Freebies

Easy, fast and beautiful Advent Calendar

Posted by Anke on 27/11/2012 1 Comment

Surprisingly enough, Christmas is coming again this year ;) As I’m going through some (positive) changes in my offline life, here’s a little tutorial from last year for you.

Time flies, and it’s only a little more than a month until Christmas. If you need a last-minute advent calendar which is easy to make, looks great and doesn’t cost a fortune, go on reading:

You need:

a sheet of Scrapbooking paper (12″x12″)
a piece of sturdy carton in the same size (old vinyl record covers work great!)
Paper Glue
scissors, cutter knife, cutting mat
a 3/4 inch circle punch or stamps/stickers with numbers
thin ribbon
hole punch, for example the Crop-a-Dile
24 printedstories/recipes/quotes (I can’t offer mine for download because I don’t own the copyright).

The basis for each calendar is a simple 12×12 sheet of scrapbooking paper glued to a 12×12 piece of sturdy cardboard. I used a 3/4 inch circle punch to create numbers in matching colors. If you like, you can download my numbers-in-circles design, print and punch (3 color schemes on one sheet).

Beneath the numbers, I used my crop-a-dile to punch small holes through the calendar. If you don’t have a crop-a-dile, you can use an eyelet tool or a hole punch out of daddy’s toolbox. Punch two extra holes in the upper left and right corner, so the calendar can be hung to the wall.

As you can see, I chose to stamp the numbers directly on the dots of this beautiful paper.
I chose 24 short stories, poems, recipes etc. and printed them on high quality paper. I folded and/or rolled the sheets, tied them to a pretty ribbon and threaded the ribbons through the calendars’ holes. A square knot on the back – that’s it. I used a small IKEA Allen wrench to push the ribbons through the holes. If you give the calendar to a couple, you can use two different ribbon colors for them to take turns in opening the gifts.

Here’s another version …

… with a tinted mirror snowflake as an embellishment.

This tutorial was first published in 2009.

Filed Under: Freebies, Tutorials | Tagged:

Vintage Christmas Postcards

Posted by Anke on 09/08/2012 4 Comments

Yes, even though it’s August.
I’m scanning a large collection of vintage postcards, and you can’t start to think about Christmas soon enough.
Here are a few freebie cards for you! They are quite large, that’s why I’m showing you a preview first:

Those cards are my favorites. Cute but not too kitschy.

Isn’t he a charming salesman? These photographs were taken in studios, backed with detailed sceneries.

Most angel pics are extremely kitschy, but I have dozens of them in my collection.

What a cute little girl :)

A floating christmas tree? Hmmm, weird… it’s probably a huge branch hanging from the ceiling. What do you think?

Another angel. Alright.

Good old Santa must be part of the party as well.

A pretty kid. Above her head, there’s a Christmas sentiment in a language I don’t know.

This card looks a little spooky if you view it at full size. The b/w photography was colored, and it has a strange half tone look.

Please do not share the cards, but send others to my website. And even though I offer the cards for free, I’m very happy about a little thank you in the comments.

Download via box.net

Filed Under: Freebies | Tagged:

Freebie: Retro DropCaps for your website

Posted by Anke on 16/07/2012 Leave a Comment

Once in a while I love to add some new design elements to my site. I’m into all things vintage and retro lately! Aren’t drop caps simply beautiful? Not only in print, even digital texts get a certain touch of classiness.

I made these for my site, and I offer them for free download (please respect the copyright, though) – here’s the preview:

Well, how do you add them to your site?

There are several nice plugins which can turn the first letter of your paragraphs into drop caps, as you can see here. But I wanted to have specific images, that’s why I need to add them manually.
At first you need to extract all the .png files from the zip archive and move them to your webspace.

