The Hybrid Chick » cards

Spotlight on: Pixel Gypsy Designs

Nicole Seitler — Sat, 24 Jul 2010 20:47:50 +0000

Hello! Boy, do I have some yummy papers to share with you today! Our designer in the spotlight this month on The Hybrid Chick is Sherrie Piegdon of Pixel Gypsy Designs.

Here’s how you can keep up with the latest news and info from Sherrie:

Sherrie’s Blog: Pixel Gypsy
Twitter: pixelgypsy
Subscribe: Pixel Gypsy Newletter

Sherrie’s designs are crisp and clean—just prefect for printing out for hybrid projects! Her gorgeous paper packs and kits are all created with very harmonious color palettes. I love her eye for color.

Here are just some of the beautiful papers you will find in Sherrie’s shop:

I took a peek in the gallery and I saw this amazing pinwheel set that slprunning made with Sherrie’s By The Sea collection. Isn’t this adorable?!

I also spotted this adorable Father’s Day card that Jess, one of our Hybrid Chickies, made using Sherrie’s French Laundry kit:

And I thought these flowers made by Jackie, another Hybrid Chick, using Sherrie’s Funky Monkey kit were so very pretty:

I was totally tempted by Sherrie’s pretty papers, too! I was inspired by the beautiful card that designer Mari Koegelenberg made with her CD Card template (you can see her pretty card posted there in the shop) and I wanted to make one like it.

I picked Sherrie’s gorgeous Lola paper pack for this project and set to work! Here’s the front of the card (made with one of Mari’s Doilie Shapes as well):

And here is the back of the card, where you can open it up:

(I just love, love, LOVE this pretty gray patterned paper!)

Here is the inside of the card with it’s little pocket where the greeting will go, once I’m ready to use it:

This card was simple to make! I don’t have a fancy cutting machine, so I just use the .png files that come in Mari’s Cutting Files template packs. And this template was especially straightforward and easy to trim. I clipped the floral paper to the front of the card in Photoshop and then on the back I printed a full sheet of plain gray paper, so that my cardstock would be double-sided.

In retrospect, I probably should have clipped the plain paper to the shape and printed the patterned paper on the back, so that I could use the scraps of floral paper for something else. Oh, well! The beauty of hybrid paper is that you can always print MORE. Yay!

When I was preparing the little pocket piece for printing, I also added a square shape to my page to cut out for layering on the front of the card. I knew I wanted to use a lot of layers for this card. Have you seen the beautiful work by scrapper Christine Middlecamp? We’ve been talking about it on our Hybrid forums (here) and, well… some of us really caught the bug for making these beautiful little goodies. Mari made her beautiful Cutting Files template set with these projects in mind. And she knew how excited I was about them, too… so she did the sweetest thing—she sent me a little package with some doilies inside so I could play along, too!

Well, today I finally broke one out and used it! I was a little afraid to… Are you ever like that? Sometimes I think “Well, maybe I’ll just keep this in my stash…” What a hoarder I can be! I love my papercraft collection. It’s just pretty to look at all the raw goodies sometimes. LOL!

But I digress…

I really love how this card turned out! I used a touch of pink on the front, which seemed to go perfectly with the other colors. And I used some green ribbon, since there is green in the original kit. I can’t wait to give this card to someone special!

Hope you enjoy all the inspiration and that you find something pretty in Sherrie’s shop for your next hybrid creation! Be sure to link us up if you do. We always love to see what you’ve been up to!

Happy creating!

Fun rotating flower cards

cbuswell — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 11:33:42 +0000

I love simple mechanisms in cards, this one is a handy one to know and it’s really easy!! You could use it for anything you want to rotate on your card (wheels, legs, whatever you like really!!) and all it takes is a few cuts in some card.

When I saw the cute die cut flower in the Berry Meadow Scrapbook Pack by Quirky Twerp, I knew it’d be perfect for these cards. Fun and simple to cut out.

These cards would make great birthday cards or party invites for kids but they are just as cheery for us big kids too!!

