Friday 22 June 2012

Christmas Comes Early

Morning everybody I hope the awful weather is not dampening your crafting spirits, I've been busy this week designing yes, wait for it, Christmas. When the weather is supposed to be cracking the flags as they say I'm thinking about snowflakes and Christmas trees. It takes me back to one of my first jobs as a junior artist for Fine Art Graphics, yes in them days we could see the sun in the sky and the studio would be filled with the sound of people singing Christmas carols inspiring us to design lots of lovely Christmas cards in June and July. Anyway I'm working on the first of our Christmas ranges which has lots of lovely rich colours and a vintage distressed look to it. I will keep you updated as I work through it and if you have any great ideas that you would like to see this Christmas drop me an email. Happy crafting!

Tuesday 12 June 2012

Fathers Day

It's nearly here, yes Father's Day so I thought I would make a card for my dad and share with you how I created it. I used the papers and some embellishments from Craftstyles Celebrations range which is so suitable for male cards. I have created an 8" x 8" sliding window card.It lays flat and then by pulling the ribbon at the top it reveals the words Happy Father's Day , I created this on my Mac but you could create it in word or something like. I created the paper stars by printing a template onto the reverse of the patterned card stock, creasing the lines and then cutting them out.


The template is printed onto the reverse of the patterned card stock, score all the lines on the stars and then cut out using a scalpel or good pair of scissors.


The short lines will be valley folds (folding away from you) and the long lines will be mountain folds
(folding towards you) alternating valley then mountain folds. Once scored and folded the stars should look like the ones shown above.


One of the best buys for me so far is a glue gun, great for when you want things to stick in place, but be very careful the glue gets very hot. To keep the stars in shape I cut some small square blocks from 10mm foam board one of my favourites, ( you'll see me using lots more of this in future projects). Once the glue gun heats up fill the centre of the star with glue drop in you foam block, turn the star over and press lightly into shape. The glue will set very quickly. You could also use large foam pads if you don't have
a glue gun.


Use the stars to decorate the front panel of the card along with your other embellishments.Here you can see the card lying flat.


By pulling the ribbon the front panel lifts up and reveals the Father's Day message. I will put the template for this card on a post or if you want me to email it to you just drop me a message. All I ask is that you credit the template in any of your designs.


The colours really suit a male design. I hope you like the design and look forward to your comments.
HAPPY FATHER"S DAY

Saturday Challenge : Challenge #189
  



Monday 11 June 2012

Good morning, I must share with you this wonderful creation made by one of our design team, Heidi Payne of Heidi's Designs & Crafts. Using Craftstyle's Garden Blossom collection Heidi has created this stunning poly bag sliding card. I think we need to do a step by step tutorial on this one as it is a simply stunning work of art. Thank you Heidi for sharing this with us.



If you would like to join our design team  and help share your creations with the craft world then drop me an email: andrew@craftstyleproducts.co.uk

Wednesday 6 June 2012

WOW what a weekend, hope you all had a fantastic Diamond Jubilee weekend. Sorry the blogs been a bit quiet but I needed to catch up with a lot of stuff and enjoy some quality family time. Well apart from my brothers wedding on Friday which I am so looking forward too I will be back in the hot seat creating some new designs and projects and also sorting out the step by step tutorials I promised. I've bought myself some foam board which I used to use in my early days as a designer,it's really great for crafting with as you will see shortly in a project I am working on. You can get it from art shops or online, it certainly brings back some memories.
I was so pleased to get an email this morning telling me I had won the latest challenge on The Crafter's Cafe challenge blog. It's my first entry and first win so I was really chuffed, lets hope there is more to come. Enjoy your crafting and watch out for the latest designs on my blog.