Blissful Giving

Posted on May 16, 2011 by Duetica Team

Veronica Goff

I can’t begin to tell you how much FUN I had creating this special Easter basket. No, it’s not your traditional Easter goodies, but a basket filled with delightful spring goodies just the same! The original labels were removed and new labels created. Using the DT Mandolyn font package, each label was created to reflect the item seen in the crate. The wooden crate was sprayed with Krylon’s premium “Silver Foil Metallic” spray paint.

SUPPLIES

  • Duetica Mandolyn font
  • Krylon’s premium “Silver Foil Metallic” spray paint
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Introducing the 2011 Duetica Design Team

Posted on April 15, 2011 by Duetica Team
Duetica Design Team

Duetica.com, which offers a new way to work with fonts for all forms of home decor and paper-crafting, is proud to introduce our inaugural 2011 Duetica Design Team.  After issuing our design team call last month, we were privileged to review many wonderful designer submissions before settling on a team with the creative energy to truly make fonts and lettering a bold new art form for crafters the world over.  The team is comprised of ten of the most talented scrapbookers, card makers, and decorators that we have ever seen, including:

Becky Conley, Candice Windham, Christy Monge, Eileen Hull, Kathy Peterson, and
Kristie Taylor, Niki Meiners, Rebecca Lynn, Suzanne Sergi, and Veronica Goff.

In the months ahead, we are sure to be dazzled by the inspiration our fabulous team brings to paper and craft design as we discover new concepts, directions, and techniques for artful lettering!

Please join us in congratulating and welcoming the 2011 Duetica Design Team!

Mark and Adrienne

Inaugural 2011 Duetica Design Team

Becky Conley (http://www.beckyconley.blogspot.com/)
Becky is a retired USMC, mom of 2, nana to one.  She love mixed media art, paper crafting, home decor, recycled crafting, actually: just about anything crafting.

Candice Windham (http://www.candicewindhamdesigns.blogspot.com)
Candice loves to paint, play with her pups, sing with her hubby (who makes everyone sound good), read, play with her camera and create interesting art out of nothing much. She is currently a designer with the CHA (Craft and Hobby Association).

Christy Monge (http://sewscrappy.blogspot.com/)
Christy is a former “Catholic school girl” who loves to scrapbook, sew, cook and basically be creative. She went to college in Australia and earned a BA in Media Studies and began her design career in the video industry. Her favorite things are mini books, paper, any cool tool, and digital scrapbooking.

Eileen Hull (http://www.eileenhull.blogspot.com/)
Eileen besides being a free lance designer, author and licensed artist, was the very first Duetica Lettering Arts Studio designer.  Her “Best Wishes Brenda” bridal layout is the key feature on the Duetica website home page.

Kathy Peterson (http://www.KathyPeterson.com/wordpress)
Kathy is a highly published crafter, design expert and best selling author of 5 crafting books.  She has been the host of Town & Country Crafts with Kathy Peterson on Goodlife TV and The Family Net TV Networks. She has also been a guest host LIFETIME TV’s The Balancing Act.

Kristie Taylor (http://kristietaylor.blogspot.com/)
Kristie has been scrapping and working in the paper arts for about 10 years, and loves every aspect of the craft. She enjoys using new products and learning new techniques, and has taught numerous classes sharing her love of the craft with others.

Niki Meiners (http://nikimeiners.wordpress.com/)
Niki is a freelance designer, and writer, known for her bold choice of color combinations and diverse mix of styles.  Her favorite mediums are Paper Crafting, Rubber Stamping, Scrapbooking, Card Making, Altered Art, Needle Felting, Needle Punch, Beads and Jewelry, Metalsmithing and Home Decor.

Rebecca Lynn (http://www.polkadotdoordesign.blogspot.com)
Rebecca is a stay-at-home girl from Edmonton, Alberta. She spends every minute of every day living life to the fullest, which sometimes included mundane and ordinary tasks like cooking and cleaning and taking care of 7 little kids.  She loves paper-crafting, specifically cards.

Suzanne Sergi (http://www.scrappinthedetails.typepad.com/)
Suzzane loves scrapbooking for many reasons. It is her creative outlet, and she loves getting lost with paper, and glue. She loves pajama days with her family, and takes advantage of them, by spending time in her studio.  Scrapbooking is the perfect combination for her love of paper and photography.

Veronica Goff (http://lifesnippets07.blogspot.com/)
Veronica is a photographer, a mixed media artist and a book maker. Her life path has embraced many facets of art in one form or another. Veronica was the second designer to lend her talents to the Duetica Lettering Arts Studio.

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Happy Birthday, Mary!

Posted on March 22, 2011 by Duetica Team

I always like to add a little something to any birthday or hostess gift I might give.  Here I dressed up a plain metal tin to hold a bracelet for our sister-in-law, Aunt Mary’s, birthday gift. Adrienne is the master when it comes to creative gift wrapping. The tin is durable and cute so beyond just this birthday, perhaps Mary will keep it on her nightstand to hold a couple of her precious, well… trinkets!

