BABY JESUS NUGGET AND MANGER TUTORIAL

Welcome to today's TUESDAY TUTORIAL.  Lisa here with you today.  Its been awhile. Hope you all that celebrated Thanksgiving had a blessed time with family making memories. Personally I cooked my first Turkey in 24 years and destroyed it. Hee. I am now determined to learn how to cook a good turkey.

Getting back to today's Tutorial, I am going to walk you through, step by step, making the adorable manger and nuggets using the new digi Lori McCroskey designed

BABY JESUS NUGGETS

Here is Lori's example.  She printed out the brown colored manger pieces onto white cardstock and assembled.  In my tutorial I will be showing you another way to make it...printing onto colored cardstock (Kraft) and printed out the pieces that are uncolored for the manger.

Here you can see I filled up my 8 1/2 x 11 piece of Kraft cardstock with enough pieces to make 5 mangers. I put them side by side.  I will cut them apart where they touch using my paper trimmer to get a straight cut. I used the png images and arranged them in Microsoft Publisher. You just need to make sure you leave at least 1/4" from the edges because the computer will cut that much off when it prints.

Now score along the four outter tabs and in the center from the side edges.

Now fold along the score lines. I folded so the score lines of the manger will be on the bottom of this piece and the little tabs are folded so the tape will go against the printed lines....they'll get hidden when assembled.

This is optional.....I embossed the manger pieces using my Cuttlebug and Cuttlebug Embossing Folder Distressed Stripes.

After I embossed the pieces I sponged all the edges (front and back)....again this is optional. I am just giving you options. I want this to be special.

I printed out a colored manger side to use as a guide for assembling my side pieces.

I placed two strips of Score Tape to adhere the top piece.

I adhered the sides and punched holes in the one on the left to show you that I inserted gold mini brads.

Here's the backs of them to show you how I bent my brads inward so they won't show outside of the manger.

I cut my score tape in half length wise to fit my tabs.

You will find the edges of the manger match up with the side edges just right.

Here is our manger. Ready to add a filler (if you like).

I printed out my colored baby Jesus nugget wrappers onto a light weight white cardstock. You can even use copy paper.  Again I arranged them in Microsoft Publisher using the png images. I made them touch each other so I can cut them apart at one swipe with my paper trimmer on each row.

I sponged the edges of the nugget wrapper to match the sponged edges of the manger.  I also cut out another baby Jesus and sponged him.

Just place  a piece of score tape at each end on the back of the nugget wrapper.

Wrap the wrapper around your Hershey Nugget and adhere. I placed a small piece of dimensional tape on the back of my cut out Baby Jesus.

I placed some filler in my manger and topped with my Baby Jesus Nugget. This is the cutest project made so easy with Lori's digital image.  I hope you found this tutorial helpful and have fun making your own gifts for friends, family, teachers, party favors etc.

Enjoy each and every day of this blessed holiday season. 

QUESTIONS FROM COMMENTS:

One more question ... Is there a way to print out the Jesus nugget wrappers on the Avery mailing labels usually used for these types of projects instead of printing on cardstock and manually cutting out?

Yes!  In Word, you simply go to the Mailing tab, labels, choose label Avery 8160, create page, Insert/Picture, choose the nugget label and then fill your page by repeating the insert function or copy and paste!  So simple!

How to recolor your digis by Diane Noble

Hello Everyone!

We have a very talented guest tutorial writer with us today, Diane Noble!  Diane has put together this wonderful tutorial that will teach you how to recolor your digis!  I have been very excited to use this in my own cardmaking and I am sure you will love having this knowledge too!

You can visit Diane's blog here! 

Diane has created the following three cards using the newly released digis Tag Blessings and Thoughtful Notes.  These cards turned out just beautiful!

Diane is going to show you how to recolor your images in Microsoft Word and in Publisher.

Recoloring Digital Images

(using Microsoft Word 2010)

1.      Copy and paste images from your purchased file.  Use either JPEG or PNG files. Size them by pulling or pushing the corner handles.  (See Deedee Anderson’s tutorial, Digis 101 posted on June 26, 2012).  Note: To move images around in Word, you have to click the image, then go to the tool bar and pull down the menu under “Wrap Text.” Choose “through” and you will be able to move the images anywhere on the page.

