Paint.Net Tutorials.

I've had a few requests for Paint.Net tutorials. I've basically learned some of what I do by trial and error and having my husband look over my shoulder saying "why'd you do it that way?". I've looked around on the internet and here is a place that might be of some help to you.

They have lots of tutorials describing different things. They are called Lunartics.

Here is a tutorial that shows how to whiten teeth in Paint.net

Here is a video tutorial that shows how to make fire in Paint.net

Hope this helps some of you get started. It really is an amazing program, has a fairly short learning curve but because of how powerful it is it's not super-easy.

USPS Thanks

I made this card for our mail carrier to thank her for faithfully delivering the mail this past year.

I used Loads of Love from Stampin' Up!.

I hand inked the stamp with a marker so I could leave off the top of the bed of the truck and the back of the cab, then I drew the back on so it would look like a USPS van.

I hand drew the road, colored it with a black marker and drew white lines with a gel pen.

I printed the eagle from the internet and then just glued that onto the truck. It should be facing the other way but.....oh well.

Happy New Year!!

Christmas Thanks

Here's one of my "Christmas Thank-You" cards. Lots of paper piecing and glue but a good result.

I used my cricut and the Christmas Cheer cartridge. The santa outfit, hanger, and candy cane are all on that cartridge.

The "thanks" was stamped using the "Make It Count" set from Stampin Up!.

I used white, black and real red paper (all from Stampin Up!) and real red ink. The belt buckle I colored in with a silver pen.

They say rain is coming....

Well, the weatherman says rain by Christmas. We had another 4-5 inches of snow last night. Our big pine tree in the front lost one of it's major branches, we fear it's a lost cause and now we can see our neighbor's house.

Looks like we're going to have a huge clean up job on our hands.

Too much snow!!

A couple of weeks ago I posted a little note saying how ready I was for snow. Can I take that back? We've had so much that church has been cancelled two weeks in a row. The kids missed the entire last week of school, my van won't run in the snow/ice so we're stuck at home unless we want to walk somewhere, we've got 9 inches of snow and counting plus at least 1 inch of ice in between snowfalls, and to top it off we lost power for almost 12 hours today (brrr!!!)

Here's some pictures I took though. It may be snowy, cold, blowing, and icy but God sure knows how to paint the landscape!!

Not a Creature was Stirring....

I found a picture of these cute little mice in an old cookbook of mine. After showing it to my daughter, we decided to make a small batch of them.

They were so easy and turned out really cute.

All you need are Oreo's, Kisses, chocolate chips, maraschino cherries, sliced almonds, shortening and red and green gel.

Carefully take apart the Oreo's and save the tops for something else. Unwrap all of those kisses!.

Melt 1 cup of chocolate chips in 2 teaspoons of shortening (I melted our in the microwave). Dip the cherries into the melted chocolate. Place it on an Oreo and attached a kiss to the cherry. Stick two sliced almonds between them for ears.

Use the red gel for eyes and use the red and green to make a little holly leaf on the cookie.

This recipe will use an entire jar of cherries (about 24).

Gift Card Holder

This is a gift card hold I made for my mom. I used the "merry" set from Stampin Up! and my Cricut to cut the scalloped oval.

The snow flakes are stickers that I found at Michaels.

I used a basic matchbook template, cutting it 8 1/2 X 4 inches. For the pouches inside I made them 8 X 4 and then folded them in half. I punched a half circle in the front of each to make it easier to get the gift card out.

After I decided which "pouch" I wanted in front, middle, and back, I trimmed the first pouch by 1/2", the second pouch by 1/4" and left the third pouch the original height.

Then I used Terrifically Tacky Tape to glue the edges of each pouch down and decorated the front of each pouch.

I put the pouches in the book so they fit all the way to the bottom and used my crop-a-dile to punch holes for the gold cord.

I did not glue the bottom portion of the scallop down as I wanted it to lay over the front of the matchbook.

Gift Box

I made this box to put a small gift in. The trees in the background were cut on my Cricut using the Christmas Cheer cartridge. The three trees in the front were stamped green on green using the Season of Joy set from Stampin Up!. I bought the gable box at Paper Zone.

I just glued the ribbon around the bottom and then adhered the trees, tied on the tags and it was done.

Free Stuff

Here are some links to get free stuff for scrapbooking. Fonts, papers, embellishments and patterns. Sometimes the free stuff changes but I've found that these always have something free!.
Merry Christmas!

Free Digital Scrapbooking

ScrapbookScrapbook

ScrapbookFlair (This is a fantastic site!)

1001 Free Fonts

WebpagePublicity

The Scrapbook Lounge (This is a great place to get ideas!)

Craft bits (lots of ideas here)

Santa

Some of you know that I collect santas. I have been collecting them for about 15 years or so. The nice thing is once everyone knows that you collect something, that is usually what you get as gifts.

Here are some of my favorites that I've either received or purchased.

