Think Crafts Blog - Craft Ideas and Projects - CreateForLess

So many of our current trendy crafts include some hand writing.  Crafts like scrapbooking, card making, collage, altered art, and even painting.  At the very least you should be adding your signature to your crafts as the finishing touch!

I don’t know about you, but as my god son would say, “My handwriting sucks!” I hated penmanship in school (dating myself with that word!) and most of the time I’m in such a hurry that I can’t even read what I’ve written.  Heck, I’m so lazy that my signature is just my first inital and last name and even then I’m just scribbling always remembering to dot the i! Many use the computer and its heavenly wealth of fonts to make their crafts neater, but the whole point of being creative is to express yourself through your own mind, heart, and hands.

My most treasured keepsake from my mother is a silly old calendar on which she wrote a little something each day. I treasure it because seeing her hand written words makes me feel close to her again.  If she had used a computer, rub on letters, or sticker phrases, I don’t think the calendar would have much meaning to me. 

Maybe I should have been a doctor, my handwriting is horrible!

Here are some handwriting tips I learned while teaching at a scrapbooking expo:

Practice. Practice. Practice! If you don’t write often, you’ll “forget” how.

Make it easier with light marks to keep your handwriting straight and not marching up and down or slanting.  Keep pencil marks light. A heavy line will leave imprints on your page and be more difficult to erase. These imprints can also affect the way the paper takes colored pencils, chalks and watercolors.

A heavy-handed eraser can take the color off white core paper, patterned or solid. Go lightly!

Small, evenly placed characters look clean and precise.

Concentrate.  Don’t be distracted.  Don’t be doing four things at once. You want your lettering to look good, so take the time to do it right.

Whether you use a template or create guidelines yourself, be diligent about it. A little advance planning goes a long way.

It is great to copy and emulate other fonts or people’s writing, but the point here is to get your writing in your books. So find a style that suits you. Are you someone who loves cursive? Do you write in all caps, all lowers, or a mixture of both? Make sure that your style shines through in your letters.

Sometimes the faster you go, the better the results can be.  Just making sure that you’re concentrating. If you’re trying for a carefree look, make your guide lines, pencil in your text for correct spacing, and then go for it!

Use a straight edge for your verticals. If you’re doing large letters for a title, or even for your journaling, use a ruler to make your verticals. This is a trick architects use to make their printing look prefect every time.

Use shadowing for a great effect. It softens the subtle imperfections in your writing, making your letters look better. Grab a Black and Platinum Zig Writer and create letters that jump off your page.

Do not be too critical of yourself. Hand lettering is not, and will never be, perfect. And it shouldn’t be.

If you think you can get overwhelmed organizing your traditional film photos you’ll be doubly overwhelmed with how quickly digital images can add up!  It’s important to keep current and keep your digital images organized. I recently vowed to organize my digital photos and I must say I was tempted to just delete everything a few times.  My husband loves to take 5-6 photos of the same thing just to be safe and my eyes started to cross trying to figure out what to keep and what to delete.

I’m trying to organize my digital photos because I’ve fallen in love with the process of making slide show videos out of them.  So in love I even purchased a new computer for myself and after 20+ years of being quite PC, I bought a Mac!  I’ve not had much time to play around with my Mac other than organize the billion photos my husband has taken over the years, but I’m excited about it.  Another way to be creative.  And don’t think I’m going totally digital, I’ve been stocking up on my decorative papers to make cool CD and DVD envelopes!

Here’s my advice for organizing your digital photos and I’ve thrown in a few of our most recent photos for you to enjoy!

Immediately delete any images you don’t want while taking your photos.  This is the first step in organizing digital images.  If you aren’t happy with a photo, delete it, and re-shoot on the spot.

Don’t leave images in your digital camera.  Download the images into a folder that includes the event and date in the folder name.  This is also a good time to delete any images that you don’t want.

A sunset captured in Palau.

Once images are downloaded into a folder on your computer, make an index file.  Create a word document and use it to describe the event, people in the photos, location, date, and journaling.  This is a must! 

If you have time, rename the images to include name, date, location or other reminder of what the photo is about.  This can be done later, but it is important.  This is also another opportunity to delete any unwanted images or to send images to others via e-mail.  The longer you wait to organize digital images the more likely you are to forget the details like location, date, and even people in the photos.

