Happy Howlween, Tutorial and Upcoming CK and Junk Salvation 2013 Shows!

Happy Halloween Everyone, 

I have a few more cute Halloween samples you may want to save for next year, a great tutorial by DT Member Sheila Rumney showing how to digitally cut your own Autumn leaves, and info on the CK Show Nov 8-9 and Junk Salvation Show 15-16 we will be at in WA!  Plus - our Pillow Pocket Download now includes a PNG transparent file (thanks to Cindy) so you can lay it over paper and photos now and I made a little 'how-to' sheet below.
 
I really love the altered witches on our Halloween CD (also in Halloween Ephemera Download) because they are big and funky and I adore the way DT Member Kathy Clement reduced one for this card and gave her a treat bag and made a matching envelope. Kathy has a bunch of photos and details on her blog. 

Here's a cute idea by DT Member Rebekah Fairies who used some of our Hallow papers to make witches legs. Love the little ruffle skirt!

DT Member Michele Kovack created a cute witch card you can see on her blog and she also made these fun bottles of Halloween hand sanitizer for all the teachers at her daughter's school

 Sheila Rumney has a new Leaf Shape Tutorial this time showing how you can cut different leaf shapes out of digital papers and look how she added them on this beautiful layout below.  Papers and images are all from our Thanksgiving Download.

I had Cindy our graphic designer turn the Blank Box Template in our new $2.95 Pillow Pocket Box Download into a PNG file. Now the inner section of the box is transparent if you use image software that allows you to layer PNG files such as Photoshop Elements. 
I used a photo of our daughter Katie (who I can't believe is 31 now) with Ryan, her sweetheart since high school.

You can also use a free download like Paint.net from www.getpaint.net or for Mac users www.gimp.org.  NOTE:  You don't have to have image editing software to use, you can simply print either file on cardstock. 
 

Mark your calendar if you live anywhere in near Seattle, WA as we will be at 2 Shows next month and are cleaning out all sorts of odd ball stock with our big sale.  See us Nov 7-8 at the CK Creating Keepsakes Scrapbook Show in Bellevue, WA . Here's a $3.00 Off Coupon

Then the next weekend we will have a double booth at the Junk Salvation Show Nov 15 and 16/13 in Puyallup, WA. This is our first time selling at this show put on by the Funky Junk Sisters Dixie and Linda but I've been a shopper at their show and loved it!  Also, great NEWS - the ever charming Vicki Chrisman will be at the Show helping us and then coming to Canada to work on upcoming specials!

Please join us Monday, Nov 4/13 for our Linky Party and Design Team Challenge. We will have a New Design Team Member joining us!

Sandy

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 Crafty Secrets Head Office
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Blaine,WA 98230

Our Autumn Blessings Free Printable, Linky Party Postponed & News!

Hi Everyone,

There is so much going on here with all our exciting changes I forgot about our Linky Party, so to make up I'm posting the most awesome 2012 Autumn Blessings Printable Gift for you!  It's a combination of 5 different files I sent Cindy, our graphic designer and after she layered and tweaked everything the result was stunning!  The colors turned out perfect for a Thanksgiving card, a framed sign, an iron-on for a pillow or apron.  It's 8.5 x 11" and just over 1 MB so left click to get it as big as possible and right click to save to a photo file.  Personal use only please but feel free to link here and tell your friends

 I'm moving our Linky Party to next Monday, Oct 8/12. so if you create anything cool you should enter it and you could be the random.org $50.00 winner!  I hope all the people who have ordered our Halloween CD and Digital Downloads will think about showing us what they have created and post a sample!  

  Here is Some Other Exciting News!

We will have a new website soon that will automatically bring up links for any digital products purchased and eventually all our products will be available there.

We are going to be introducing a new Design Team.  Vicki Chrisman will still be our Head Designer and I will post details soon

I'm in training for making youtube videos with tutorials that will show you all sorts of creative ideas for using our products. We will also have guests contributing videos so email me if you create youtubevideos, love our products and would like to be a guest.

I've been working on a plan for commercial use of our CD and Digital Images and will be posting details soon on the new website.  Many people create cards and other handmade items to sell and I want to be able to offer that option.

More digital products will be added to our new site as well as Our Etsy Store but eventually I plan to close our Shopatron Store and have our own store on our new website as we will have more creative flexibility.

Watch for NEW items by other vendors like our coming line of T-shirts. greeting cards, posters, fabric and die cutting designs!  

Our Big Sale will continue until all the stock is gone!  There are multiple cases of many of the printed products but some titles of our Clear Art Stamps are starting to sell out.  I mentioned in my last post we had 2 NEW Christmas Sets ready in August but our stamp manufacture has new owners, who moved the plant and service went downhill. Last week a new company contacted me, they have already made drafts, we need to check them and if all is well we will place an order for both set.  I need to find time to contact other stamp companies and see if any would want to sell our Clear Art Stamp Line, or maybe just have only the very best sellers made until our printed products run out.

Wholesale Sale Pricing will be available on our printed products and possibly on the Clear Art Stamps that we have a large amount of stock.  Please contact us for our new Wholesale Order Form.

Lastly I have some samples to share from Michele, Julie and Vicki.  

 Look at these adorable samples 'Treat Holders that Michele Kovack created using our Halloween Digital Kit and her Silhouette Die Cutter! You can get details here on Michele's Blog. If you noticed I mentioned 'Die Cutting Design Files'  above as a new product and yes, they will will with the Silhouette Die Cutter!

Here is a cute card Julie Campbell made using the Halloween Digital Download Kit and you can also check out Julie's pretty Autumn Journal pages.  The Halloween CD is also in stock and shipping now (has same files as download) and include some fun altered photos.

