A quick tip for scoring tiny pieces!

I used the scoring pad on the leaf shapes and on
the stars in this photo. 

I like making paper things, but I absolutely hate scoring, especially tiny pieces. I just never seem to get a good score on little things, and it makes my hands cramp.

I was working on a card that had a wreath with tons of tiny little leaf shapes that needed scoring. I was absolutely dreading trying to score all those... so I made something to make it easier!

I took a sheet of fun foam and cut some 2" squares, then glued 4 or 5 of them together. Once those had dried, I was able to put my leaf shapes onto the pad and score them with a single press of my bone folder!

So, if you want to see how to make your own and use it, this video will show you what you need! Hopefully it can help someone else, because it's made a world of difference to me!

Recreating an old sketch to use on my Cricut!

I've kept sketchbooks off and on for years... simple, inexpensive notebooks I'd pick up either on sale or at the dollar store. While looking through some of my older sketches, I found several I'd like to make into stickers. I started with this strange little critter that seems somewhat frog-like.

My original drawing was fairly messy, but still fun.

He needed a LOT of work! The original photo of my sketch wasn't all that great, and he very much needed to be cleaned up and sharpened up. Because of this I brought the image into Photoshop and basically redrew the entire image.

Once I was finished, I saved him as a basic PNG image, then brought him into Illustrator to save him as an SVG. Then I had an idea...

I love the rough quality of the lines, almost like the tool marks from a chisel!

I recently saw a post on Reddit that linked to a really fun website called CuteCutter that helps you create simple SVGs of your images so that you can print them and/or cut them out on your cutting machine. I've done several images and I love how they come out... I'll be sharing more of those in the coming days, believe me. :D

I have to say I loved the way my original drawing came out using CuteCutter! It has an interesting, organic feel to it... almost like a linoleum print! It will definitely make an interesting sticker!

Also, once I finished cleaning up my drawing I decided to share an animated gif to show the difference between the two images. It's always good to start with the highest quality image you can, so that you can wind up with better end products.

Hopefully I'll be showing you some lovely stickers soon, including this chunky boy. I also have several other things to share coming up, so keep an eye on this space!

Til next time!