to your image using your favorite adhesive.  Finish coloring and use to create a beautiful card! 


If you would like to enter a card in this weeks technique challenge, simply upload a card to your online blog or gallery then leave a direct link to your project in the Mister Linky widget at the bottom of this post.  If you have a favorite technique you would like to share with everyone, send us an email and we will help you put something together.

A quick note for those who join us for multiple challenges;  be sure to copy the FULL url for the current blog post to copy into Mister Linky. It automatically remembers the last card you entered and will link to that post instead! To view the FULL url click on the post title or select the post in your blog archive.

Cardmaking 201: Tulip Trio Tutorial

This week we have some wonderful inspiration to share with you including a lovely digital image created and donated by Tracey-Lynn Miller, owner of Fred, She Said and a beautiful card and amazing tutorial prepared by Darsie Bruno, Designer for Fred, She Said.  Thank you, Tracey and Darsie, for sharing your fabulous talents with all of us here at Stars and Stamps.  You will want to visit the Fred, She Said store, they have some really gorgeous digital stamps, pre-coloured images and digital papers.  To see more of Darsie's fabulous artwork, please visit her blog, Crafting With Darsie, and leave her a comment to show your appreciation for today's card and tutorial.

Tracey created this beautiful Tulip Trio Digital Image to inspire all of you in making Mother's Day cards for the Half and Half Challenge.  Keep in mind this image is also perfect for Love You, Miss You, Thinking of You and other feminine cards.  Click here to download the Tulip Trio Digital Image and save it to your hard drive.  Click here to download the image in a word document.  Please do not re-post or email out the digital image or word document, at the request of Fred, She Said and in support of their angel policy, but you are welcome to include a link to this post to tell your OWH friends about the availability of the image!

This week's card and coloring tutorial is by Darsie Bruno, Designer for Fred, She Said!  A HUGE thanks to Fred ,She Said for sharing this with us!

Digital stamps are the technological rage for cardmakers these days! Fred, She Said images, hand drawn by the talented Tracey, are fresh, crisp and a delight to incorporate into your cards. I particularly love the floral images they have released in the last few months and my card today features the Tulip Trio digistamp.

Using digital stamps are fun and easy with any Word or Drawing program. You don’t have to be a wizard at Photoshop to be able to re-size and print the images for your needs. Once you purchase Fred, She Said digital images, all you have to do is open the file in Word, click on the image and resize to fit. Any good printer will work, and a clean, white cardstock is needed for printing, usually 80 lb. cover or heavier.

Once your image is printed, you can use any medium to color your image. With any type of coloring, the fundamentals between light and shadow are important. To gain this degree of dimension, choose at least three shades of any one color, i.e, as in my card, light, medium and dark pinks and greens.

With Copic Markers, I used darker pinks at the bottom of the tulips and the lines, and on the inside top petals. I then colored the entire tulip with the lightest pink, which also helped blend the colors together. This gave my sense of light at the foreground of the tulip, and shadowed the inside petals as well as the bottom of the tulips. They appear as if the sun is shining down upon them!

The instructions for my card are as follow:

I printed the Tulip Trio on Whisper White (Stampin’ Up) cardstock, then cut out the right side of the image. I colored with Copic Markers and sponged Memento Sky Blue ink onto the left side of the colored image to represent “sky”. I then added self-adhesive rhinestones and a peel-off sticker butterfly. With a Photo Corner Punch by Martha Stewart, I made two photo corners from a scrap of pink paper by The Paper Studio. I attached them to the upper and lower left corners and added a self-adhesive square rhinestone. My ribbon is from Michael’s Craft store, and my two papers are by Bazzill. Card size is: 4 ½ x 6 ¼ inches.

Please take a moment to browse the Fred, She Said store for more wonderful images that would be perfect for Mother’s Day, Birthday or All Occasion cards for Our Troops! Our card today was created by Darsie Bruno, one of Fred, She Said’s Design Team Members and she would love your comments!

Darsie Bruno http://www.craftingwithdarsie.blogspot.com/
Designing for:
Fred, She Said http://fred-she-said.blogspot.com/

8 ways to trick out your blog

Nonbloggers: A tip for you, too: we recommend that you sign up for a Google account (free) if you've been unable to leave comments, just to be sure you can play along on March 20th!

Bloggers! Our blogs are an expression of our creativity - as much as our cards are! It's not as hard as you'd think to add some personality to yours, so we're providing a few ideas for you here....they're not chrome wheels, but they're the bloggers' equivalent of them!

