I recently bought some things at an online store and one of the perks was to provide me with a coupon code for a FREE PERSONALIZED CALENDAR from Shutterfly. I only had to pay shipping which was very reasonable.

I want to be very clear, I have no affiliation with this company and did not receive any solicitation or compensation for this review. I am just a happy customer.

I just had to click on the link that came in my email to start the process. I got to select my desired 'theme' for the background of the pages, choose which photos (my own) to use on each month as well as on the cover, select layouts for the photos, add captions to the photos, and input my own family's birthdays and anniversaries.

I got to preview everything before it went 'to press' and they warned me when some of my photos were not high enough resolution to reproduce optimally.

The whole design process was clearly guided and took only about 1 1/2 hours. The most time consuming part was inputting all the personal dates.

I decided to make a calendar for the quilt studio out of it and included favorite quilts I made in 2015.

The finished calendar is produced on heavy glossy cardstock of 8 1/2 x 11 pages. It is spiral bound at the top.

Thank you, Shutterfly!

Ddd

Posted by studio3d@ccgmail.net at 12:01 AM PST

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Miss graduate also asked for a Thank You card for her Dad with the request that his be humorous.

For this I wanted to incorporate personalized elements: He is an engineer, she will be studying engineering, she is an artist.

I worked from a sketch for this card again but I did all the layout and design in CorelDraw. I downloaded some graphics from Google Images and used the program to remove color and tone down contrast. The idea was to end up with a light sketch of tools with the girl on top.

The image was printed on white cardstock with an inkjet printer. I then used a black watercolor marker to draw in the girl and her cap with bolder lines. I then used Copic markers in warm greys to color them in. Colored Copics were used to trace out the background images.

I trimmed and mounted this image onto a warm grey card base. Inside, a second printed panel is mounted.

I used a playful mix of fonts to contrast against the structure.

Ddd

Posted by studio3d@ccgmail.net at 12:01 AM PDT

Updated: Thursday, 9 May 2013 10:15 PM PDT

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I sat down to work with three patriotic digital images and had a lot of fun with them.

First up is the stitched star. I used markers in a sketchy style and added a variety of Stickles and Liquid Pearls to enhance the stripes and the stars. This panel was rounded and backed with matching blue. I created a card base from blue star cardstock and layered with a red stripe and a strip of gold tissue tape.

I like how simple it is.

Next was this little guy hugging his bunny. I got a new set of markers that are all flesh tones. There are two shades in several color ranges that allow for selection in how pink/peach/gold the skin will be. For the baby I decided to go very pink. 

I used a Nestability die to cut the image, allowing it to cut off the edges of the picture. Layering with the same colors, each banded in black, makes for a very graphic presentation. I trimmed the end of the text stamp (also a digital stamp) into a flag shape and popped it up on foam tape.

Finally, I colored up this little soldier and flag. It is such a large image that it fills up a good deal of the card. I rounded two colors to pull it back in a bit. By backing with red and banding in the bright blue it left me wanting to see some of the gold from the pole and the uniform blue so I punched some stars, added some faux stitching with a pen and attached them in a scatter.I also tied some neutral scrapper's floss around the end of the greeting banner.

The buttons, belt buckle, hat band, and environmental stars have gold Stickles. The stars on the flag have silver Stickles.

Ddd 

Posted by studio3d@ccgmail.net at 12:01 AM PDT

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The challenge on coloring up this digital image was to make the watering can look like metal. To do this I used three shades of cool grey markers and really worked on rendering the curve of the shape. I think it turned out really well. I used more cool grey to create a shadow pool for it to rest in. Three flowers were colored up in purples in two shades for each bloom. They got yellow centers.

When I stamped the text it disappeared into the image so I traced over those areas with white gel pen to make them pop out.

All the layers are banded with black and there is a dark green card base.

Ddd

Posted by studio3d@ccgmail.net at 12:01 AM PDT

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This is a page I designed for the toddlers to use at library storytime. We had a bunch of farm animal stickers for them and they could place them anywhere they wanted on their farm.

Ddd

Posted by studio3d@ccgmail.net at 6:00 AM PST

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Though it is not the season for this graphic, you may save it to use when the time is right! I created it as a full page graphic to be printed on letter-sized paper. The the kids cut 'three sides of a square' to make flaps all over the house. They then glued the page to letter size cardstock and could draw Halloween images or place stickers behind the flaps. We used these to make a countdown to Halloween calendar at the library.

Ddd

Posted by studio3d@ccgmail.net at 6:00 AM PST

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Here's an easy project to create. Try it with kids:

Cut all these pieces:

Arrange as shown:

This will be the result:

Ddd

Posted by studio3d@ccgmail.net at 6:00 AM PST

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The library where I work had a summer reading theme relating to adventure a few years ago. I created a treasure map to the children's department for tehm to hand out to the kids.

The sections of stacks are very generalized but correct in location to one another.

Ddd

Posted by studio3d@ccgmail.net at 6:00 AM PST

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A while back, at work, I created some custom labels for book spines. One of these was the recently shown 'Food For Thought' graphic. Here are some others:

This is for the children's department for books written in two languages.

This is for a new collection of paperbacks.

And this one is for the graphic novels in the children's department.

They all are in a 3/4" x 1" format.

Ddd

Posted by studio3d@ccgmail.net at 6:00 AM PST

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Here's a digital project I created for an event to be held at work. We are having a 'community read' and the book selection had food as it's major theme. I was given the title and this is what I designed for the logo to be used on the posters and the book labels. 

Ddd

Posted by studio3d@ccgmail.net at 6:00 AM PST

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I found a template for a 2010 CD calendar with blanks for photos. I used CorelDraw to add photos of my own art projects to the months and printed the pages back to back on cardstock. A quick trim and I am all set for the new year.

Some of the pictures are of cards I've made, some are photos I've taken, and some of other projects I made, like this snowman candle.

Ddd

Posted by studio3d@ccgmail.net at 6:00 AM PST

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