Duetica Trinkets Tin Sample

I started with a plain metal tin from the Container Store.  I decorated it by ruching a pretty, brown ribbon around the tin and finishing with a silver button.

With the Duetica Lettering Arts Studio, it was simple to create the “Trinkets” lettering.  In fact, I created this project to show how the Studio can be used with any True Type font currently on your computer.  I did not use a Duetica font for this title, but several others I like:  Caslon Open Face, CAC Champagne and Valiant, as well as AL Playbook.

Duetica Lettering Arts Studio Design Pad for Trinkets

It took only minutes to flip through dozens of letter choices to create my final design, simply by typing the letter keys over and over again.  Using the Duetica Lettering Arts Studio, I was able to print out my final title, positioning it exactly where I wanted it on my patterned paper.

Duetica Trinkets Printed on Page

Next, I chose a frame outline from my Silhouette library.  I made a quick test cut to make sure that I could line up my printed “Trinkets” with the cut pattern on the Silhouette.

Duetica Trinkets Test Cut

Once everything was all lined up, I was ready for the final cut. As Bob Vila of “This Old House” always says, “measure twice, cut once.”

Duetica Trinkets Final Cut

To add more character to the Trinkets title and frame, I used my Copic markers and distressing inks to give it a textured look.

Duetica Coloring Trinkets Design

I used the Silhouette to cut some pretty background paper to fit the top of the tin can lid.  You could also use punches or Spellbinder if you had the right circle punch size.

Duetica Trinkets Background Cut

I then assembled the pieces and added some glitter to finish the label.

Duetica Trinkets Label Completed

After gluing the finished label to the tin can lid, I coated it with Aleene’s Paper Glaze to make sure that it could stand up to daily use holding jewelry and other items on Mary’s  dressing table.

The finished design is a gorgeous gift wrapping for a bracelet or earrings for that dear friend or sweet sister-in-law.  Rather than throw away the gift wrap, it becomes a lasting part of the gift!

Duetica Trinkets Tin Opened with Gift Inside

Mark and Adrienne

It took only minutes to flip through dozens of letter choices to create my final design, simply by typing the letter keys over and over again. Using the Duetica Lettering Arts Studio, I was able to print out my final title, positioning it exactly where I wanted it on my patterned paper.

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Duetica Design Team Call

Posted on March 19, 2011 by Duetica Team

Duetica.com has developed a new way to work with fonts for scrapbooking, card making, and home decor. Our fonts are beautiful, fun, and edgy, but here’s the big news: Instead of each character in the font having only one appearance style per letter, our fonts have bunches! We don’t have just one lower- and one upper-case “A” in our fonts, but a slew of them. They all work together so crafters can mix and match them to create truly customized headlines, greetings, and display text. And here’s the best part: You choose and change each letter simply by typing. You can learn a little bit more about the Duetica Lettering Arts platform by visiting our web site at: www.duetica.com or our facebook fan page at facebook.com/Duetica.

We are now forming our first Duetica Design Team, and we would like you to be part of it. To be considered for the team, you will need to submit photographs of 3 to 4 projects, your bio (who you are, what you do and any other design teams you might be on) as well as your contact information including phone, e-mail and blog site addresses.

For the projects, please submit what you consider to be your best work (even if it is one of your older projects). One project must be a scrapbook layout and another one a card, the rest can be any that you choose. We are also interested in home décor / gift projects as well. At least 1 of your projects should incorporate a title as a key element of the design. Send us a photograph of each keeping your image sizes under 500KB. As an alternative, you can create an album on a photo sharing site, upload your photos to it and send us a link to the album you would like us to review.

Those chosen will be on the Duetica Design Team for 12 months. Duetica Design Team members will be required to create 2 new projects a month prominently using Duetica Type fonts. The projects do not have to be exclusive to the Duetica Design Team. So, you can use your other team’s projects for Duetica Design Team projects as well, provided they use Duetica Type fonts in a dramatic and creative way.

As a Duetica Design Team member, you will be given free access to the Duetica Lettering Arts Studio, our online tool that helps you create your lettering designs, as well as all of our Duetica Type fonts. You will also get copies of our latest fonts before they are released to the market. Finally, we will pay you a $75 bonus for each of your projects that gets published in a national papercrafting magazine or website.

To be considered for the Duetica Design Team, please submit the following:

1. Your 3-4 project photos – or link to your online photo sharing album.
2. Your bio
3. Your contact information

E-mail all of this in ONE e-mail to design@duetica.com with the subject line “Duetica Design Team Call” by no later than April 8th. We will go through each submission, and will contact the new Duetica Design Team Members by April 15th.

Mark and Adrienne

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Valentine Angel in My Doorway

Posted on February 14, 2011 by Duetica Team

It’s Valentines Day, and love is in the air. A time to embrace that Special Someone in your life. Of course, many of us have pet names and special remembrances for the loves of our lives. Whether it’s “Snuggles,” or that sunset walk on the beach, there are terms of endearment or moments in your relationship that are unique to the two of you. That is certainly the case for the love affair I have had with my wife. Adrienne and I had been good friends and coworkers for many years. Until one fateful Saturday night. We were going out for dinner at the beach, and when she came to my door that afternoon, the sun shown behind her, and I heard God say that this is the woman I was going to marry. From that point on, I have always called her “the angel in my doorway,” and 15 years later, we are still very much in love. In creating this scrapbook page I wanted to recapture that very special moment.