SUPPLIES:

Digital Scrapping Kit - I used Berry Meadow Scrapbook Pack by Quirky Twerp at the Digichick
White Card (nothing too flimsy!)
Paper/cardstock for printing on
Printer
Basic suppies (scissors, glue, pencil, decent craft knife, double sided tape)
Optional – Sewing machine, natural twine, buttons, paper clip, sentiment, yellow paper from The Thrift Shop by October Afternoon

Ok, so I printed the flowers onto a sheet of card, a good quality thickness. I cut out one flower and a matching circle centre. In the centre of the flower I cut out a small circle with a craft knife.

For the card base I used berry dots and butterflies from the Berry Meadow Pack and yellow paper layered onto some white card (but you could decorate it however you like). I added some stitching on the sewing machine but again this is optional.

Just so you can see this clearly, I drew the mechanism onto a piece of plain white card. (The card has to be a good quality thickness to be durable enough to stand up to all the movement later) This is the basic shape, each side is actually the same shape as a paperclip so you could use it to draw around. The important part: the width of the gap between the two sections needs to be slightly smaller than the circle in the centre of your flower.

Now simply cut around the edges with a sharp craft knife (as shown) and leave the centre attached. Gently bend your tabs upwards.

Now you know the simply mechanism you can apply it to your card, as shown.

Now take your cut out flower from earlier and slot over your tabs.

Make sure it rotates smoothly (the edges of the circle must be smooth) and make any adjustments if necessary.

Flatten down your tabs and add some adhesive to the top of them. Take the circle centre of the flower you cut out before, align and place onto the tabs. Rotate your flower to make sure everything is central.

That’s the basic principle. One other note, it works better if you have the edge of the flower over-hanging an edge, just so it’s easier to rotate.

Now, decorate as desired. I added a simple sentiment I just printed out, a bit of twine, a button and a paperclip.

Here’s a couple of variations. You can scale down the mechanism, and layer it on top of things, just make sure the card you use is thicker. I made a smaller flower in this one and added a button on top.

There’s lots of different layouts you could try. I used a medium flower here and layered the mechanism on top of the other flowers. Just the top flower rotates but you could have more than one if you wanted!

So, there you have it, do give it a try, it really isn’t that hard and it’s lots of fun!!

A circle card & a candy dispenser

AliceW. — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 11:59:43 +0000

Hi all! I have a little birthday project to share with you today. I made a little circle card and candy dispenser using EloDesigns’ beautiful Birthday Bash kit and Kelleigh Ratzlaff Designs’ Candy Dispenser Template Set.

Supplies:

Cardstock: Neenah Classic Solar White
Digital kit: Birthday Bash by EloDesigns
Template: Candy Dispenser Template Set by Kelleigh Ratzlaff Designs
Stamp: Hero Arts (sentiment)
Ink: Memento Tuxedo Black
Dies: Spellbinders Nestabilities Standard Circles Large, Spellbinders Nestabilities Classic Scalloped Circles Large
Die cutting machine: Cuttlebug
Adhesives: 3M, Recollections, Glossy Accents

I love the beautiful scenery patterned papers in the Birthday Bash kit, so I decided to build a little scene with some elements from the kit.

I first placed the tower and the rocks on my background before I printed them out. I then printed out one extra set of the tower and the rocks, cut them out then pop doted them over the original images. This way I didn’t have to worry about cutting out the delicate parts like the swirly thing-y that extended out from the roof of the tower and the grass around the rocks. I then cut out the banners then attached them using pop dots. The circle part of the card is then pop doted over the scalloped card base, also printed from one of the patterned papers from the Birthday Bash kit.

I used another pretty paper from the kit and Kelleigh’s template to make my candy dispenser. I printed out the banners again to decorate the front of the dispenser. I used my finger nails to curl up the ends of the banners a little to add a little more dimension. I didn’t have any candy on hand when I was taking this photo, so I put some Fimo marbles that I made in it, just in case you are curious. =)

Hope this will inspire you to make a circle card or a shaped card using your digital kits.

Have a wonderful day and thanks for stopping by! =)

Masculine Card Challenge

Savitri — Sat, 19 Jun 2010 11:41:49 +0000

Hi! It’s Savitri here! Do you remember that father’s day is tomorrow? If not you still have one more day to create that special card for that special dad in your life!!

Now, whether or not you have a father’s day card I’d like to host a masculine card challenge. Masculine cards are always hard for me. I am a ribbon and bright colors kind of girl and toning it down for a more macho feel is really tough.

