Tammy Tutterow

A Holiday Giveaway!

As a way to thank those of you who visit my blog and check out my creations and vintage images, I would like to give away a little something that combines a little of both. This fabric scrapbook combines today's free vintage image (found here) with my love for sewing, scrapbooking, and ribbon embroidery.  The book has covers that are heavy duty mat board that are padded, covered, and sewed and features blue fabric with a tiny heart vine print.  The image is printed on muslin and stitched to the book front.  The image is also embellished with a bit of silk ribbon embroidery and tiny petite seed beads.  The book features a hinged ring binding and 20 blank 6x6 pages inside. If you love it and would like a chance to make it yours, all you need to do is leave a comment on this post.  I will draw a random winner on January 1st at 6pm (cst).

Prima Endorsed Artist Educator: Life in Color Decor Board

I have been working on the class samples for my Prima classes for the first quarter of 2010.  The first I have ready to share is a decor board featuring the Life in Colors Decor Board. If you are wondering what a decor board is, it is what I call a lumpy, bumpy, full of texture open face picture frame, minus the frame.  Basically it starts with a heavy chipboard base and has several levels and layers with a photo in the center.  Photo mat is constructed so that the photo can be slipped in and out so that you could leave the board out and change the photo as desired.  It can be displayed on an stand or could be framed in a 12x12 shadowbox frame. I selected really elegant elements for this board to create a really romantic feel.  I absolutely love the jeweled leaves! The embossed chipboard base has a really fun paint technique that creates real depth of color with a distressed and aged look and a bit of shimmer courtesy of Shimmerz Spritz. This project has tons of layers and lots of textures! If you are interested in taking this class, be sure to tell your favorite store about it!  I will begin filling calendar dates very soon!  You can always check my class calendar to see where I will be by clicking the link above for "Store Classes".

Fun Give Away on the Red Lead Blog!

Red Lead has a fun give away on their blog that you need to check out if love all things vintage and sparkley!  Check it out and leave a comment for your chance to win a sweet merry treat!

All moved and ready to get back on track!

Yay! Everything is all moved and set up at our new host. You probably won't see any difference unless you look at the menu bar above. Everything on the site is now at home on www.174.121.37.86/~tammytut instead of www.fairydavis. com . If you are in the habit of typing in the Fairy Davis address to visit me here, you still can, it will bring you the new place starting sometime tomorrow or so. If you have downloaded a class in my online classroom, you will need to re-register there.  In the process of the move we re-built the classroom and did not move over any previous account information. Tomorrow I will be back to sharing images and crafty things so be sure to check back in then!

A quick note:

Hey everyone, just a quick note to let you know that I won't be adding any new images for a couple of days. I am in the process of having my site moved to a new host and promised I would not add anything else to move until it was done. You shouldn't notice anything as it happens other than no new images for a few. Be back soon with even more to share! t

Swirly Whirly Wednesday: My Favorite Things Doodle

A while back I shared a project I did for BasicGrey featuring Lemonade that included a hand doodled lettering piece in it: I have been wanting to share that doodle here for a while and finally got around to scanning it and editing it.  I am a real novice at scanning lettering like this and am not totally happy yet with my process, so I hope you will overlook a few random specks that I missed in the editing process. If you print this image in "grey scale" on your printer directly onto pattern paper, it should print lightly enough that you could ink over it to make it look like an original lettering piece. Click this link to download. A new window will open with the high res version of this image. (The watermark has been added to the low resolution preview to help you distinguish between the low and high res version of the image.) On the high res image right click and select "save as" and save the image to your computer. The image is a .png file and can be edited as desired in a photo editing program. Please remember that downloading my images means you agree to my terms of use. You may find them here: Tammy Tutterow/Fairy Davis Terms of Use.

Classroom News: New Classroom Reveal

A couple of weeks ago I added my first downloadable online class to the site here.  I really loved that the program I was using to deliver the downloads worked right here from within my blog because that made it really easy for me to have just one spot to log into to manage everything .  Unfortunately, the cart program really just did not work well.  To make the whole process a bit easier, I have installed a new cart, one that used back in the Heart In Hand Scraps days that I know works well and delivers downloads as it should.  After a little tinkering to make it all pretty, I am glad to say it is all ready to go! If you haven't already grabbed the free House Shadowbox download, you can still get it and now, download it much easier than before! If you would like to visit the classroom, you can click on the "Online Classes" link above. I can't wait to show you the project that will be added in January!  I love it so much and hope you will too!

Tuesday Techniques: Febreze Luminary Shades

I have been wanting to share this idea forever and have finally gotten a chance to sit down and photograph it. I love the Febreze Flameless Luminary!  I really love the glow a candle gives off but I honestly have a hard time feeling comfortable with candles burning in the house.  Part of it is due to the fragrance (I am super sensitive) and part of it is the whole flame thing (we had a house fire once).  That is where the Febreze Luminary is a great item for me, it gives a great warm candle glow with no scent and no flame.  To activate the light, you have to insert a paper shade into the base.

