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Name Card Template

Over on Free Craft Downloads we make loads of Word Card Templates. Some of the say things such as Happy Easter, Merry Christmas etc whilst others contain peoples names. These templates are actually quite easy to make as long as you have the correct  graphics programme. In our video we have used PaintShop Pro be we are certain the same thing is possible with other good graphics programmes such as GIMP or Photoshop.

These word templates are great for things like birthday card. The best thing is, if you can make them yourself, then you can make a card for absolutely any friend or relative quite quickly. I’ve even know someone make one for their dog!. 

Once you have mad the card and printed it out you have a few options about wqhat you do to decorate it.

If you want you can cut out the gaps between each letter, the cards should be made so they will still stay in one piece and stand if this is done. You don’t HAVE to cut out the gaps, you can just decorate each of the letters if you wish.

There really is no limit to the types of card which you can make using this technique. We suggest sitting with a cup of coffee (or tea) and having play for an hour or so, you may be surprised with the results.

[ for those of you which are confident with graphics programmes you could of course continue once you have made the template and decorate it in the programme using things like the flood fill tool, gradients and patterns etc. Having said that, if you do it this way, we're fairly certain you can't call it a craft ]

Continue reading »]]> Quite often you find two separate images which you would like to combine into one. Very occasionally this can be as simple as feeding the paper through the printer twice. This is something I do fairly often with patterns e.g. the first time I put the paper through the printer I may get it to print a light(ish) coloured backing paper, the second time I put it through I add something like a design for making a box (this will only work if the box design is mostly white (which doesn’t print) and the design a fairly bold colour.

Fig 1.

Apart from that combining two images is going to take a little work. I’m going to use Paintshop Pro to do it although the technique will be roughly similar in many graphics programmes. My foreground image is also one which was made with a transparent background which will make the process easier, the same technique will work with any image with a solid colour background. The two images I’m using are both from the Quartet series on Free Craft Downloads and are brewster_cello_lg and  quartet05_ls_l.

Fig 2.

Obviously the first thing to do is to open both images. After that we need to set the background colour in Paintshop Pro to the background colour in the foreground image. In this case rather bright green (Fig 2)

Next we ensure the foreground image is the one selected and we go Edit / Copy(or Ctrl + C) . So we now have a copy of the foreground image in the Clipboard. Now we highlight the background image and use a special paste to put the foreground image on it (Fig 3 ).

Fig 3.

The spesical paste is Edit / Paste / Paste As Transparent Selection (Ctrl + Shift + E). This will place the foreground image on the background..

Next we select the “deform Tool” on the left  (Fig 4) and use this to resize the foreground image to how we want it. Once this has been done you will obviously want to use File / Save As… to save this new combined sheet without overwriting either of the originals.

As I said in the introduction this technique should work when the foreground image has a solid background as long as you remember to change the background colour in Paintshop Pro (or your graphics programme) to match. The tools will probably be in different places if you are using a graphics programme other than Paintshop Pro.

Fig 4.

Fig 5.

Continue reading »]]> There are many times when crafters will need to find a graphic or and image in a hurry. To make that last minute card, as part of a bigger design, to use as a digi stamp etc.

There are lots of places to get there free designs on the internet BUT if you aren’t careful you can end up spending hours going round in circles. This is because many website owners are more interested in sending you from site to site, where you can view their adverts, rather than letting you find what you are after.

Copyright Free , Public Domain, Royalty Free etc…

We can hardly talk about free designs without talking about copyright. If you want to use design of the internet they really need to be copyright free or Public Domain Images. Some images licensed under the “Creative Commons” can also be used but in this case you will need to read each license separately.

Royalty Free is not good enough. For these images you normally have to pay a fee, after which you may use them as many time as you like, that’s the royalty free bit.

There has to be sense of reality here, I doubt even the strictest company in the world is going to drag you through the courts because you used their image on a one off card you made for your 4 year old nephew. But try the same thing on cards you are selling (even for charity) and you could find yourself in a completely different situation. Not only are you guilty of copyright infringement but could also be accused of selling “fake goods”.

The same applies if you make other peoples images available on a website, even as part of a picture of one of your products. You could even have your website closed down by your hosting company, although most will give you at least one warning and the chance to remove the images.

Where to get the images.