If you want to add a drop cap “M”, for example, add this piece of code at the beginning of your text, changing yourWebspace.com to your URL:

<img class="dropcap" src="http://yourWebspace.com/uploads/dropcap-m.png" alt="M" width="49" height="60" />

Just replace the M with any other letter you need, both in the image source and in the alt tag (dropcap-z.png for a Z, dropcap-f.png for an F and so on. The German umlauts would be -ae, -oe bzw. -ue eingeben).

Now your drop caps need the correct style. Add the following snippet to your CSS file:


 img.dropcap {
 display:inline;
 float:left;
 margin-right:5px;
 margin-bottom:0px;
 margin-top: 7px;
 }

That’s it!

Please note: You must have some Html and CSS knowledge in order to add the drop caps to your site, and I can’t give you any further support – please ask auntie Google for help ;)

Ready? Here you can download the file:

Download @box.net

This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 License.

Filed Under: Freebies | Tagged:

Vintage Mother’s Day Cards

Posted by Anke on 21/04/2012 2 Comments

n our more and more virtual world, do you still write postcards? With a fountain pen and your best handwriting on real paper postcards?
Old postcards which were written before World War II are escpeciall fascinating, both for their illustrations and their messages. I’m very lucky that I’m allowed to scan several hundred old postcards, some of which are already available as free downloads here and here.

I came across a beautiful blog yesterday: “The Best Hearts Are Crunchy“. The author collects old postcards and posts “Postcard Friendship Fridays”. It’s quite educational to read her posts, you can learn about the origin of April’s Fools or about a Pineapple Upside Down Cake (I’ve never heart about that here in Germany).

Before I visit the stamp fair tomorrow (today, to be technically correct) and get all excited about trying new stuff, I’ll upload my vintage Mother’s Day postcards for you. My scans are quite large because I want to be able to print them in good quality. Here you can see a screen-friendly preview:

You can download the scans for free at box.net if you click here:

Download @ box.net

Which card do you like best? I love the little guy with the trumpet!

Among the scanned cards, there are several which would need to be cleaned up digitally. One of them has a great caption:

The script is old German, and it reads “Little Brother learns how to march”. The card was sent in 1917, in the midst of WWI. On the back, there was just a short greeting, nothing more. I found another interesting card, the date was April 21, 1916. Exactly 96 years ago! The town was called Ratteick which now belongs to Poland and was re-named to Ratajki. A father wrote to his family in Marwitz (close to Berlin):

A happy

Easter to

all of you from

your father,

I’m still healthy

and I hope you

are, too.

Did he write home from war, what do you think?

Just a side note: I think it’s a sacrilege to add pencil marks to old postcards. Be it the prize or any other info – put the card in a protective sleeve first, then add a sticker!

I’m very lucky that I can read the old German script. In my growing collection of postcards, I often find funny, bizarre, or emotional remarks or stories. :)

Now I’m curious: What are you going to do with the downloaded cards?

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Vintage Easter Greetings

Posted by Anke on 01/04/2012 Leave a Comment

pring is in the air, and I can hear Mister Easterbunny hopping around in the distance. Just one week until Easter! A perfect time for new vintage freebies, don’t you think? I scanned these postcards some weeks ago and finally had time to remove stains and scratches. Here’s a preview:

The download is free and without any watermarks, and the images are large enough to print postcard-size. I’m happy about comments :)

Download @ box.net

Filed Under: Freebies, Scrapbooking | Tagged: Tagged With: freebies, postcards, vintage

Paint Swatch Birthday Calendar

Posted by Anke on 14/03/2012 Leave a Comment

Paint swatches are wonderful! You get them for free at the hardware store, and you can use them for craft projects, for example a colorful reminder of upcoming birthdays (click to enlarge):

It’s easy as pie: use some large stamps (I used “Simply Sweet” foam stamps by Doodlebug Design) and black ink (Staz-On) and stamp the first three letters of the month on a card (I chose colors which resembled the mood/temperature of the months).