 

The light came with a heavy cardstock weight shade in the base that I used for a template.  You could easily measure it out, but it was super easy just to flatten the included piece and use it as a template.  The shade is one long section of paper with a small tab section of one end.  It is slightly too long to cut in one strip from a 12x12 piece of cardstock so I traced two sections, each with a tab.  I reccomend a nice heavy weight cardstock so that it will stay nice and straight and not sag in time.  In my example above, I used Curious Iridescent 8.5x11 89lb Cardstock from Cut Card Stock.  It has a stunning pearly iridescent finish with a subtle mauve-ish pink touch.

After cutting out the two strips, score all of the fold lines.  I uses the cutting guard on my trimmer for a nice straight line to score against but you could also use a ruler.

 

Fold along all of the score lines and press your lines with a bone folder.

 

Apply adhesive to the two tab sections.  I prefer Therm O Web's Super Tape for this because the bond is instant and will stand up over time.

 

Adhere one tab section to the non-tabbed end of the other strip.  You will now have one long strip with a tab on one end.  For now, leave the backing on the tape on the remaining tab.

 

You could use a border punch to add a decorative edge to the top of your shade.

 

 To cut a window out of the shade, use a pencil and ruler to draw some cutting guidelines on the back side of the shade.  Cut along the pencil lines with a ruler and craft knife.  You can add as many windows as you would like.  I am showing just one for simplicity.  Keep in mind if you put a window in each section that it will make the shade flimsier.  Using a really heavy cardstock will help counteract that.

 

Line the window opening with adhesive.  Again, I prefer the tape for this since it is an instant bond.

 

Cover the window with a piece of vellum cut to fit.

 

Remove the remaining tape backing and adhere the tab to the end of the strip.

When assembled, you will have a square shade with frosty windows.

Placed on the base, the soft flickering glow will show through the vellum.  For the purposes of simplicity, I left my vellum piece plain.  Imagine all the fun you could dress it up though, for instance with stamping and markers, with rub-ons, and with bling embellishments.

 

 A few days ago I shared my tips for using rub-ons with alcohol inks.  Tonight when I was fiddling with one of the pieces, I discovered I could peel away the metal base from one of my dried pieces that had been coated with Glossy Accents.  When I peeled the metal away, I was left with a clear acrylic piece with the ink design being clear but kind of opaque.  I decided to make another shade and cut a window opening to fit the alcohol ink piece.

 

 I cut a piece of Therm O Web's Mounting adhesive to fit the inside of the shade, slightly larger than then window.  I applied the adhesive piece to the inside of the shade and removed the backing.  On the outside of the shade, I applied the clear piece to the exposed adhesive in the window.  Although the Mounting Adhesive leaves a tacky surface exposed on the inside, it works great for this purpose since it is completely clear and won't affect the light shining through.

 

When placed on the base it gives a really soft amber glow that reminds me of Craftsman and Mission Style Mica Shades.

 

For the second shade I used a metalic cardstock from Cut Card Stock.  This one is 105lb cardstock and is really nice and stiff while still being very workable.  This color is called Mars and has a really lovely shimmer to it. If you make one of these I hope you will email me a photo, I would love to see what you create!

From my studio: Gift Card Holder

I shared this project once before, maybe last year or so, but was thinking with so many people shopping for gift cards at this time of year, it might be a good project idea to share again.  This example is birthday themed, but I think you could easily adapt it to a holiday theme.

To begin, I created my envelope with one strip of cardstock and one strip of pattern paper, both cut to 4" x 12".

Ink the edges on both sides of the cardstock and the printed side of the pattern paper.

Fold both in half so that they measure 4" x 6".

Adhere the pattern paper strip to the inside of the cardstock strip.

Fold one edge (cardstock and pattern paper) down 1 3/4" to create a flap on the front of the envelope.

Use adhesive or stitching along the open sides to create a pocket.

Punch a hole along the the seam at the top of the flap on each side of the pocket.

Wrap ribbon around the pocket and through the holes, tying the ribbon in a bow or knot on the front of the small flap.

Embellish the ribbon and flap as desired.  (I embellieshed mine with a reprint of a vintage image, Prima flowers, sparkle brads, and walnut ink mini tags.)

For the insert in the pocket, I used a manilla shipping tag as my tag base.  My tag was a little longer than my pocket so I shortened it to fit.  If you don't have a tag you could easily create one freehand.

Use the tag as a template to cut a piece of pattern paper and a piece of clear vellum to fit.

Adhere the pattern paper to the tag and ink the edges.

Ink the edges of the vellum.

Adhere the vellum to the tag, attaching it only along the top.

Add a decorative brad or ribbon to the tag hole.

To add a gift card, add a small amount of adhesive from a tape runner on the back of the gift card.  Adhere the gift card to the inside of the tag, under the vellum.

Using a small amount of adhesive make it easy to remove the card and leave the tag in good shape so that it can be hopefully repurposed.

St. Louis News!

If you are in St. Louis, the St. Louis Etsy team would love for you to stop by and visit us at our holiday show! We will be at Off Broadway, 3511 Lemp Ave.  St. Louis.