Well here is a list of Sites we like. Each really do have free images on them. Please ensure your read the sites polices about how their images may be used and/ or any restrictions placed on individual images.

http://www.wpclipart.com

A great site with a large selection of clipoart split up into categories such as animals, art, armed services, cartoon, education etc.

http://www.reusableart.com/

Lots of old out of copyright images which you are free to use in any of your crafting activities.

http://www.clipartsalbum.com/

Lots of great free clipart and images on this site. Very good download system as well.

http://classroomclipart.com

Great site with loads of clipart on. Some seem to have watermarks on  which is a bit strange

You will fnd there and lots more free clipart sites listed in the relevant section on Free Craft Stuff

http://www.freecraftstuff.co.uk/generalclipart/

Just one final word of warning. When talking about copyright free images don’t always assume that the person with an image on their site has the ability to declare the image “copyright free” unless it is clear it is their own image. Likewise we have see sites which attempt to place their own copyright on images which clearly aren’t their own, in fact images which are actually release in the Public Domain.

Continue reading »]]> This tutorial with show you how to make your own inserts for card making. Using the same technique you can make a wide variety of sheets. This is a very simple method which you should pick up in no time at all.

First of all you need to find a suitable backing paper and if necessary resize it to the size you need. We want to make an A5 card so this is an A4 sheet (from www.freecraftdownloads.co.uk) which when folded in half will give us an A5 insert.

Open up the backing paper you want to use and add two Guidelines. To do this you click in the ruler area and simply drag a blue guideline onto the image.  Put one at the half way mark and one at the three quarter.

Now we need to make sure we have the correct colours selected. The colourin the lower of the two boxes will be the background colour and the one in the top box is the main frame colour.

You will also need to ensure that the solid colour (the big black dot) is selected.

Now we are going to select the shape tool on the tool bar.

In the tool option toolbar first select the shape you want (use one of the basic ones, some of the more complicated ones wont let you use the background colour), check create as vector is ticked and have a fairly large line width.

Now you need to draw the shape on your image. Don’t worry if you don’t get it the right size straight away. As it is a vector you will be able to grab the sides and resize it to get it exactly to the size you want.

Obviously you wont want to go over the centre line and the middle of the shape will want to be on the three quarter line. Don’t worry the shape will always remain symetrical so you don’t have to worry about that.

Next we will need the “Magic Wand” select tool. Make sure the tools options are set roughly as they are in our picture.

Use the Magic Wand to select the border on the shape you have created. Once you have selected it you will be able to alter it using the Inner Bevel option. You will find this by selecting Effects / 3D Effects / Inner Bevel…….

You can select the options as we have or you can have a play around with them and see what different effects you can come up with. You can use the “eye” to preview what you image will look like at any time. When you are happy with the setting the just click OK.

And that’s basically it. All you have to do now is save the image (File / Save As….). Obviously you can use the same technique to produce a wide range of inserts by using different shapes under the shapes tool and selecting different colours for the border and different options for the inner bevel.

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This tutorial will show you how to make text with some nice effects. Great for both card making and scrap booking. As you go through you will be able to increase the size of any of the pictures by just clicking on them. We are using Paintshop Pro (v8) but you will be able to use similar techniques in both GIMP and Photoshop.

First Make a new image by clicking on File / New. The size isn’t desperately important but at this stage you should make the working area bigger than the final image you will want. You can always resize the image later and it is always much better to make an image smaller rather than larger.

In our example we are making it 800 x 400 pixels at 150 DPI. This will give us an imge just over 5″ x 2″.

The first thing we will do to this is add another layer. This is done by clicking the new layer button on the layer palette or by using Layers /New Raster Layer….

Make sure this top layer remains highlighted as we will be working on this to start with.

Now click the text tool. Ensure that, in the tool options it is set on vector, a reasonable size and the font of your choosing. Don’t worry if you don’t like your first choice of size or font you can always change them a few times until you have it as you want it.

In the text box you should add the text that you want. If you want to change it’s font or size you will have to highlight it.  Again the size isn’t to important as, with vector images, you will be able to drag it to the size you want .

So click OK and then more the vector writing so it is positioned how you like. You can also grab a corner and make it larger or smaller as you wish.

Now, using the Selection Tool / Magic wand and holding down shift, click on each letter to select them (holding down shift ensures each letter is added to your selection. If you didn’t hold down shift the selection would change from one letter to the next.

You should end up with all of your letters / words selected (as above). This means whatever we do next will only affect the selected area

First we are going to use the “Inner Bevel” tool. You will find this under Effects / 3D Effects / Inner Bevel. When you select this anther window will pop up with lots of options in it. Don’t be afraid to have a play with these option, you can change them again and again. You can see the results in the little preview window on the right, or, if you prefer, you can click on the “eye” to see it previewed in your main image.

If you have trouble you can copy the settings in the image on the right here (click to enlarge) or you can click the dice a few time which will give you random setting.