The new addition to my craft studio my husband is building.

It’s a good idea to back-up your photo inventory on a timely basis so you don’t lose any images if your computer has problems.  It’s a good idea to keep different categories of CD or DVD copies too.  

There are several excellent software programs that help keep your digital photos organized.  Programs like Greenstreet Digital Photo Album Deluxe, OnTheGoSoft Photo Backup and Preclick Photo Organizer.  These programs organize, backup, and even allow for digital albums.

A huge grouper we saw diving!

Use subfolders for key events like birthdays, Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter, and other annual events that you know you will take photos.  The main folder should have the event name and all subfolders will have the year.  For example:  Main Folder is Maria’s Birthday; Subfolders are 2003, 2004, 2005, and so on. Vacation folders should include location and year with an index that includes specific dates and people.

Ken's 50th birthday.

If photo editing, make sure you keep the original image intact.  Make a copy of the image you want to photo edit and work with that.  The more you photo edit, the more the image loses some quality so it’s important that key original images be kept as backup.

One of our orchids in bloom.

Every Family Has A Story…

Although I’ve scrapbooked most of my life, recently I’ve been focusing on family heritage albums and pages.  I found as I was sorting my older photos that I was very curious as to who all these strangers were in my photographs and just how I was related to each one! Genealogy helps us map all our family lines to create family trees.  Family trees make understanding our family connections a little easier. 

A family tree page can make things very straightforward for you.  The page has spaces for writing the names of members of your family tree including the family relationship (grandparents, uncles, aunts, cousins). 

You can also use the Family Tree Guidebook, which is an easy to read, easy to understand handbook for helping you create a lush family tree.

I’d also like to recommend the following websites, all of which are filled with great genealogy information, resources, printable forms, and research tips. Cyndi’s List is world famous and very user friendly.  Resources For Family Historians provides endless help in many areas of family research.

My favorite family heritage story is also a little embarrassing.  I wrote a book called, Creating Your Family Heritage Scrapbook: From Ancestors to Grandchildren, Your Complete Resource and Idea Book for Creating a Treasured Heirloom, with an editor I’d been working with for years.  Once the book was published, my cousin Jeff, our family’s serious family historian called and asked me why I didn’t tell him I’d written the book with a relative.  Basically I told my dear cousin Jeff that was the craziest thing I’d ever heard in my life, I’d written the book with an editor who happened to be a friend, not a family member. 

I even called my editor to tell him just how crazy my cousin Jeff was!  Not fifteen minutes later the editor called back to say he’d checked with his aunt (his family historian who happened to be a genealogist) and it was indeed a fact that we were related.  Our great great grandfathers were brothers.  How wild was that!  I humbly called my very sane cousin Jeff to tell him what a brilliant family historian he was!  Families do have the most wonderful stories to tell, we all just need to be quiet and listen.

Do you have a family heritage story to tell?  Have you created a family history or heritage page or scrapbook?  Please share it with us. And if it turns out we are related? I promise not to call you crazy!

You have the tools, now how do you age, antique, and distress materials?  Here’s a handy guide:

Bleach It!:  Brush or lightly spritz paper with bleach.  Allow colors to fade, dab off any excess.  Lemon juice can also be used.  Heat set once dry.

Coaster It!:  Using a messy cup of coffee or tea, use your paper as a coaster or saucer and let it soak up the coffee or tea that has puddled at the bottom of the cup or glass.  It’s an interesting, realistic touch of distressing.

Crush It!: You can ball up the paper and then smooth out to give aging lines and some instant wear and tear to paper.   The more you crumple it, the more aged and soft the paper will look.  You’ll have a paper with a fine webbing of age lines. 

Ink it!:  Spill a little ink on that paper!  Dribble it!  Puddles of ink are perfect touches of aging.  Allow ink to dry completely before adding any embellishments or photos. 

Iron it!:  For a more polished look, iron distressed paper.  Always use an ironing cloth to protect your ironing board surface and your iron!  Do your best to crush, ink, rip, sand, and more, then use the iron on a warm setting to smooth it all out.