The fabulous part about a manly card, at least to me, is that it’s a great way to go simple. The guys I know are not into layers and layers of details so I always go the keep it simple route.

While I was perusing TDC’s shop I came upon this most perfect set for a manly card (or a scrapbook): Karla Dudley’s No. 1 Dad.

After messing around a bit in Photoshop I came up with this simple design:

I LOVE LOVE LOVE Karla’s handwriting. Just so fun! Her simple designs are awesome too for hybrid. I can’t get enough of her stuff!!!

In Photoshop I created an 8.5×11 page, divided it in half with a guide and aligned my design the way I want it to print on paper and after I was done I pushed “Print” (I also remembered to put my kraft paper – this one is from Stampin’ Up! – in the paper tray before I printed… I tend to forget sometimes, he he…). To give the card some dimension I added some buttons (which are all over my craft room) and polished it up also with some stamps (Golf Pro stamp at the top left and Woodgrain Silhouette for the sentiment). I used stamps because I love them and I have a lot of them but you can just skip the stamping and add more digital elements to your card. Just keep in mind that unless you have a printer that has a “bleed” option – where you can print all the way to the edge of the paper – you image will be cut at about 1/4″ from the sides. That’s what happened to my dotted line – my printer cropped it.

Oh, I’ve also been loving using twine on my buttons. I love jute and baker’s twine. They’re the perfect size to go through button holes!

Now it’s your turn! Share your creation and get a chance to win the above kit! Just submit a link to your creation here on the blog by 11:59pm (EST) on Friday, July 2nd and one lucky winner will be randomly selected to win. Good luck!

Last Minute Father’s Day Card

Rebecca (MamaBee) — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 21:32:04 +0000

Hi everyone!! In case you forgot… like me… that this Sunday is Father’s Day.

This month has gone by so fast and this holiday just snuck up on me. So, while Daddy is at work… time to make a quick card, with kiddo’s help! It is from him, after all.

Supplies I used for my card:

Lil Dude by Jennifer Fox, Nikki Epperson, and Melissa Bennett, available at The DigiChick
card stock
adhesive
scissors

Lil Dude

1. Design the card in your editing program and print out.

2. I like to layer my papers and mat with black paper… optional.

3. Trace the hand of your willing assistant and cut out the shape. If your child is too young to sit still, you could always paint their hand and stamp it on paper. Another option in place of pattern paper is to have the child decorate the hand shape with markers and glitter.

4. Place two foam dots on the middle and ring fingers…. this will create the I love you sign in American Sign Language.

5. Fold down the two fingers to the palm.

6. Decorate the inside of the card.

7. And finally, the card isn’t complete until it is signed.

This will be a card that will be treasured for years to come!

Rebecca

Father’s Day ‘Easel’ Card

Christy — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 13:29:42 +0000

With Father’s Day right around the corner, I wanted a fun card that my kids could give to their dad. I chose to make this fun easel card, that props up to display the message. Here is how you can make one.

Supplies:

Industrial Revolution by Quirky Twerp
Trimmer, scissors, adhesive, ink, scoring tool

Step 1: Create a design 5″ x 10″ – you can either use digital paper for your base or use cardstock and cut it 5″ x 10″. You will also need to create a top and a stopper. The stopper will be used to prop your card up. For the top you need a 5″ x 5″ square, for the stopper 2.5″ x 5″. I added all my digital elements to the top and the stopper and then printed out my design.

Step 2: Cut out your pieces and score your basecard at 2.5″ and 5″

Step 3: You will now fold your scored lines and get your top and stopper ready to be adhered.

Step 4: I opted to ink the edges of my top and stopper cards then I adhered them to my basecard.

Step 5: To give the card the ability to stand, you will use a popdot for the stopper. You can also do this with a button, a flower, or a brad. Anything to give your top part something that “catches” it.

Lastly, this card will lay nice and flat so you can put it in an envelope. Hope you enjoyed this little tutorial. I enjoy making these cards as they are quick and easy to make.

In the Garden notecard box

melissaj17 — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 16:55:30 +0000

I had so much fun making this vintage, soft trio of notecards and the beautiful matching box. And it really came together so quickly! The best part is that this project can be redesigned in so many ways using minimal extra products.

Kelleigh has create her memo box to be the perfect fit and when you open the file, it is very clear as to where you need to clip the digital papers. Easy peasy, lemon squeezy!