Now attach a printed list of the days to the card. Use good glue, otherwise they might curl upwards after some months like mine did…
Anyway, if you’d like to make such a calendar, here’s a free download for you as a PDF :)
Print it (12 copies of page 1 or, to be correct, 7 copies of page one, 4 copies of page two, and 1 copy of page three) and cut it to the width of your paint swatches. Trim to get an equal height. Choose a nice place for your calendar and attach it to your wall or door.
I always mark the current date with a little arrow (“Book Dart”), so I can see upcoming birthdays at a glance.

By the way, the icing on the cake is the cat on top of my door. I cut it from vintage wallpaper scraps. And it covers a dent in the wall *g*.

Filed Under: Freebies, My Works, Tutorials | Tagged:

Free vintage Valentine’s Day cards

Posted by Anke on 05/01/2012 3 Comments

In Germany, Valentine’s Day has become more and more popular during the past years. In my stash of old postcards, I found these beauties which fit the occasion, and for you English speaking visitors, I removed the text from the German cards (nice, huh?). So you’ll find them in two versions below; click on the little images for a preview, and if you like click on the Download link below which will take you to the large files (~ 2 MB each).

Download via box.net

Have fun and leave me a comment if you download my freebies. Thanks!

Filed Under: Freebies, Scrapbooking | Tagged: Tagged With: postcards, vintage freebies

Vintage New Year’s Greetings

Posted by Anke on 02/01/2012 3 Comments

Happy New Year! I hope you had a great start and less rain than we did :)
Don’t you just love vintage greeting cards? Currently I’m scanning a huge collection (no, it doesn’t belong to me), and I thought I might offer some for free download. If you like them, I’ll add some more – just let me know.

Here are five cards for you, one is even in English ;)

If you click on the thumbnail pics, you’ll be able to see a preview. The download link leads you to the laaaarge files:

Download@Box.net

Have fun! And tell me what you think.

Filed Under: Freebies, Scrapbooking | Tagged: Tagged With: postcards, vintage freebies

Digi-Freebie: 3 Printable Vintage Bingo Cards

Posted by Anke on 22/12/2011 Leave a Comment

Christmas is approaching faster than usual (or does it only seem so?), that’s why I publish another freebie – it simply doesn’t fit in any other time of the year.

The cards MERRY and X-MAS have differently placed numbers because I didn’t want it to look like Copy&Paste too much. The cat bingo card was a spontaneous idea after I had worked on a photo starring my cat in a santa outfit:

Joschka didn’t really like this photo shooting, and I’m really glad that the digital ages made it possible to take dozens of photos without wasting expensive film *g*. So the retro frame around the photo is just fake.

Where was I? Oh yes, the freebies: Here you can see a preview, the download link is below. The three cards are in PDF format, each of them is twice on the sheet, as a large and a small version.

Please don’t share the direct link or the file, rather pass on my website’s address. And if you download the file, please leave a comment. Thanks!

Download PDF

Filed Under: Freebies, Scrapbooking | Tagged: Tagged With: printable, vintage freebies, winter

Digital Freebie: Musical Snowflakes

Posted by Anke on 18/12/2011 Leave a Comment

As a teacher for descant and treble recorder, I’ve taught my students numerous Christmas carols. It’s cute to listen to their first “real songs” when they are beginners, and their families can’t wait to hear them play on Christmas Eve. I had the idea to make some snowflakes merely from musical symbols, and I really like the results. So here you’ll get some glittery snowflakes as freebies, they come with and without shadows.

Here’s a sample layout with the snowflakes scaled to various sizes (click to enlarge). The text reads: “As peaceful and nice the carols may be, as a recorder teacher I’m about to get a Jingle Bell ringing in my ears”. Credits:
Snowflakes by me, the paper is by Michelle Coleman from the “Retro Christmas” set, the photo frame is by Andrea Rascaglia, freedigitalscrapbooking.com, the font is “Janda Swirlygirl” by Kimberly Geswein.