1. Watermark your images. It's always a good idea to protect your work! Dawn produced a tutorial for us recently, and it's a FREE site, too!
2. Decorate your header. The blog name in the url can't be changed once you start (unless you export the whole thing and re-upload!) - but if you're not pleased with that name, you can change that name and create whatever you'd like for your header! 
1. There are free header images you can use - check out FWPH,  Theme Headers, or The Best Free Blog Headers. Be sure to use any art within the Creative Commons Licenses linked on the sites.
2. Add text using the FotoFlexer site to add text to your selected photo, or experiment with your photo editing software. When following the tutorial Dawn produced for us, you can set one piece of type, click off the area, and click the text tool a second time—then you can put a header and subhead, or add your name or byline of some sort (like "I make cards for our heroes!" lol!) 
3. Add gadgets. Play around with the available gadgets that are available through your blog software. You can have a list of visitor comments appear in the sidebar, a slideshow of your card pictures, a list of all your friends, or links to your favorite sites or charities.
4. Add a background. There are so many free sites out there—check out your favorite bloggers and ask how they created their designs. Here's a tutorial showing how to add a background in Blogger. Consider donating a few dollars to the one you choose if they have a paypal link - these are a lot of work to create! Here are a few ideas:
1. ShabbyBlogs - for the shabby chic crafter - backgrounds, blinkies, and accessories
2. Hot Bliggity Blog - a nice range of patterned paper backgrounds
3. Ivy's Inspirations - some really pretty gardening backgrounds and scrappy designs
4. My Blog Makeover  - a few patriotic designs
5. Free Blogger Backgrounds - a number of different styles
6. That Blog Place - more patriotic backgrounds
5. Turn down the sound. Many bloggers like to have music playing when visitors arrive; and while that's certainly an option, remember that if someone doesn't like your selection, they may decide to just skip to another blog. Music can also seriously slow down loading of your blog.  If you have an option to turn it down, or to invite the visitor to turn it on if they want to hear it, consider that as a courtesy. We ask that, during the hop, music be turned off to allow us to all get to as many blogs as we can during that day!
6. Open up comments. It's a wise idea to open up your comments to anyone when there's a big event going on! For some blogs, if the comments are embedded below the post, there are some visitors who won't be able to comment on your blog. If you notice everyone else gets lots of comments and yours still just has a few, check your settings!
7. Turn off CAPTCHA. We recommend turnining CAPTCHA off just for the day of the bloghop - just to make it extra-easy for the hundreds of visitors to leave you feedback as they stroll by! You can turn it back on after the hop and keep those spammers away.
8. Sign your posts. Add a signature to each of your posts by using MyLiveSignature to use a simulated handwritten signature! To add the html to your blog, go to your Dashboard, click Layout, then Formatting, and place the html into the Post Template dialog box. On any new posts created, that image will automatically appear in the window! (The "Your turn" sig below was created using the MLS system...pretty cool!)

What ideas have we missed on the list? Do you have links to other sites for blog tricks that we'd all love to visit?

S&S Sketch Challenge #7

Good morning, everyone! Hope you are ready for another Stars and Stamps Sketch Challenge. Before we present sketch #7 though let’s take a look at the participants’ cards from last weeks sketch challenge. To see details about their cards or to visit their blogs… please click on their names in the original post. Many thanks to all who played along with us this week!

Sketch Challenge #7
This week's sketch is provided by Erika. To see more of her beautiful artwork, please visit her blog, Polley Crafts. Thank you, Erika, for the fabulous sketch and sample card! Plus - Erika is offering blog candy to one of the folks who use her sketch! Woohoo!

Tips from Erika, to add color and texture on the inside of your card simply carry the patterned papers from the outside of the card to the bottom inside of the card.  Here is a photo of Erika's card showing a peak at the bottom inside of the card.  And remember, you can always flip the sketch sideways so the strips are horizontal and have more space for longer sentiments or simply use the strips as a backgound and add an image to the card.

To play along with this weeks sketch challenge just upload a project using this week's sketch to your blog or online gallery then leave a direct link to your project in the Mister Linky widget at the bottom of this post.  And remember, you can use this sketch at any time. When a NEW challenge is posted next Sunday, we'll include photos of the cards that used this sketch before then. Feel free to re-post the sketch on your blog along with your card… then come back and leave a link for us so we may all see your cards!