And, you won’t find a more gorgeous set of floral papers and elements to use in a project like this! By including designs with blue tones as well as pinks, Mari’s kit is also useful for more masculine projects. You should definitely check out some of the scrapbook layouts made with this kit–wow!!

Here’s what I used:

In the Garden kit by Mari K
Memo Box Template by Kelleigh Ratzlaff Designs
Photoshop Elements
Printer
Paper trimmer
scissors
Scor-Pal
Ink and sponge
Stamps
gems
Silk ribbon
corner rounder
Adhesive
Glue-dots

Above you can see how I laid out the digital paper and elements on the sheet to be printed. I clipped more papers than I needed to the memo box and wasted some of my ink–lesson learned!

When I’m making projects, I never really have an exact end result in my head so I wanted to print enough of the digital papers and elements to give myself some freedom to create. I was drawn to the beautiful tags that Mari included in the kit and I knew that I wanted my notecards to feature those.

With such amazing papers I didn’t need to add much to make these cards pretty. The silk ribbon echos the soft feel of the designs and I thought that the butterflies worked well with the floral images. Also adding to the soft theme are the rounded corners that I punched into the corner of each card.

Thanks for stopping by to check out my project today!

Greeting Card Organizer

Jessica Pranaitis — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 20:47:52 +0000

I knew that what I needed was some kind of organizer to hold each month’s birthday cards, as well as a monthly calendar to let me know whose special day was coming up. I happened across an empty half-sized binder when I was cleaning up our home office, and an idea was born.

The papers from the gorgeous Fresh Cut: The Collection by The Digichick Designers were perfect for my file pockets, and I found exactly the right calendar in the shop as well: Jan Hosford’s Perpetual Calendar Templates.

The first thing I did was to create a new 8.5 by 11 inch document and drag in the 12 patterned papers that I had picked out. I then created a vertical guide at exactly the half-way point where I was planning to fold the printed page in half to create the pocket.

I added Jan’s calendar and a white mat under it, as well as a white box where the cut-away for the pocket would go. Planning ahead, for once, I also made sure to leave plenty of room on the left side for the stitching and three-hole punching. Each page was created the same, and then I duplicated the necessary layers, flattened them and printed my file pockets.

After everything was printed, I gathered up the rest of the things that I thought I’d need. Here is the complete supply list:

Fresh Cut: The Collection by the Digichick Designers
Perpetual Calendar Templates by Jan Hosford
Epson Premium Matte Photo Paper
half-sized binder
three hole punch
sewing machine (or paper piercer, needle and thread)
adhesive (I used both Mono Adhesive Permanent and a glue pen)
ruler, craft knife, scoring tool

My sewing machine and I are not on speaking terms, and apparently our three hole-punch is not the adjustable kind so I had to use the old-fashioned tools here. This next part would go a LOT faster otherwise! First I scored the middle of all of my printouts, and then used my ruler and craft knife to cut out the blank white part. On two of the pages, I’d added some month tabs before I printed that I’d made from elements out of the kit, so I cut those out as well.

Next was the task of creating the pockets by folding the papers in half and sealing up the bottom and side. I knew I didn’t want to just use glue, because it needed to be sturdy enough to hold up to repeated use, so I decided that stitching it closed would be the way to go. I tried my sewing machine, failed, reprinted and got out my paper piercer and ruler with the evenly spaced holes. Then I started poking away. It took a while. But I finally finished and pulled out some floss and a needle and stitched the sides together. I hope that it lasts a long time because I’m not anxious to do that again!

Here are all my pages, pierced, stitched and hole-punched!

I added the tabs that I’d created and here is the inside of the binder, ready to be used. All I need to do is fill in the birthdays for the appropriate dates, and then the cards for each month can go in the pockets.

I slipped the outside covers into the front, back and spine, and my project was done! I can’t wait to start filling it up, and I hope that this fun little binder inspires you to use your craft supplies to get organized too!

Red River Paper Give-Away!

Heather — Tue, 25 May 2010 18:14:21 +0000

I recently was given the chance to sample a huuuuuge pack of different papers from Red River Paper Company, and oh my! I’m in 7^th heaven!

Their paper is a dream to work with in my HP Inkjet—the colors render beautifully, and they have all kinds of very cool textured papers that add a rich dimension to your projects.

