Waltzingmouse Stamps Friendly Feature - Deirdre Horgan

Hello and welcome. We are back with another Friend Feature – a monthly feature where we select a friend of Waltzingmouse Stamps to provide creative inspiration. This month our guest blogger is Deirdre Horgan. Deirdre has two wonderful shaker cards to share along with her creative way of designing them using Waltzingmouse Stamps.

I was a happy camper when Claire and Lynn contacted me a number of weeks ago to be featured on this special feature – I am so thrilled and honoured and still doing a little Irish gig!.

I made two cards to share today – they can each do a little “gig” too!.

The first is a “celebratory” one which I left “sentiment free” as I decided to let the “Shaker” part do all the talking.

I cut my cardstock and used my Scor-Pal to score diagonal lines and then stamped the tiny cupcake from the Frame-It Stamp set in each space. The diagonal scoring made it very easy to keep my stamping even and uniform.

I found some discarded clear packing in my stash to make the see through top layer of the shaker element and ran it through my Big Shot with a circle die. I needed to create a thin frame/layer to hold the acetate above the seed beads/stars and ran some foam adhesive through the Big Shot with two circle dies. I adhered the frame to the acetate filled with the tiny beads and veneer stars and adhered the white circle which I had already stamped – you could colour the cupcake too, but I wanted it clean and simple.

My second card is using the new set – Man of the Hour. I decided to create another shaker card and used masculine coloured, copper sequins and some distressing using tea-dye ink and a blending tool.

I ran my acetate through my Big Shot with a polka dot embossing folder and while it is difficult to photograph it adds an extra dimension to the layering.

I machine stitched the layers together (no need for adhesive) and filled the sequins behind the acetate before I stitched the last side. I adhered to the card front and added the sentiment layers and a round paper clip.

Tip – if the sequins are too bright you can use a layer of vellum instead of the acetate and it gives the card a much more muted look.

Thank you to Waltzingmouse for featuring my cards today and thanks so much for stopping by. I hope you have a wonderful weekend.

Supply List: Celebration Card

Stamps - Frame It Stamp Set

Inks - Black Tuxedo ink – Memento

Dies – Circle dies – Lifestyle Crafts

Accessories - pink and black cardstock – Canson, wooden stars – Studio Calico, seed beads, foam dots – Stick It!, card blank – Docrafts, pearls, Scor-Pal, disused clear packaging, ribbon - Paperchase

Supply List: Dad Card

Stamps - Man of the Hour Stamp Set

Inks – Dark Chocolate – PTI, Tea Dye Distress Ink – Tim Holtz/Ranger

Dies – Wine bottle die and notebook die – PTI, Polka dot embossing folder – Lifestyle Crafts

Accessories – Persnickety 6x6 patterned paper – Lilybee Design, blending tool – Tim Holtz, Big Shot, acetate, copper sequins – Gutermann, Kraft card blank – Docrafts, circle paper clip – Crane’s, foam adhesive – Stick It! and machine stitching.

...sneak peek No. 2

Just sneaking in early this morning with another peek of one of the new stamp sets coming on the 29th - Wed next.

Later this morning we have a little friendly feature on the blog, do pop back and see who it is! I can't wait! but then, I don't have to - I snuck into Lynn's post to spy out who it was already!! squealed with delight!

...calling all movers

Just for fun, If you took part in our Make it Move challenge here, pop me an email with your address in it - I am having a little crafty purge and I have decided to pop each of you ladies a little something in the post!!!

Please put 'I MADE IT MOVE' in the subject line so's I can find you!!!

...a peep at what's coming for May

I have a little sneak for you today, we will be releasing a couple of new stamp sets on May 29th (Wednesday next) along with a couple of other developments that we are excited about....wondering if anyone will get what this peek is, my DH couldn't see it at all and he has seen the stamp sets!

...Cut Files - a little info

 

I had a few emails from folks wondering what cut files are - Here's some Q&A's just in case it's something you are not familiar with.

So what is this thing, this Cut File?

