Digital Shopping: DoverPictura

Everyone knows Dover- books, right? Various companies I’ve worked for have bunch of their clip art books for design source and I have been hoarding their freebies on my hard drive for ages. And for ages I mean I found out via Craft Gossip last spring that they give out samples on regular basis.

Recently they started a new service called DoverPictura.com where you can buy their books as hi-res digital downloads! Not only that, they have individual pages from their books as well on sale! The service is new so they are offering 3 free pages if you register now. Not that I need anymore digital freebies but they are so nice! I chose my pages from these books:

 Choosing just three wasn’t easy. Luckily the individual pages cost between 0.99-1.99 so getting bunch of them isn’t a problem. Would it be stupid to ask digital downloads for my birthday? Right now I have my eyes on the vintage Halloween images. Totally drool worthy.

P.S. This isn’t the freebie I mentioned in my previous post. Just thought you peeps would like to know about Dover. Now I’m totally going to work on that freebie I promised.

TAST 33: Scribbled Pekinese Stitch

Pekinese stitch was very interesting to work with. I had to check out couple of tutorials but it wasn’t too hard to figure out. I had more trouble to come up with the sketch to stitch as I was overwhelmed by all the fantastic antique Chinese samplers I saw. In the end I settled on a loopy scribble, a similar one to my couching sampler.

 Can you see the mistake I made?

 The mistakes show up particularly well in this picture. As I was doing the second round of stitching, the looping, and I was turning around, I kept picking up the floss strands up, leaving them standing up quite ugly.

 Another thing I’m not too happy about, is the way I added the one lonely half-loop. I thought it would be a fun detail but it actually looks very sad and gives the sampler very half-finished look.

 But all in all, I’m excited about Pekinese stitch. It will take some finessing but I think it will lend itself to fashion embroidery quite well. Imagine military detailing…Anyhoo, next in-line is Linked Double Chain.

My other samplers are listed here. Go and have look. Clicking the pictures will take you to the individual posting where you can read more about my process with the particular stitch.

Till next time!

Emboss It!

Yes, it’s time to show my latest DT card for Craft Your Passion! This week’s theme, “Emboss It”, caused a whole lot headache at the Thrifty Apartment. First of all, I don’t have Big Shot or any similar machine and thusly, not a single embossing folder. Secondly, I don’t own a single jar of embossing powder and wasn’t too keen buying one for just one challenge. What is girl to do?

My fellow DTs were very helpful and gave me a tip that I could use my rolling-pin and some textural items to create an embossed background. I got all excited until I realized that I literally don’t own anything that could be used as an embossing template. Just great. My deadline was just hours away when I thought “There must be embossed scrapbook papers, right?”

I crabbed my jacket and made a mad dash to the local craft store in order to get there before closing time. Once I got there, I began browsing through their stacks of paper and lo and behold, there they were! Two tiny, A5 sheets of wet embossed paper. Which cost me 60 cents in total! I truly am a Thrifty Genius.

 The embossed paper is the black, dotted one. I also used linen fabric that I frayed on the edges and old book pages.

 The butterfly is a digi stamp by Cardmadfairy that I coloured on Photoshop. Originally it has a scalloped wings and antenna but I cut them away. For technical reasons *wink, wink*.

 Go on and make a card and take part on Craft Your Passion! This week’s prize is 20 dollar gift card to Simon Says Stamp and 5 digi’s of choice from Cardmadfairy! Not too shabby, I think.

Well, I’m off to check out the latest TAST- stitch, till next time!

Weekly Photo Challenge: Merge

Yeah, yeah. I know I’m a week late with this. I had one idea but didn’t have the chance to execute so I decided to skip it. Today, when I began browsing through my Paris photos for the Urban theme, I actually got inspired to do Merge. No worries, I’m still doing this week’s challenge, I’m just going to get the previous one out-of-the-way first.

 Ooh, Notre Dame! To achieve this look I used layers, selective magic wand, pattern I got from Deviant Art and Pioneer Woman Action “Quick Edge Burn”. The photo itself is SOOC and was shot on some random setting accidentally, which gave the photo its bluish tone. Then to finish things off, I merged the layers together. Here’s the original:

Sigh. I miss Paris. If only I could be there! No wait. I will be! In couple of months! Yay!

Weekly Photo Challenge: Purple

When I saw this weeks theme, I decided on a very specific set of photos. And when I say very specific, I mean very hard to find as I didn’t remember if I still had them on my hard drive, or maybe on a USB which I’ve lost some time ago or maybe on a CD. See where this is going? Yes, it took me days to find them and in the end they were on my hard drive. In a folder I had specifically created to hold my, and I’m using this term very loosely, artsy photos.

Okay, I’m no horticulturist but I think this plant is syringa. A good tip to find out english names of plants and animals is to type the name in your own language in Wikipedia, copy paste the latin name in English Wikipedia. Latin, surprisingly many uses in modern-day writing environment. In this case it was from Finnish: Syreeni to Latin: Syringa to English (disappointedly): Syringa.

 I love the photo challenge. It gives me an excuse to play with Photoshop Actions. Once again I used the free sets available from The Pioneer Woman. My favourite and thus the most over-used action is Seventies which gives that lovely golden sunset vibe on every picture.

When I was playing with the said actions, I began thinking I could do something more with the images. Another freebie I’ve downloaded quite some time ago, a French cancellation mark set by Just Something I Made was perfect for what I had in mind.

You know what I made? I made small, postcard sized posters thus suitable sending for a friend:

 Or maybe use one of them to make a bigger card:

Click on the text below images to download:

ThriftyFinnVueCard

 ThriftyFinnLilacCard2

 ThrifyFinnNantesCard

Let me know who you sent your card to! Or if made something crafty with them!