If you'd like to create a sketch and sample card to be featured in an upcoming sketch challenge, please send us an email and we will help you get started! For those of you who haven’t made a sketch before, keep in mind that the sketch is just a rough draft, we realize it won’t look the same as the ones posted here on the blog. The sketch may be created in word, excel or drawn on paper then scanned or even take a photo of it! So really all you need is your creativity and to make a card!

Thanks for stopping by and hope you join in the fun!

A note for those who join us for multiple challenges; Be sure to copy the FULL url for the whole blog post to copy into Mister Linky. It automatically seems to remember the last card you entered the last time you used Mister Linky, and will link to the post with that card instead! To view the FULL url click on the post title or select the post in your archive.

Featured Cardmaker: Jean U, Palmer AK

Meet Jean from Alaska.....she's been sending us cards for a while now....what talent!

How long have you been stamping?
About 8 years.

Do you have a craft room or specific area where you stamp?
Yes, I have a small bedroom converted to my stamping area.

What are your favorite stamp products?
I like designer papers, brads, eyelets, ribbons and rhinestone gems.

Do you have a favorite technique?
No favorite technique, I do like to color with color pencils and chalks. I like the new embossing folders used in die cutting machines. I like to heat emboss to add a little shine to cards.

Are there colors you love to include on your cards?
I almost always use white cardstock, and I like pinks, browns, reds, and blacks. I let the stamp or the occasion dictate the colors I use.

How did you hear about Operation Write Home?
I first saw it mentioned on a card gallery website, and then searched the web to find out all the details.

What motivates you to make cards for our heroes?
It brings me joy to think others may benefit from a hobby I enjoy so much. It’s a great way to support the troops and show I care.

S&S Color Challenge #2

This week we have another color challenge for you!  Create a card using any of the colors in this photo of vibrant tulips taken by Caro at Pike Place Market in Seattle.  Thank you, Caro, for the inspiring photo and beautiful cards!  To see more of Caro's fabulous artwork please visit her blog, Scraps of Time, and while you are there, don't forget to leave her lots of feedback!

Here are the cards Caro created to get you started!

To play along in this week's color challenge, post your card on your blog or to an online gallery then link back here using Mister Linky below.  For those of you who do not have a blog or online gallery simply send a photo of your card here with Color Challenge #2 as the subject and your card will be included in the slide along with the others.

Cardmaking 301: Dahlia Fold

Many thanks to Kate for this great Dahlia-folding Tutorial! Be sure to follow her blog, Hello From Kate!

When I think of Mother's day cards, I think of flowers, so now is the perfect time to make flowers using the dahlia fold. These flowers always impress, and they are much easier to make than they look.

You will need:

• Double-sided paper - Pick one that has a lot of contrast between the front and the back. Both sides should fit the color scheme of your card.
• A circle punch. 1-3/4" is a good size. I've made one with circles as small as one inch, but the smaller the circle, the bigger your fingers feel when it's time to do the folding.
• Coordinating cardstock.
• An adhesive, such as a glue stick, that allows repositioning.

I made this video for the mini blog hop last summer. We were making Christmas cards at the time, but the steps are the same.



Christmas
Dahlia demonstration from Kate
Mrdja on Vimeo.


If you're not able to view the video, or if you want written instructions to have for later, here are the steps.

1. Punch eight circles from your designer paper. These will be your petals.
2. Punch one circle from the cardstock to be the base. The base isn't meant to show, but
3. occasionally it will peek through between wayward petals, so keep that in mind when selecting the color.
4. Fold the designer paper as illustrated: 

To assemble the flower:

1. Fold the cardstock circle in half, creasing it all the way across.
2. Fold it again the opposite way, creasing so that the intersection of the creases is the center of the circle. If you are going to be using a brad in the center of your flower, punch a hole in the center of the cardstock.
3. Use the gluestick to cover the entire surface of the cardstock circle.
4. Position four of the petals along the crease lines, so the points meet in the center.
5. Slide the remaining four petals in between the first four, to fill in the gaps.

Things are going to be sticking out all wonky, and some of the petals will be stubborn from time to time. This is normal, and it will be fine. This is why we used a glue stick, so we could make adjustments. Just keep sticking the petals back in and scrunch them together until you get them the way you want them.

Before you know it, you'll look down and realize it's a flower! Here are some samples and variations:

Variations:
* Decorate the center of your dahlia with a button or brad.
* Fold half the petals the opposite way and alternate the petals for more color.
* Use a scallop circle punch for more flourish.
* Make budding flowers by sliding one or two petals inside a green petal.
* Make a half-flower look like a fan, or the tail of a turkey for Thanksgiving.
* What ideas do you have?