How too faux cross stitched wedding card

I seem to be in the thick of wedding season again. I'm off to a wedding this weekend so I'm trying to be organised. The outfit is sorted so I started thinking about making a card. I've wanted to have a go at making a faux cross stitch card for a while so thought this would be the perfect opportunity. I grabbed my graph paper pad and had a bit of a doodle for a design and came up with this simple heart design. I designed a few smaller ones as well but though this one was most suitable for the size of the card. I could use the other designs for valentines day. If you fancy having a go feel free to use the pattern bellow.

I used a letter X stamp I had in a small alphabet stamp pack. You can draw out a base grid in a soft pencil if your not confident to help you aline the X's and then rub it out when the the ink's dry. As you might be able to tell I decided to try it freehand. It depends how much of a perfectionist you are. Very simple but quite cute.

Through the view finder

I've wanted to try this for soooooooooo long. I bought a Kodak Duaflex almost a year ago from Ebay for an absolute bargain price of about £5 but I just hadn't got round to having a play. 
Through the view finder photography is basically when you take a digital photo through the viewfinder of a old analog camera. This gives the look of an old photo without any Photoshop tricks.
So eventually, one evening last week I got out some black card and started to freestyle and make a collar to marque off the viewfinder on the top of the camera.

This turned out to be a little complicated but was basically trial and error. I still have a little work to do but I couldn't wait to test it out. This was the first shot I took. As you can see it was very murky, this was down to the fact that I hadn't cleaned the camera since I got it incase it lost the 'vintage effect'. I took a risk and gave the viewfinder a clean which I admit has lost some of the charm but it still gives the desired effect. The results are the image at the top of the russian dolls and image bellow of my pet goldfish who was being a little camera shy!

The Book Dance

I love this video, it makes me smile every time I watch it. I'm a real sucker for stop frame animation and organisation!

Tying the knot

Tying the knot
Originally uploaded by DuckDownDesigns

Here’s a card I’ve made for a friend who are getting married on Saturday. I’m quite short on time at the moment so I wanted to do something quick but not too serious. Mission accomplished me thinks!

Sunny Sunday

This is a photo i took back in the autumn. As I said before I've been playing around in photoshop and wanted to see if I could turn an otherwise slightly dull photo into something a little more interesting. I think it has a very dreamy quality to it which is what I wanted to achieve. I love the light this time of year and wanted to see if I could replicate that with a little photoshop magic. 

Be my Valentine

I have just finished making these ready to post to a few friends. I've been looking for some small knitting projects which would push me to learn/ understand more about knitting patterns. I was looking for something that wasn't very complicated or very long so I didn't get confused and bored. Mission accomplished with these babies. I was even able to knit the hearts without looking at the pattern after the third one! Plus they are really cute which doesn't hurt.

Tilt shifting tricks in Photoshop

I recently went on a photoshop course and now I have to admit I'm addicted. I've been using photoshop for years but I'm pretty much self taught. This has led to some bad habits of doing things the long/ wrong way round!
However, I am now going to redeem myself by trying to learn as much as possible. I've got myself a great book and found pleanty of tutorials on line and so it is now my mission to learn as much as possible.
I've wanted to play with tilt shifting for a while now and it was a lot easier then I thought. Check out this tutorial here . I found it very easy to follow and I'm quite happy with my first attempt.

Here is the original for you to compare.