This santa in a spaceship is one I received from my husband a couple of years ago. We were out to dinner with friends at an old hotel that had a gift shop and this was in there. My dh actually had our friends go back the next day and pick this up for me.

The "chime" santa and the santa with the blue hat are both that I bought at one of the after christmas sales.

The santa in the fur is one that my sister bought me while she was teaching in Turkey. The fur is actually reindeer fur!!

Family Tree

Here's a page from my heritage album. It shows my family tree (or most of it anyway) on my dad's side.

We use a program called Family Tree Maker to store all of our data as we come across it. It's not the best program out there but it's all we have!!

I printed this out on a regular sheet of paper. I digitally blacked out the names of the living.

I then mounted that sheet onto two other color-coordinated sheets and then mounted that on to the page.

I used my Sizzix to cut branches and leaves, to go with the whole "family tree" theme.

The more I look at this page though the more I think it needs something else. Maybe some felt flowers to brighten it up or something in that big blank white space!!

Retooning the Navitity

This was shown to me and I wanted to share it with all of you. It's a wonderful, fresh "new" look at the nativity story. Take a look. It's less than 5 minutes but is really great!!

You can view the video by clicking here.

Ready for Snow!!

Here in Portland we don't get much snow in the winter. At least where we live there's not much. The higher elevations get more but down here it's usually just cold rain.

When we want snow (and lots of it) we plan a day to head to the Mountains. No one in my family ski's. We just like to play in the snow with friends, go sledding, and drink hot chocolate!

This picture was taken at Trillium, on Mt. Hood. It's a great little sledding area with some trails for cross country skiing.

I'm posting this because now that December is here I am ready for some snow. We're still hovering around 55-60 during the day, sometimes rain or drizzle but mostly just gray!

Happy Thanksgiving

To everyone who has visited my blog and given me a reason to keep it up....

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!

Jolliest Time of the Year

THIS IS IT!!! This is the card I am making this year. I love everything about it!!

I CASE'd it from Splitcoaststampers.

I used my Cricut and Storybook cartridge to make the oval and the scalloped oval and my oval SU punch to punch the small oval.

All of the paper came from SU. The card in Kiwi Kiss (which looks like the Grinch when it's all by itself). and the red is Riding Hood Red.

Santa is colored in with color pencils except for the white which I used a white charcoal pencil. I outlined all the shading on him with a black marker.

The ribbon is also from SU but the snowflake brad I bought a Michaels.

Serene Spring

This is one of the stamps from the level 2 hostess set "Serene Spring". I was going to save this for Easter cards but realized it would make a perfect baby shower card too!!

All the paper is from Stampin' Up!. I stamped the image in black on Confetti white and colored with color pencils.

The card itself is Blush Blossom although it looks a lot more pink in this card than it actually is.

The ribbon is just a strip glued onto the card itself and the bow is tied separately and the attached with a glue dot.

Christmas Cards

Here are some cards that I've made so far this month. I really like the snowy evening one as it was sooooo easy.

I'll post more as I get them done. For now, it's off to soccer (the last game of the season!!)

Snowman Card

Yet another Christmas card. This one uses the Christmas Cheer cartridge. The paper is from Stampin Up!, I used Kiwi Kiss and Riding Hood Red (two of the new in-colors). The striped paper is just some left over patterned paper and the ribbon is also from SU, one of the new ribbons, this one is riding hood red.

I used a marker to make the eyes, mouth, and buttons.

Happy Halloween - Take 2

This is a little gift I made for each of my kids. I had these sitting at the places at the table when they came to breakfast this morning.

The bags were super easy to make. Probably only 10-15 minutes from start to finish. You can download the directions from Chiaki's web site.

It is supposed to be a card holder but they are very sturdy and can hold a lot of other things.

The paper is double sided from Stampin' Up!. The ribbon and eyelets are also from SU.

Have fun!!

Happy Halloween

I saw these cookies on the web and thought....hmmmm those look like cookies I need to make for our youth groups halloween party!!

They are too freaky looking for me to eat!!! I used my sugar cookie recipe (you can find it under February), loosely shaped them into stubby fingers, pressed one end with the tip of a knife to make a fingernail indent and used the knife to put three slashes for knuckles.

After they were baked, I put a dollop of red gel frosting and a slivered almond on top of that.

These are really gross looking!!! I love them!!

Baby Shower Invitation

Here's a cute little baby shower invitation. The actual invitation is inside the bag with some pink jelly beans.

Cut a gift bag from the Tags, Bags, Boxes and More cartridge in size 4 1/2.

Using the Cuttin' Up cartridge, cut "baby shower" in size 1 1/2, and a rattle in size 1 1/2.

Cut a corresponding shadow image for the words and the rattle..

Mount the words and rattle onto the shadow and place the word "shower" onto the front of the bag.

Glitter-up the rattle and place it so the handle becomes the "o" in shower.