Even making a simple card is super-easy, as they have a whole bunch of pre-cut and scored papers that come in standard and non-standard sizes. Here’s a card I made using the 60 lb. Cordovan Textured Gloss:

This particular card was 5×7”, and I really love that pebbly leather look. (By the way, that card is entirely printed on one layer, even the alpha!) Most of the Red River card-sized papers work well with Epson pigment inks, their insert notes. They also include settings for some of the more common inkjet printers (Epson, Canon, HP) so that you can get the most out of both the paper and the printer.

I also used some of the 60 lb. Polar Matte cardstock to print out some patterned papers that I then cut like regular cardstock, and made a thank you card with it. Again, the printing quality was great, and I got the colors I expected. The drying time was minimal and there was no streaking during handling.

Another project I made was this little mini-album for Mother’s Day with more of the matte paper (the Polar paper also comes as a double-sided printable paper, which is really handy for hybrid projects!). I followed craft-diva Sunghee’s most excellent guidelines, but since I don’t usually do hybrid, my project was less than perfect—fortunately I’ve got a wonderful Mom who didn’t care about things lining up!

Again, the papers printed wonderfully, were easy to score and fold, and held up very well during all my manhandling.

(Supplies used: Card 1: Everything from the Owl Play kit by Heather T. Card 2: Everything from the Blueberry Cobbler kit by Kellie Mize. Mini-Album: Everything from my Over The Moon.)

Here are some other Hybrid Chick projects using Red River Papers:

Kim’s Desk Organizer (great project for Father’s Day coming up!)
Linda’s Mini Suitcase and
Linda’s Quick Hybrid Album

Oh, the give-away part? Red River Paper is GIVING AWAY 4 (four) $50 gift certificates for paper, and a sample kit. YOWZA! Wish I could participate!

This will be a random (random.org) kind of thing, so just leave a comment letting us know what you could possibly make with $50 worth of paper before midnight (EST) Tuesday, June 1st for your chance to win! Only one comment per person, thanks…

Top Heavy box and card

AliceW. — Wed, 19 May 2010 12:55:13 +0000

Hi all! I made a set of shabby/vintage looking project that is perfect for a sweet friend using Quirky Twerp’s gorgeous Bohemian Rhapsody kit and Kelleigh Ratzlaff Designs’ Top Heavy Box template. With the help of Quirky Twerp’s beautiful kit, this project came together pretty quickly.

Supplies:

Cardstock: Papertrey Ink, Neenah Classic Solar White
Digital kits: Bohemian Rhapsody by Quirky Twerp, Top Heavy Box by Kelleigh Ratzlaff Designs
Stamps: B Line Designs (bird image), Papertrey Ink (sentiment)
Inks: Memento Rich Cocoa, Tim Holtz Distress Ink
Markers: Copic
Patterned paper: Jenni Bowlin
Buttons, silk ribbons: Papertrey Ink
Dies: Spellbinders
Die cutting machine: Cuttlebug

I first printed the template on a plain printer paper then used removable adhesive to attach it to the printed patterned paper. I then carefully cut out the box and assembled it according to the instruction. After the box was done, I inked all the edges with Tim Holtz’s distress inks in tattered rose and vintage photo to add a little aged look.

I then trimmed the other pretty patterned papers that I printed out from the Bohemian Rhapsody kit to the sizes that I wanted. Then inked the edges with tattered rose, tea dye and victorian velvet distress inks then distressed all the edges with a paper distresser. The stamped bird image from B Line Designs was stamped with Memento Rich Cocoa ink then colored with my Copic markers. After die cutting it using Spellbinder’s Lebels Nine die, I inked edges with tattered rose and vintage photo distress inks.

I also inked the silk ribbon with some tea dye distress ink. The sentiment stamp is from Papertrey Ink and the sentiment tag is also cut using a Spellbinders die then inked with distress inks.

I made the paper flowers using some music sheet papers by Jenni Bowlin a little while ago. After inking them with some more distress inks, I decided to use them to tie the two projects together. Both flowers were decorated with stacked buttons strung with silk ribbons.

With a little inking on the paper edges, the shabby/vintage look is easy to achieve. Hope my project has inspired you to create a hybrid shabby project! =)

Please don’t hesitate to ask questions if you have any, I will do my best to help!