Design House Digital

Our birthday is over, but we have one thing left: it’s time to give out the presents!  Everyone won, of course, because we gave some awesome free kits to all.  And each person who participated in a challenge completed a project and hopefully learned something along the way. Our challenge winner is Michele Clay, for [...]

Designer Call

Design House Digital (DHD) is announcing an open call for digital designers.  We are mainly looking for people with talent and experience in the digital scrapbooking industry, but we do have one opening for someone with a lot of spunk and design talent – someone willing to work hard and take feedback and direction from mentors on our design team.

Our Design Team

Our designers work closely together as a team and work with each other often.  Every month, they work on our “House Party” collaboration series, where they share a color palette and build coordinating kits that are available for sale individually in the store.  They also build several collaboration kits throughout the year.  Every week, two designers pair up to create coordinating kits as part of their featured designer weekend.  They communicate often via email, forums, and Facebook.  They also try to meet monthly on a conference call to encourage each other and to discuss issues related to store and digital design.  So, you see, if you come to Design House Digital, you need to be prepared to work closely with other designers: to share ideas, share techniques, and grow each other as we grow the shop as a whole.

We want active designers who will regularly:

  • put new kits in the shop
  • create 2 blog posts per quarter, containing inspiration or new techniques
  • contribute to our House Party collaboration series once per quarter
  • contribute to 6 free kits per year
  • host one challenge per quarter in our gallery
  • be active in our forums
  • grow their own brand through their own blog and/or social media accounts

Designer Applications

If you would like to join our fantastic team of designers, please send an email to [email protected] with the subject “I want to be a DHD designer!” and answer the following questions in the body of your email.

  1. What’s your name?
  2. Why do you want to join the DHD design team?
  3. What made you get into designing, and what motivates you now?
  4. What can you bring to DHD that is uniquely “you?”
  5. How do you think you will fit in with the other designers in the DHD design team?
  6. Where can we download some samples of your work?
  7. Where can we see your current store?
  8. Where can we see some samples from your creative team?
  9. Are you willing to put your digital designs in our shop exclusively? (Yes, DHD requires exclusivity from all of our designers)
  10. How many kits do you sell each month on average? (this information will be kept strictly confidential)
  11. What are the links to your blog and/or social media accounts?
  12. What else do you want us to know about you?

About Design House Digital

Design House Digital opened on January 1, 2010, and has grown into a major presence in the digital scrapbooking world.  Our purpose is three-fold: to create a community where anyone can learn, share, and support each other with digital projects, to make it easier to create, preserve, and share family memories, and to provide a way for home-based people to make money.  We are dedicated to our design team, our creative team, and our customers.

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Halloween Hybrid – Spooky Soup Cans

hello, everyone! It’s Jennifer Valencia here with a post on creating custom labels for soup cans. These can be used as decorations, holders for candy give-aways, or play food for your kids.

Halloween Labels for Tin Cans - Spooky or Sweet

Toy Food Cans - Designed With Help From My 5-Year Old

Supplies
-Smooth edge can opener (mine is from Pampered Chef) which leaves 100% smooth edges with no sharp pieces
-Printouts for the soup can labels
-Clear packing tape
-Glue Stick

Open the Can:
Using the special can opener, open the can and save the lid. There should be no sharp edges.
Save the food separately. (ha!)
Wash the lid and can, and dry them well.

Smooth Edge Can Opener...No Sharp Edges!

Smooth Edge Can Opener Leaves No Sharp Edges!

Create Can Labels:
-For a typical Campbell’s size soup can label, start with a document that is 8.5×3.5″
-For a typical small tuna can: 2.5cm x 28cm
-You may have to trim the edges a bit for the perfect fit
-Drag papers & embellishments onto your can and add text

Spooky Soup Can Label

Cute Soup Can Label (Ingredients Chosen By My Daughter)

Cute Soup Can Label, Designed By A Five Year Old

Tuna Can Label, Also Designed By My Five Year Old

Create Top Labels:
For a typical Cambell’s soup can, draw a circle that is ~ 2.75″ in diameter.
For a typical Tuna can, use a circle that is ~ 3″.

Print & Prepare Labels:
Print the labels onto regular paper and coat the front with clear packing tape (if desired) to make them more durable.
Carefully line the label up on the can and tape one edge down with packing tape.
-Smear glue stick all over the backside of the label where you can reach it, then carefully smooth the label onto the can.
-Add extra glue to to the back seam if needed and smooth it down firmly.
-For the round top labels: Glue the back and press them firmly onto the lid.