Next we are going to add some drop shadow to the image. This is quite simple. Just go to Effects / 3D Effects / Drop Shaddow….

Again another pop up window will appear and you will see another set of option. We have chosen (and normally choose) black for the shadow and quite a small offset.  You are free to experiment. The preview is available for you to see how it looks and it wont actually take effect until you press OK. (Even then if you don’t like how it looks you can always Edit / Undo)

Nearly there now, just two things left to do. The first is to change the colour of the background to what we want.  To do this make sure the correct colour is selected in the lower of the two colour boxes. If it isn’t just click on the box to change it. After checking that then you move to the layer palette and select the background.

To complete the background colour just select the fill tool and right click on the image. The chosen colour will be flooded onto the background layer.

The last task (apart from saving) is to crop the image so we don’t have all the extra background round the words (unless you specifically  want it).  Just choose the rectangular selection tool and the select the adrea you want. Once you have done this just go to Image / Crop to selection.

Once you have done this you will want to save the image. For websites we suggest “jpg” as the format and for printing out we suggest tiff. To do this choose File / Save as. In the box which pops up you will be able to select where the image is saved, the name you give it and the type of image it is saved as.

That completes the tutorial. As normal it may seem difficult but after you have actually done it a couple of times it will become like second nature to you.

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For most of the functions that you can access from the menu in Gimp there are usually Hot-key short-cuts to the same function which are shown in the menu and which, when you get used to remembering them, can save you loads of time in making your images.

Step 1: Isolating an object in an image for tile creation

First of all you need to select the area around the object you want to tile, usually the Rectangle Select Box in the tool box is the perfect tool to use.

Press Ctrl key and c together to copy image and then press Ctrl, shift and v together(Paste into New Image) to create new image that only contains the area you selected in the rectangle select box.

Once you have the picture that contains the item you want to tile you will need to make the image background transparent, to do this select Layer menu – Transparency – Add Alpha Channel

Now when you use the Fuzzy Select Tool to select the background and press the Delete button on your keyboard you will be left with a transparent area.

Step 2: Tiling the isolated image

First of all we need to duplicate the image layer so we have two copies, there are several ways to do this but I will just list 2 here, you can either right click onto the layer on the layer window and select Duplicate Layer from the drop down menu, or you can simply press Ctrl, Shift d to duplicate the layer, there will now be two identical layers.

Continue reading »]]> Many people are nervous about shopping on the internet, will their Credit/Debit Card Details be safe, will they actually get the goods they order, will they be able to do anything if it all goes wrong. All these are reasonable worries and, although you can never be 100% safe, there is much you can do to minimise the risks.

Shop by Recommendation

Many of you will read forums, even if you aren’t a member  many forums allow you to search the posts. If you are thinking of buying from a particular website do a search on forums you frequent which allow discussions about other sites. Has anyone else bought from that site, what was their experience? If you have taken the time to join a Craft forum, and the rules allow it, the you can ask the other members. Hearing of others experience with the same company is probably the best information you can get, especially if its people who you can be sure have no vested interest.

Searching

If you aren’t able to do the above then do a general search on the company using Google. There are risks in doing this. You probably wont know the people who are making comments about the company either on unknown forums, review sites or on blogs etc. You wont know if they have a vested interest either to support or rubbish the company.

What to Look For on a Site

There are certain things a Web Site selling goods must have by law, this will vary country to country. On top of this there are things that are good to see because they give you confidence in the website. In this article we are mostly talking about UK law, you should check out the consumer law in your own country if you are worried.

Address
This is the first thing I look for on a site I am thinking of buying off. In the UK this needs to be a geographical address, a PO Box or c/o address is not good enough for Distance Selling Regulations). There are a lot of sites selling goods whose only method of contact is an online form. Even if it weren’t illegal I wouldn’t dream of giving my money to a company unless I know where they were and how to get hold of them. You wouldn’t give your money to a bloke in the pub and trust him to come back with the stuff (would you?).

Clear Information
The returns and cancellation policies should be clearly stated and comply with the relevant consumer law. I suggest, if there is even a mention of a re-stocking fee, then you leave the site immediately. Not only is this possibly against the terms of the Distance Selling regulations it’s not a nice way to treat customers.

Likewise information regarding postage and packaging costs and delivery times should be stated UPFRONT. Even if the postage is calculated by weight then a table should be shown of the costs associated to different weights and postage means. A customer shouldn’t have to go through the whole shopping process, including putting in personal information in some cases, before they can find out what these charges are.