2.      To begin recoloring, double click the first image you want to recolor. This will open the Picture Tool tab and bars. Click on the “Color” icon on the left of tool bar (see arrows below).

 

3. 

When you click on the “Color” icon, a drop-down menu will appear.  Select your colors from the third row under “Recolor.”  This immediately changes the color of all the solid portions of your image.  Repeat to change color of other images, then copy and paste recolored images to get the number needed of each size and each color.  Remember you can change sentiments so they coordinate with the colors of your images.

 

4. 

Continue copying/pasting/sizing/recoloring to fill the page with desired images for one or more projects. I wanted to use images from Tag Blessings and Silhouette Thoughts, so both appear on the page for this tutorial.

 

5.      When you have the number of images you want to use, you can arrange them before you print to conserve paper.  Leave space around images where you may want to use dies, like on the sentiment.  If you are going to free-hand cut out images, they can be placed closer together. You can leave the images as they are now, or you can proceed and have a little more fun cropping your digis.

6. 

Notice in the step above, that two identical sized images from Tag Blessings (bird/text) have been recolored.  We will go through a series of cropping steps to combine two colors on one image! Select the first image to crop (blue bird/text circle tag in lower left corner of page). Use the crop tool in the upper right corner of the tool bar. (Highlighted in yellow below.)  This will create the cropping handles on your image.  Push in to crop off the unwanted portion. 

 

7.   

I cropped off the bottom, or text, of the blue bird image, and cropped off the top of the green bird image.  See the two images in the lower left corner of the page. 

 

8.      Now move the two cropped images into alignment and “group” the images.  You can now copy as many images as you need and arrange them all on your page to conserve paper. 

 

9.      I also copied and recolored two sentiments, cropped them and rejoined them to create a two-colored sentiment.  Now, I’m ready to cut out, die cut, or punch the images/sentiments to make my projects. 

Recoloring Digital Images

(using Microsoft Publisher 2010)

Microsoft Publisher is a word document program but it works with a graphics base.  You have to insert text boxes that act as images instead of just typing on the page to embed text.  But because it is a graphics based program it handles digital images with much more flexibility and ease than does Microsoft Word.  When you copy/paste your initial images, they will immediately float on the page—you can move them anywhere by just clicking and dragging.  Publisher has a decided advantage over MS Word in the scope of colors available with virtually endless possibilities. Working with the images will be very similar as far as mechanics.

1.   

Copy and paste your images to a Publisher page.  To speed this portion up I’ll show the recoloring all at once instead of in steps as before.

2.   

To recolor click on an image.  The picture Tools tab will appear and you will pull down the menu from the Recolor icon on the left side of the tool bar.  From here you will immediately have a huge array of color options.  Select the color you want, apply and save and you’re finished!

3.   

Here’s the window that open to select your colors. There will be another drop down menu on the Color bar.  Once you open that you’ll see the color palette. 

 

4.      The colors just pop with Publisher.  Publisher is a very versatile program and can make newsletters, brochures, letterheads and all types of graphics rich documents.  Here all the images are copied and recolored once. The cropping function to achieve two colors on one image is basically the same.

5.      To crop, click on the image and go to the crop icon in the upper right hand portion of the tool bar. It’s highlighted in yellow in the screen shot below. Once you click it cropping handles will appear just as they did in MS Word, and you continue to crop as before.

6.      Here’s the finished recolored and cropped worksheet done in Publisher.  It’s ready to print.

The advantages and challenges with each program are dependent on user comfort.  Most people are more familiar with Microsoft Word, but Publisher is easy to learn.

Images can also be recolored in other photo editing programs.  When recoloring images, give the creator of the image full credit for the design.  Occasionally artist will stipulate that their images are not to be reconfigured or manipulated.  Adhere to any stated limitations by the creator, particularly if you plan to publish pictures of projects with the recolored or cropped image.  It is a violation of the intellectual copyright laws of the original artist to manipulate their designs then claim any credit as your own original creation. 

Most artists are delighted to see their images used and enjoyed.  They get excited to see the versatility someone has achieved with their images.   Playing with recoloring just takes a little practice.  Most printers will print at a high enough color quality on the regular print settings, but experiment with your printer.  You may have to change the setting to a higher quality to achieve the look you want. 

Thank you Diane for sharing this wonderful tutorial with us!  What a blessing!

I hope your day is filled with stamping and blessings galore!