Labels Add a Nice Touch To The Can Top

-Glue Lids to Can – or Maybe Don’t
You may decide to leave the lid unattached, so your child can play open/close/fill with it. You can also fill it with candies or other non-perishable treats and glue the lid shut, so the recipient gets to open it with a can opener (what fun, right?) If it’s going to be a play food can for a very small child, it’s best to glue it shut; even though the edges are not super sharp, small kids can probably find a way to hurt themselves on it anyway. And you probably already knew this, but this is NOT a way to “can” or store perishable foods like soup, sauce, jam, etc. To do THAT, you need a “real” professional can lid sealer, if you’re using aluminum cans, or glass Mason jars & supplies.

My daughter LOVES these! I left the lids unattached so she could open and close the cans and put toys into them. I let her pick out the embellishment and dictate the text or ingredients, depending on what we were making. I love her idea of what goes into soup.

Tuna Cans With Cute Labels - My Daughter Stores Pennies In Them

Playing With The Decorated Cans & Lids

I also made some spooky ones which I plan to fill with a bag of candy corn and a ribbon, and pass out to friends on Halloween. These can also be used as party decorations. I guarantee that these will start conversations between party or dinner guests, too!

I'm SO proud of my 6.66 grams of TRANS(ylvania) FAT.

Keep in mind that there is nothing to stop you from making labels for full cans of food, if all you need are party decorations! But it’s really fun to have the empty smooth-edge cans for toys.
I hope you give this a try…and if you do, please post it in the gallery to share. And if you want to use some of the same products I used, look for these in the DHD store.

DHD Products from Jen Allyson, Mye De Leon, Karen Funk

Karen Funk’s Pumpkin Patch Digital Kit
Jen Allyson’s Vintage Findings Black And Tan
Jen Allyson’s Vintage Findings Elements
Mye De Leon In Be”Tween” Years Kit

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13 Days Of Halloween: Memory Match Game

Hey there! Are you enjoying your 13 Days of Fall & Halloween so far?

I’m here to show you how I took some fun digi goodness and turned them into a memory match game for my kiddos…or me. Who are we kidding here? ;)

Here’s what you’ll need:
1. Small Wood Pieces (I used 1.5″ circles I found at my local hobby store)
2. Mod Podge
3. Paint & Brushes
4. White Cardstock
5. Printer
6. Digital Elements & Papers

I used the following Digi Supplies:

Trick or Treat Papers 1 by Gennifer Bursett

Doodled Halloween Character Brushes by Tiffany Tillman

Superstitious Stickers by Karla Dudley

Instructions:
1. Using the measurements posted on the bag, I created a template in Photoshop to clip my papers and elements to.

2. Print out the document and cut out the images using your method of choice. I used a circle punch.

3. Paint wooden pieces the color of your choice – or leave natural if you prefer.

4. If painted, allow the paint to fully dry and then apply a small amount of Mod Podge to one side of your painted wooden piece and to the back of your cut out image.

5. Apply the mod podged image to the mod podged side of your wooden piece, smoothing out any bubbles as you apply.

6. Once dry, this is the perfect opportunity to trim excess pieces of paper that may be overlapping your piece. Use a knife or sandpaper to remove this excess.

7. After trimmed and dry, apply a light coating of mod podge over the top of the applied image to seal it.

8. Repeat these steps with remaining pieces.

Once you are done, add the completed pieces to a decorative bag or box. I found this organza bag in the wedding section of our local craft store and tied it with a festive ribbon.

Have fun!

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13 Days Of Halloween: Photo Frame

Today’s hybrid project is going to be quick and also fun, perhaps even a stress reliever?

You will need:

  • One inexpensive or recycled frame.  I used a 4 inch x 6 inch kraft paper frame from the craft store.
  • 2-3 favorite digital papers printed out onto lightweight paper, not cardstock.  Digital papers can be printed to the dimension of your printer size or smaller.  One frame does not really require a lot of any one paper.
  • Glue gun or craft glue.
  • Sticker letters or other embellishments (optional)

Start by using your paper cutter or scissors to cut about a 2 inch wide strip from each of your printed papers.  Trim off any white border. Set aside the remaining printout for other projects.

Tear the paper strips into pretty small pieces.  Make small piles of your papers.  I used papers from 2 kits here at DHD.  They are shown below.  Click on images to go to the DHD store for more information about these kits.

Use your glue gun or craft glue to adhere the torn pieces of paper to the frame.  Don’t worry about making it smooth or filling the entire frame.  The lumpy look is great with the torn edges, it creates a lot of texture.  I used one paper on the bottom layer and then added a different paper as interest to the top layer, keeping in the traditional halloween color combination of orange and black.

Add any embellishments as desired.  I plan to add a photo from the upcoming Halloween year to my frame after that day, so for now I just added another paper and some sticker letters in the middle of the frame.

I hope you enjoyed this quick project.  Easy to do and cute!  This would make a fun teacher gift or club craft project, or mostly, something great looking for your house!

Happy Halloween!

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