Sand It!:  Using sanding paper, fine steel wool, or an emery board, sand the edges of paper or embellishments.  Skip the sanding paper or emery board over the body of the surface too.  This gives the effect of weathering and aging by wind, sun, and time. 

Speckle or Splatter It!:  Using an acrylic wash or ink, take an old bristle brush or toothbrush and dip into liquid.  Lay background paper or scrapbook page on newspaper or other covered work surface.  Flick brush or toothbrush with your thumb and this sends a fine mist of paint over the paper.  Repeat until you are happy. 

Sponge It!:  Sponge on hints of color using inks, pastels, chalks, paints, tea, coffee, glazes, and watercolors.  Add layer upon layer of color until happy.

Spray It!:  Spray surface with diluted ink, paint, even strong tea or coffee.  Intensify color by repeated spraying.

Tear or Rip It!:  Tearing and ripping paper gives it an aged or distressed look.  You can rip along an edge or right down the middle!  Practice ripping with scrap papers to get a feel of how different papers will rip and tear.  You can also chalk or ink the ripped paper edges to give a more earthy aging effect. 

Tips

• Age builds up on surfaces so to create a realistic aged surface slowly “build” layers of color, stain and paint. Then sand or pound. Then repeat layering of color.
• Step back from your work occasionally and look at the aging effects from a distance. Up close your project may look done, but at a distance you may see it in a different light.
• Gold ages with brown tones, silver with black tones.
• Add shadow with dark hues, highlights with light hues.

Everyone loves the look of antiques! You can easily get that look quickly with the following tools:

Acrylic Paints:  Water down the paint to an inky consistency, which creates what is called a wash (1 part paint to 3 parts water).  Colors of dark blue, patina green, rust, black and burnt amber work best on light color papers while white, light gray and light blue work best on dark colors. Brush light coats onto the paper until happy with the hue.

Antiquing Gel:  This is a thick liquid or gel that is brushed on and then rubbed off leaving a thin film that makes an object look older.  There are a variety of colors from white to black.  For hard surfaces like charms you can age the item by using antiquing gel. 

Chalks or Pastels:  Chalks and pastels can be used to age paper.  Use darker colors and dust chalk around edges, over sanded portions, or all over the surface.  Chalks and pastels need to be “sealed” with a spray finish, fixative or sealer.

Chalk Inks:  A pigment ink that is usually light in saturation and hue.  When dry, it leaves a chalky-like finish.  Lightly sponged onto a paper or surface to antique or age it. Lightly sponge chalk ink over paper in aged colors like mustard, brown, rust, black or patina green.

Coffee and Coffee Grounds:  Coffee can be used for aging and staining just like tea.  Brew up a strong, dark batch of coffee and then you can soak, spray, dribble, or puddle the coffee onto the paper.  Coffee grounds can also be used.  Sprinkle coffee grounds over wet paper and allow to dry.

Fine Grit Sandpaper or Emery Board:  Use the sandpaper or emery board to sand away layers of the paper to give a weathered effect. Use fine grit sandpaper or emery board and sand lightly over different areas of your paper.

Hammer or Mallet:  Here’s a chance to get out all that frustration!  Simply pound areas to give a dented, abused, and ‘seen a few years’ look to paper, metals, fabrics, and plastics.  Some altered artists also use heavy chains to give the same look.

Inks:  Inks used in rubberstamping can be used to antique paper and other surfaces.  Select colors that lend to aged looks like dark yellows, rusty orange and browns, patina greens, dark blacks and off-white whites.  Best application is to lightly sponge ink onto paper in light layers.

Ink Sprays:  Diluted inks in spray bottles used to spritz color onto a surface.  Shade and intensity vary.

Steeped Tea:  Place several tea bags into a bowl and add hot water.  You want at least 3 tea bags to each cup of water.  In other words, you want a strong batch of tea.  Avoid teas that don’t give rich color like green teas.  Spray a mist of strong tea onto the paper and iron it.  The straining will make the paper look old.  Repeat misting until the paper is aged to your perfection.

Walnut Ink:  This is an ink that is speckled, dripped or brushed onto paper that gives a sepia or brown wash to the paper.  Usually a powder that you mix with water, but is also available in liquid form and in a variety of colors.