Hearty Bird FREEBIE and a CASology Challenge Card

And a 365 Photo of the Day too.

“On the Radio, yea-ah, On the RADIO”

I imagine in the day of this vintage radio it was a very big thing to listen.  When I fire this beautiful thing up I am in awe it still works and receives a station or two.  The writer inside me dying to get out makes up all sorts of bits of an audible crazy quilt of themes where this radio sits and feeds the ears of people in a bygone era in all manner of home situations. 

I think about a farming family on the prairies and the wife kneading bread and looking out the frosty panes of windows in the long winter when the wind blows and keens. I think about the radio as bringing someone inside to visit while she goes about providing food and comfort to her family.  I also imagine the farm Mr looking forward to getting all the chores done on an early Saturday morning and being eager to sit later and listen to news, politics or a sports game.

Oh, how many more scenarios beg to be spoken here, however I’d best stop here as my post may be a tad long.

CASology 133 Challenge Card – “LOVE” theme. 

I chose to make a card in the suggested theme used by Ardyth which asks us to “Choose only one or two large graphics elements to keep your card clean’ 

Well, I’m counting the bird as one large elements and perhaps the teeny hearts don’t really count at all?  No, you don’t see them there at all do you?  At any rate, I thought I’d place my card under that theme and hopefully this fits in. 

Supplies:

Embossing Folder by Darice

Hearty Bird Cutting File and Digital Scrapbook Template – Barb Derksen

In fact, I created this file today to give away to YOU!  Whether you desire to use this file to cut out this sweet bird, or use it as a template for a Digital Scrapbooking Project, I hope you’ll enjoy it.

Personal Use

Zipped file contains:

Fully layered PSD

PNG

SVG

.STUDIO

DOWNLOAD

Please don’t share my files directly, instead send folks here to download, it will always be free here.  If you like my files would you please consider “pinning” this post on Pinterest or Twitter this post.  Many thanks!

Technorati Tags: Free Silhouette Cutting File,FREEBIES,Mrs Miles Freebie,Free Digital Scrapbooking,CASology

I ♥ Cherries sooooo much - I’ve made a Cherry FREEBIE for YOU!

Living in the heart of the beautiful Okanagan Valley in British Columbia is living in fruit heaven. 
This year I’m all about the cherries.  I’ve never seen them so BIG! 

A BC cherry is a HAPPY cherry I say!

I’ve been freezing them in batches, so yes, my fingernails look horrible and my kitchen is speckled red and my fingers were getting awfully tired of my regular cherry pitter (though I’m sure it’s a drastic improvement over the ones our grandmother’s must have used) 
And then my sister came to visit and we were at Home Hardware in town - our Home Hardware is AMAZING - truly people come from all over to shop there.  Our Home Hardware is a shop with a heart - they do all sorts of good for our community and we’re really proud of them. 
So, we went and looked at all the gizmos and gadgets that might be new when we came across one of these:

This is a Chef’n quickpit One-Handed cherry and olive pitter. 

And it not only WORKS… it did not take my sister and I to declare a “show down”

That’s right, this hot little “cherry gun” PITTED sister against sister hehe. 
Well, actually we turned on our photographer (my Mr) who clued in at the last moment and just barely avoided being maimed.  He may take my cherry gun away if I’m not careful.
All this “cherry-ing” has inspired me to make a fun .studio cut for YOU!  I also built a card to showcase it for you - I think it turned out perfect!

Sentiment reads:

“One must ask children and birds how cherries and strawberries taste.”

-Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Supplies:

Designer Paper - Your Life Beautiful by Brandin O’Neill

Inks - Versafine, Colorbox

Cutting File - Cherry Love by Barb Derksen

Method:

I cut the file on my Silhouette SD.  I inked the cherry pieces and then I heat embossed the cherries. 

I’ve created this file both as a .studio cut but also as separate png’s as well so if you’re a digi-scrapper you can adapt the cherry for your needs as well. I would ♥ to see what you make with my files, send me a jpg and I’ll feature your artwork here!

DOWNLOAD

Personal Use

Crop Stop Challenge #82

I’m having a ball trying out some new challenges, just hunting them up via Google.  Today I thought I’d give Crop Stop a whirl. 

Crop Stop Challenge #82

Use any three colors from the image below:

And so, I made:

Supplies:
Designer Paper - Young and Active in the Backyard by Ronni Mccray

Stamps - Studio G “Hello” and trim
                Inkadinkadoo for the flower and stem

Inks - Versafine and Studio G

Paint for leaves - Niji Pearlescent watercolors

Embossing powder

I struggled with this card, I must admit and was a bit thrown off that the red ink looks so much darker on the blossom than on the Hello sign but I think it works!  I really like the pearlescent watercolors - I’ll definitely be playing with these in the future.  I was told they do “magic” on black…

I Scream, You Scream - Happy National Ice Cream Day & a FREEBIE!

photo: http://www.chicagonow.com/tween-us/2012/07/we-all-scream-for-national-ice-cream-day/

I found out it’s national Ice Cream Day in the USA and well, this Canadian girl likes ice cream way too much not to join in on the celebration. 