Privacy information should be clearly stated, are they going to hand over your details to anyone else. If you are going to sign up for “offers” from this, or any other company, it should be an opt in system, not an opt out one. You will be shocked at how many companies make money by selling your details on to another company and get away with it through the “small print”.

Paying Method and Security.
Any page on which you are entering personal information should be secure. You should see a little padlock in your browser and the address should be an “https” one. If you are in doubt don’t give your details. If possible telephone your order through. (NEVER put you credit card details or anything else like that in an email, they are not secure).

Many sites take Pay Pal and Credit cards, these are a fairly secure way of paying as, if anything goes wrong, you can apply to those companies for a refund.

After Sales

If anything goes wrong always approach the company before you do anything else. Ensure you keep the packaging, paperwork, emails and anything else to do with the order. Things do go wrong,  post goes astray, computers mess up etc so the sign of a good company isn’t that nothing goes wrong but how they deal with it when it does.

If you get no joy from the company then write them a nice email setting out the issues and giving them 2 working days to  respond constructively. If that doesn’t work the next port of call for most people will be their Credit Card company or Pay Pal depending on how you paid.

For those who have issues there are many websites geared towards helping consumers with problem orders. Having said that, in our experience, as long as you follow the basic guidelines above then the vast majority of orders are completed with no problem at all.

Consumer Direct

What Consumer

Continue reading »]]> Shopping on the Internet can be quite fun and often quite financially rewarding. You can look around many more sites quicker (and warmer) than you could shops and therefore compare a lot more prices. Internet companies (or companies with an internet site) also seem to have more special offers, often Internet only. This is probably due to the fact it is easier and cheaper to advertise a special offer on the Internet rather than off it for example on TV.

Most of the “issues”  about shopping on the internet are to do with trust and safety however there are steps you can take to mitigate these.

Finding a Site / Product

Shopping Comparison Sites.

These have become increasingly popular over the last few years and they certainly do allow you to search through products quickly. The main drawbacks with these sites are they don’t seem to have may craft products on them and quite often you haven’t heard of the shops which come up (although there are some quite well-known shops on them as well). A few popular sites are listed below -

Price Runner

Kelkoo

Price Grabber

Google Product Search

Whilst Google Product search can be good it does suffer from the same issues as the shopping comparison sites; a lack of Craft products and many shops / sites you haven’t heard of.

Google Product Search

Review Sites

There are many sites which review other sites and / or individual products. The reviews are written by “customers” but herein lies one of the problems, we obviously have disgruntled customers and happy customers, but we also have site owners trying to improve their own ratings and competitors trying to mark them down. Worth a look but take some of what you read with a pinch of salt.

Review Centre

Consumer Search

Craft CDs

Personal Recommendations

This has to be, by far, the best way to find shops and products. Even if you aren’t a member of a Craft Forum you can still look and search through them. If you are member then you are even better off because in many forums you will be able to ask others for their recommendations. Remember it will be down to a forums rules if you can do this or not. Normally if a forum is attached to a specific shop then you wont be allowed to mention other shops (there are a few exceptions)  where as if the forum is a community site this will be allowed.

Craft Bargains

We will give a special mention to one of our “sister” sites, Craft Bargains. This site is specifically set up to find the craft bargains for you. Whilst it doesn’t guarantee any of the sites listed it does try and only list sites with a good reputation and those which meets the basics on distance selling and security.

Craft Bargains

Please see our separate article with more advice of how to shop safely.

Continue reading »]]> As crafters we often like to store a large number of designs.  You might buy a lot of these on CDs which, as we know, can be easily scratched. Copying them elsewhere, for your personal use, is not only legal, it is also advisable. These, together with all the images we download off the internet, videos and personal photographs can soon start to take up a lot of room.

There are 5 main forms of storage (yes I know there are more but here we are talking about “every day” storage which everyone can use)

• Internal Hard Drive
• External Hard Drive
• CDs/DVDs
• USB Sticks/Pen Drives
• Memory Cards / SD Cards / Compact Flash.

Internal Hard Drive.

Every Computer has an internal hard drive, the make, type and size will differ but their function will be the same. It will store your operating system, programmes, files, videos, images, settings and everything else your computer needs to work or you choose to save on it.

Hard Drives have got remarkably large over the past few years 500Gig – 1 or 2 Terabytes (1,000Gig) are quite common. Now this should be more than enough space to save what you need unless you save a lot of video. Having said that you should remember two things.

1. Your operating system will require free space on your hard drive to function properly. Whilst working your computer will be continually writing information to your hard drive in something it calls swap files. Other programmes will also need space, your browser will need space to put all the information you are looking at on the internet (By the time you are looking at something like this page all the information will actually have been downloaded onto your computer, into temp internet files.