Glue the word "baby" so it overlaps the rattle.

Glue the bag together, place the bow on the handle.

Mini Pizza Box

Here's my pizza box!!

I love that it was soooooo easy. Probably 1 hour tops from start to finish!

This little box is perfect for holding gift cards or one really good sized cookie!

Lots of blogs and websites have the pattern and instructions but I found mine at Splitcoaststampers.

If I had some yellow craft ink I would have stamped the face in yellow so it would look like it was lit up inside.

I mounted all the pumpkins with Stampin' Dimensionals to make them stand out a bit more.

Another Christmas Card

Here's another attempt at a Christmas card design.

I used the Christmas Cheer cartridge from Cricut. I drew on the reins for the deer and the moon is yellow paper with white craft ink sponged on.

I'm not too sure about this card but I do like the moon.

Digital Scrapbooking

My latest totally digital scrapbook page!!

This is my daughter's soccer team. A bunch of 6th grade girls who are more interested in having fun on the field than anything else.

I did this in Paint.net. Everything except the soccer balls is totally from paint.net. The hardest part for me was figuring out how the layers worked and worked together.

I spent more time on this than I was planning but I liked the way it turned out.

Baby Card

Here's part of a card (I didn't do a very good job taking the picture!) that I did for one of the new mom-to-be's at church.

Obviously she is having a girl. all the paper is from Stampin Up.

I used the Going Places and Home Accents Cricut cartridges.

The background is just a corner swirl from Home Accents, cut in the same color as the card and glued on. Kind of a quick, cheaters way to emboss!!

Our Alaska Trip - Page 1

Three years ago our family took a vacation to Alaska. We went with some friends of ours. I would highly recommend a trip up there for anybody as it is beautiful in the summer.

Here are the first and last pages of the scrapbook I did of our trip. I'll be posting the rest of the pages during the next couple of weeks.

I love the way these two pages "sort-of" go together.

On The Fly

This was a super easy card to make. It's simply black and white layered cardstock, white eyelets, and white craft ink.

I used the On The Fly stamp set from Stampin' Up as well as SU's paper and ink. I can't remember where I got the eyelets from. It took me all of about 20 minutes to make. I used a template to space my eyelets and then set them with a Crop-a-dial.

If you're stamping on black you definitely want the white craft ink though so it shows up.

Scrapbook page bio

My daughter belongs to the "Friends" group at our church. Currently they are discussing peer pressure. There leader told them the best way to resist peer pressure is to have a good idea of who you are.

With that in mind, we had the girls do a scrapbook page of themselves (this is the one I did of me as an example for them).

Each girl wrote a "bio-poem". The poem can be changed to add or delete any information you want. I then typed up all the poems for the girls so they would fit on the page we were going to use (5.5 X 8.5).

I used my cricut to spell out each girl's name in a variety of fonts and formats so they would have a choice. Then last Wednesday I took a bunch of my scrapbooking stuff to church and we had a great time scrapbooking and talking about ourselves.

The girls worked hard on their pages and they really turned out great.

Royal Rangers Emblem

Wow, I love Design Studio!!

Here's the Royal Rangers Emblem that I did using Design Studio and Going Places cartridge.

I used the solid tent and made it skinny then just cut like crazy until I had all the pieces I needed.

I still need to work on my alignment with the gold and brown points but I'm happy with the way this turned out.

From point to point (top to bottom) this measures 8 inches. The circle is 5" diameter.

Guitar Lessons

Here's a page I did yesterday. The letters were done using my Design Studio and Printing Press cartridge. I welded the letters together and cut the red words and then enlarged the words just a bit and cut again in black.

As much as I'd like to take credit for the guitar, it's really a Jolee's.

The actual page doesn't have any black marks on the jounaling but I don't want to paste everyone's names on the internet.

All the paper came from Stampin Up.

Blueberry Scrapbook

I just received by Storybook cartridge for my Cricut. I had to play!!

This layout was made with Storybook and Christmas Cheer. I used the Christmas cartridge to get the doo-dads on the blueberries.

After I took the picture I had to touch it up a bit on the computer, I cut and pasted some blueberries over the white mark left behind by the flash.

I also erased my journaling and typed in what I had written.

Before cutting, I layed everything out on Design Studio so I would only have to cut once. It worked out great!

Christmas Card - Cricut

Here's a card I made with my Cricut - No stamping necessary!!

The penguin came from the Christmas Cheer cartridge. The water is just torn paper.

This was a simple card, a little time consuming to put the penguin together but with the Design Studio is was easy to lay out the pieces and cut what I wanted. I also cut two penguins - just in case!!

Christmas Card

Here's my first Christmas card of the season. I usually make a dozen or so before I find the one I like. Thanks to my new cricut, this card was very simple!!

I used the Christmas Cheer cartridge.

The paper and ribbon came from Stampin Up!

Stay tuned for more cards as I make them.