I mentioned Vicki's Fall Festival & Flea Market in my last post but it's this weekend  if you live in Nebraska and it's grown bigger than just her art group now, so there will be a huge variety of hand craftted and shabby vintage items for sale! 

 In the meantime, thanks for your patience and support!  We try and look big but we're just a little 2.5 person office with 1 shipper and my hubby Scott who also helps us out.

Sandy Redburn

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This Blog: http://heartwarmingvintage.blogspot.com
Our Website: http://www.craftysecrets.com
 
Toll Free Phone or Fax 1-888 597-8898
Local Phone 604 597-8817
 
Crafty Secrets Head Office
15430 78 A Ave.,
Surrey, BC V3S 8R4

USA Warehouse
250 H. Street, #436
Blaine,WA 9823

Vintage Halloween CD, Tips & Links, New Samples and Update!

Hi Everyone,





Feedblitz keeps giving me errors and didn't send this to subscribers so I'm trying again.  I think we have too many subscribers for the 'free version'

Our Halloween CD finally arrived and a bunch of orders were sent out Friday! The silk screened superior labels take longer than paper ones but it all turned out amazing!

We send our orders by priority mail and here's the link to the Halloween CD in our Shopatron Store. We've also been selling the Halloween designs in smaller groups in our Etsy Store with papers $7.99, or the 12 templates for $5.99.

Click on the covers to see them jumbo sized and you can also see the preview sheets and samples here in our Shopatron Store.  

If you are wondering why I increased the price(it's $17.99, CD 1, 2 & 3 are $15.99) by $2.00 it's because quality antique seasonal images and are far more costly than buying patterns to create papers, plus the altered witch ladies and children as well as the 12 templates took so much time to design - but they were so worth the effort and hours our graphic designer Cindy van Koll put into it!  Also, Liv from Country Liv's Cottage Art helped wrap things up when Cindy was on vacation and made samples sheets like this with the Templates.

I love all the Templates like the mini Popcorn box which has a funny poem on one side.        
I made cheesey popcorn for my niece and nephew and they loved having their own.

I've been learning Photoshop and helping and we currently working on several projects including an amazing Christmas CD that is making my heart sing!

  

Image Editing Programs

I've had so many people inquiring about the CD's who are new to digital and wondering if they will be able to 'figure it out'.  Yes - if you can open a jpg or png file you can use our CD’s to print the papers and designs for all sorts of projects!  See my list below.

If you have an image editing program you can also easily re-size, crop, color, add text and print our Halloween images and designs on a variety of mediums using several image software programs that are FREE.  Check your computer to see if you already have a built in program you can use such as Paint, Microsoft Office Picture Manager, Windows Photo Gallery and often  printers come with photo editing programs.

Here are Links to the Most Popular FREE Image Editing  Viewing Programs

www.gimp.org  for Windows or Mac

www.photoscape.org

picasa.google.com

www.getpaint.net

pixlr.com

www.faststone.org

www.adobe.com    Adobe offers a free 30 day trial for Adobe Photoshop Elements 10 and for Adobe Premiere Elements.  Both are for the fully functional programs and offer a perfect way to see if you like the software!  

ALSO:  All of our Creating with Vintage CD series have a tutorial by digital expert Patty Deboswski www.thedigitalscrapbookteacher.com who shows step by step how to build and create a layout with multiple layers using Photoshop Elements 10.

Designer Leader Vicki Chrisman was also a huge help whipping up many of the included samples and getting me hi res photos. You can see some more of the samples on Vicki's Blog. Vicki is also putting on a huge Fall Fair & Vintage Flea Market next weekend Oct 5 - 6 at her home in Nebraska with her art group, so if you live in the area you should stop by as it sounds so great I want to go!!!

DT Member Marilyn McIldoon and Darlene Pavlick also made this cute cards 

We also included a sample of DT Member Julie Campbell's Halloween Art Journal and Melissa Bove's fun witch hat. I wish I could show everything!

Look at this adorable stamped card Sophie La Fontaine emailed me.  I just added the watermark as it looked so big when clicked him on but I wanted you to see the cute coloring job Sophie did. She turned our Uncle Sam from the  American Beauty set into a football fan and you can get the details.   Yikes - I just went to Splitcoast to find Sophie's link and spotted a bunch of gorgeous cards by a bunch of ladies you can see here! 

UPDATE:  Everything is sorted out with the little copyright problem I wrote about on my last post and all the items have been removed. 

We are working on a new website to make the digital downloads easy and instant!

SALE: We are starting to sell out and get low on some stamp sets and I will do another blog post and list the status of everything tomorrow.  A new stamp manufacturing company has contacted me about making stamps (my old stamp company was sold) and I'm tempted to have them make our 2 new Christmas sets that we finished last month. I will show you a peek tomorrow and see if you like them. My old stamp company was sold  I've also been given some contacts for other stamp manufactures to see if they want to carry our best sellers.  Material Girl is almost sold out and that is so sad!  But - maybe no company will want our stamps now that I've discounted them so much and will also be offering them digitally.

We still have a large amount of some sets and tons of printed stuff like Stickers, Creative Scraps, Booklets, etc and they are all on SALE. 

PS - I will add the Halloween CD to our Etsy Store tomorrow

Wishing you all joy & creativity

Sandy
 
Visit Our Online Store
Join Us on Facebook!

This Blog: http://heartwarmingvintage.blogspot.com
Our Website: http://www.craftysecrets.com
 
Toll Free Phone or Fax 1-888 597-8898
Local Phone 604 597-8817
 
Crafty Secrets Head Office
15430 78 A Ave.,
Surrey, BC V3S 8R4

USA Warehouse
250 H. Street, #436
Blaine,WA 9823