2. All types of storage can fail, hard drives corrupt, CDs and DVD get scratched, pen drives and memory cards fail. So the golden rule is always back up your work, your graphics, your photos… anything you wouldn’t want to loose. Most people choose to do this by keeping one copy on their hard drive and another copy on one of the forms of storage below.

External Hard Drives

This is the most popular form of extra storage for people who want to store large numbers of files. They are simple to use (just plug into you USB port in most cases) and come in just as large sizes as internal hard drives. Be careful when you are buying one. Some companies sell the enclosures and the drive which goes in them separately. If you are going to buy them separately then you will need to get the right type of enclosure to go with the right type of hard drive to put in it. A 500Gig External Drive (Drive and enclosure) can be bought from about £40

CDs/DVD

Most computers come with a CD writer or a combined CD / DVD writer. Unfortunately both CDs and DVDs haven’t proved to be as resilient as we were led to believe. A few minor scratches and they refuse to work. They can also be quite slow to use. A CD will hold about 800Mb and a DVD about 5Gig (5,000 Mb)

USB Sticks/ Pen Drives

Great little devises especially if you need to carry your data around, to a friends house or a craft group for instance. There is still a small risk of loosing your data but seems a lot more stable than either an external hard drive and certainly more stable than DVD / CDs.  You should be able to pick up a 32Gig version for about £30.

Memory Cards / SD Cards / Compact Flash.

Many computers now have a card reader. If not you can get an external card reader which plugs into a USB port. They will take a variety of cards, you may even have some already, in a camera, a phone, mp3 player or such like. A 32Gig SD Card will cost you about £45 – £50.

Remember to always back up your work. If you buy lots of Craft CDs with designs on them think about copying them onto an external hard drive. Then you will have your two copies, one on the hard drive and one on the CD. You can work off the hard drive, which will be faster, and keep the CD as a back up. This is perfectly legal as long as it’s just for your own use and you retain the original CD. If you are someone who buys (or gets free) downloads off the internet you should store these in two places as well. Often the sites which sell these downloadable designs only give you access to them for a week or so. If you loose them after that you won’t be able to download them again.

Continue reading »]]> Keeping your computer safe should be one of your major concerns. We’ll start with a quick check list:

• 1. Make sure you run an anti-virus programme and keep it up-to-date.
  2. Do not click on links in emails even if you think you know who it’s from.
  3. Do not download software off the internet unless you are absolutely sure about the site.
  4. Do not trust anyone who telephones you about your computer unless it is a phone call you have arranged.
  5. Change your passwords regularly.
  6. If your friends start getting emails from you which you haven’t sent your computer may have a virus. If you can’t deal this yourself then get someone you trust to look at your computer for you.

Anti Virus Programme

There is no need to pay for an expensive anti virus programme. Most of the larger anti-virus vendors offer a free version of their software which is automatically kept up-to-date. You will find a couple of free ones listed HERE. We recommend the free version of AVAST.

Links in Emails

Scammers like to send you emails with things like “Your Pay Pal information needs updating” or “Someone has tried to log into your bank account”.  Then they will give you a link which supposedly goes to Pay Pal or your bank or where-ever. In fact it doesn’t, it goes to the scammers site which is a copy of the original, except when you put in your username and password it will be collected by the scammer. Normally you should just ignore these types of email but if you are worried or concerned then visit the site BY USING YOUR BOOKMARKS or by TYPING THE ADDRESS IN (the address you already know NOT the address given in the email). That way you can check your account safely.

Whilst we’re on the subject of emails then try not to open attachments in email unless it is something you are expecting… avoid attachments like “Look at this funny picture” or “Here’s the document I promised you”.

The Great Free Office Suit: Open Office

Software off the Internet

There are lots of software on the internet but it isn’t all safe. You should whenever possible only install and use downloaded programmes which have been recommended and from sites which you can trust.  Never try and hack or crack a programme which you should be paying for. Cracks and hacks are well-known for installing other stuff on your computer.

Phone Calls

There has been a spate of phone calls recently claiming to be from Microsoft Support or something similar and telling people there is something wrong with their computer. They will then try and get you to install software which will give them complete control over your computer. You need to be realistic, Microsoft is not going to give telephone support to you, neither is anyone else (without you calling first and spending a fortune on premium telephone calls). If you do get one of these calls you would be best just hanging up.

Change your passwords regularly

I know its a pain but you should change your passwords regularly.  Pick words and number combinations which wouldn’t be obvious but you can remember well.