I’ve taken the summer off from all commitments and I’m using the time to catch up on things and to create and enjoy the things I love to do most.   Lucky for me I am able to combine doing what I love with some of the things that need to be done, like build graphics for websites my Mr. has taken on.  It’s not going to get us rich but it is something we can do together and together is where we want to be. 

Speaking of getting rich, haha, my Mr. added a DONATE button onto my blog because he’s loving me being home and he also supports my making nice things to give away to you.  I spend quite a bit of time and effort in making my elements top-notch, (this Ice Cream elements set took me two full days!) so if you’re able to help out, a buck or two here and there would be oh so welcome!  If you absolutely can’t - no worries, I’ve been there before and been very blessed with the best designer friends in the world who gave me a helping hand when I started.  All the money I earn generally goes right back into supplies and well … I want a Cameo in the worst way!  I’d bet totally chuffed to “earn” it here through your generosity!  Cameo for me = more freebies for you.


If you’re a designer - I DO allow some commercial use if you’ve contacted me and I’ve given permission, details are included in my TOU.

Little note:

I won a Playing in Paradise Card Challenge - (hopping up and down!)  More to come when my looty arrives in the mail!  If you have not joined in the challenge before you should consider it, the prizes are fabulous!  Thank you to the PPC design team for hosting.

Apricots are Ready!

here in the beautiful, sunny Okanagan, Canada

I enjoyed making last week’s popsicle file so much that when I heard about Ice Cream Day I decided to create an ice cream cone… and it turned into two versions. 

Card

DOWNLOAD

Personal Use

Includes fully layered PSD, PNG layers

and .studio files and full cut-sheet.

As always, I’ll pop these files in some of my other “pages” tabs up top of the blog so you can ALWAYS find these files if you lose them.

Another Little note - KELLY over at Finding Time to Create has a wonderful tutorial on how to make this sweet summer fan cut.  GO VISIT!

In case you might wonder how I create the “texture” on my elements I’ll tell you how I achieved the look for the ice cream and then the cones.



I start with the plain shape of the scoop of ice cream png (it has a transparent background, imporant for this tutorial).  Then I went on the internet and found a free texture of cement.  I saved it then brought it into Photoshop and placed it on a layer above the scoop of ice cream.



Next I hold down the Ctrl key on my computer and click in the layer which has the shape of the ice cream blob.  This turns the shape of the ice cream blob into a “selection” 



A selection contains everything inside the shape. 



I want to get rid of everything that is outside the shape so I click into the layer that has the cement and then I go to the toolbar and choose SELECT and then INVERSE.  Now everything outside the shape is selected.  At this point I hit the delete key on my keyboard and voila!  Next I use the Ctrl + d keyboard shortcut to remove the selection.

One thing I always do now is to remove the color from the texture - I don’t want it to color tint whatever is on the layer below.



I do this by going up to IMAGE then ADJUSTMENTS then choosing BLACK & WHITE. When the instruction window pops up hit OK.

Now we are ready to blend this texture over our blob of ice cream. 



Next we go to our Layers panel, click the arrow for the drop down menu and choose OVERLAY.  Magic, huh? 

Ok, so now we have our ice cream the right color but its sort of “flat” looking, right?  Here’s how we will fix that.



Before we begin to alter the look of the Ice Cream, we need to merge the two layers together.  As in my illustration above, click the teensy tiny triangle and when the drop down menu is presented choose MERGE VISIBLE. 



See?  Now we have just one layer with a texture to it.  Lets go shade it a bit.



On the far left of your screen are your brushes and the tools.  Find the hand (about 1/2 way down) and click onto it.  You will get three choices, the DODGE TOOL, the BURN TOOL and the SPONGE TOOL.  We will be using the dodge tool and burn tool in this project.  Lets grab the burn tool first.
I have my brush size set to a fuzzy brush and it’s sized  at 78.  Now we just start “painting” onto the Ice Cream in the areas we want to darken.  These would be areas which fall into shadow. 




So, mainly around the edges, at the “waist” and under the ruffles at the bottom.  We could almost just leave it as is now, but just for this lesson lets change our tool to dodge and add a nice highlight or two.



There you have it!  If you have Photoshop you might want to try this yourself using the PNG in my Ice Cream Day Elements!

Note - for the cones, believe it or not, I used a fine, smooth cement texture.  The possibilities are endless.