So, I'm making a card or a LO and I want to cut out one of the images I have stamped. Used to be I got out my scissors and started trimming around the shape as neatly as I could. This was grand, I have a great patience for papercutting, what I don't have is time.

Then I discovered dies - we love dies, don't we ladies, yes we do. I am addicted to dies, if I ever need to send anyone to college I will just auction my die collection, I think it will probably see all three of them through. Metal dies enable me to get a crisp, neat, even cut around any shape I have a die for. First it was basic shapes such as circles and squares, then I discovered labels and now I am having custom dies made up for some of my stamp sets. I love dies, they are great for mass producing card sets and they give a lovely embossed edge (well mine do because mine are all Spellbinder dies). the low profile metal dies will work with just about any table top die cutting machine such as Cuttlebug, Bigshot and of course the Grand Calibur etc. These are mostly hand cranked machines and you can also use embossing folders in them to produce texture on your cardstock, or indeed any other material such as fabric, thin cork and some wood papers, leather etc, lots of stuff, you can see why we love dies.

But, I'm greedy. I also like lots of shapes, I like to make up my own shapes. I like the possibility of designing a shape and being able to cut it out any size I want, in any quantity I want depending on my project. I can do this with an electronic cut file.

Yes, but what is an actual Cut File, what does it look like?

A cutting file is an electronic file that you can download to your computer. It's a bit like a digital stamp, except that where you send a digital stamp to a printer to get it out onto your cardstock, you send your cutting files to an electronic cutting machine which uses the file to electronically cut out a shape.

If you have a peep at the images above - you can see that the first image is of the Halloween Party stamp set - you can clearly see that the black images represent the stamp designs.

The next images shows the same stamps, but this time, you can see a little red line around the stamps - the red line shows you the shape of the cut file associated with the stamp that it surrounds. The Halloween Party cut files are a Freebie, so you can dowload them and have a gander at how they come. If you have a grahics program on your computer you might even be able to open them and have a peep inside. It is vital that you save them to your desktop first though, or they won't open. They come in a zip file.

When you download a 'Cut file' (from WMS), you are getting the file that has the red line shapes only. The cut files will produce blank shapes onto which you can stamp the corresponding images provided you have the matching stamps. Some of our cut files are for shapes that don't require stamps at all, such as the Art deco card front set. This file produces lovely patterned card fronts.

What do I need to have to be able to use Cut Files?

You will need a computer and a compatible electronic cutting machine.

In order to use cut files from WMS and indeed from may other stamp stores you will need a cutting machine which has the capability to use files. I have a Silhouette Cameo machine, I bought it with the designer edition software which allows me to use my own and purchased cut files from a wide variety of sources.

Some personal electronic cutters are closed systems and use only the cutting shapes available in their own cartridge systems, and example of this are the Cricut machines. At present Cricut machines are only able to use files on cartridges made by Cricut, although this may change if cut files become more popular. 

I hear people talking about svg files, what does that mean?

Cut files are supplied in a few different formats, most commonly you can find them as .svg and .dxf files. The format is just the way in which the file is saved and each machine will have it's own preference about what files suit it best. My silhouette Cameo can use .svg files, but before that I had a Robocraft machine that used .dxf files.

We hope to expand the availability of file formats as time goes by, we have started to introduce .jpeg files and if you require a particular type of file format we'd be interested to hear about it.

So which is better, dies or cut files?

 The short answer is that it depends on what you are making. It's like trying to compare apples and oranges, they are both different and you can do different things with each.

Electronic cutting machines offer great creative freedom in that you can resize files, merge files together, create mats for files, cut lines, dashed lines, and cut many multiples at once. The trade off is that it is not so easy to cut other materials. I only ever use card in mine, although vinyls and fabrics can be used, but I would not dream of putting felt into it for instance and felt is something I love to die cut. Also, and this is a big thing for me, you just don't get that lovely embossed edge that I love from my Spellbinders dies. So going forward my personal choice would be to have both! 

I hope this info helps a little, but I'd love to see if anyone has any questions about this, I am not an expert by any means, i am just learning my Cameo, but if there is something you need to know, i might be able to find an answer for you!