Valentine Page - Angel in My Doorway
Of course, you can’t find “angel in my doorway” on any pre-made stickers or stamps, but with the Duetica platform and the Duetica Mandolyn font, I was able to express my true love for her. I created a textured pink background in Photoshop and finished this digital page with some cute hearts from Katie Pertiet’s collection. The photo is from ShutterStock images.

This Valentines Day, take a moment to tell that certain someone just how much they mean to you, and make it personal by saying it in your own words.

Happy Valentines Day,

Mark and Adrienne

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CHA – CHA – CHA

Posted on February 4, 2011 by Duetica Team

Hi Everyone!

CHA was a lot of fun this year. Once again, it was great to see all the creativity and style that each of the manufacturers is coming up with. The lines are cleaner but more intricate than ever before and it seems lots of folks are building (beautifully!) on their core businesses.

Our focus this year was on making personal contact with designers and artists who might partner with us in Duetica. Merci beaucoup to all of those that took the time to speak with us and thanks for all your great comments!

One thing I noticed at CHA was that the dominance of personal cutters continues! New at this year’s show was Xyron’s Creatopia, which comes with embossing rollers (as well as cutters), and Craftwell which can cut from rolls of 12 inch wide paper. These, of course, were in addition to established brands such as Sizzix and eclips (the Vagabond was very cute!), Cricut, Slice, Silhouette, Pazzles, etc. Wow.

Each cutter has its own special features and the choices can be dizzying. But! Ta-Da! Duetica will work with any cutter that supports the standard True Type font format, which is pretty much all of them since even a cartridge-based system like Cricut works with plug-in programs such as Sure Cuts A Lot, or Make the Cut.

I was also impressed with Tim Holtz’s line extensions. Distress is still a popular look, especially as an accent in combination other, softer aesthetics. Although a number of our new Duetica Type fonts work well with the distressed look, Tin Whistle is specifically designed to add just the right amount of grunge and playfulness to your titles and captions.

Duetica Type Tin Whistle Font

We encourage designers to experiment with the Duetica Lettering Art Studio and our font library to come up with some great new looks of their own. If you are interested, please contact us at design@duetica.com.

Keep dancing and scrapping,
Mark and Adrienne

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The CHA Show is This Weekend in L.A.

Posted on January 28, 2011 by Duetica Team

We have been members of the Craft and Hobby Association for a dozen years (back in the day when it was called HIA.) Every year we look forward to seeing everything that is new and many old friends at the CHA Winter Show. This year is no different, as we will be at the CHA Show here in sunny Southern California this weekend.
CHA Logo
If you are a scrapbook or card designer and will be attending CHA, please drop us an email at design@duetica.com. We would love to meet with you, and give you a first hand demonstration of the Duetica Lettering Arts Studio.

See you in L.A.
Mark and Adrienne

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That Personal Touch

Posted on January 26, 2011 by Duetica Team

Adrienne and I met years ago at Mattel Toys while I was heading up one of their toy design groups. Right from the start, I began illustrating my card envelopes to her capturing both the flavor of the occasion and the love that we shared. This tradition continued this Christmas with the rendition of a heart-shaped ornament, dangling from its hook.

Christmas Card Envelope Duetica Type Mandolyn

Although I am a pretty gifted illustrator, my penmanship never really matched my artistic flair. That is until this year, thanks to the Duetica platform. On the envelope above, I was able to use both Duetica Type Mandolyn 1 and 2 fonts to create the beautifully flowing, “Merry Christmas Adrienne.” It was so much fun to flip through all the various swash and flourish options to capture the perfect sentiment. It took only minutes to compose this in the Duetica Lettering Arts Studio, and then I simply inserted the envelope into the printer to add the final text. (Just a note, I tested it first on plain paper to make sure I had the spacing and placement right before I printed the final copy.)

If you are a scrapbook or card designer, we would love to see the cards and envelopes that you can create. Simply contact us at design@duetica.com.

Isn’t he so yummy?

Blessings!
Mark and Adrienne

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Happy New Year!

Posted on January 25, 2011 by Duetica Team

Our team has been busy working to put the finishing touches on the Studio and added some cool new features to the platform.

We are actively looking for a few good designers to help us create sample scrapbook pages, cards, and other projects that showcase just what you can do with the Duetica Lettering Arts Studio and Fonts. If you are interested, please email us at design@duetica.com.

The Duetica platform makes creating page headlines and titles for cards easy and fun to do. For our 2010 family Christmas card, I used the Duetica DT- Piper font for the card title “California Christmas.”

Christmas Card with Duetica Piper font

It literally took only a couple of minutes to create this uniquely personalized card title. All I had to do was go to www.duetica.com and log into the Design Studio (with my membership ID). I selected the Duetica Type Piper font to use for my design, and then began typing out my text. As I typed, I quickly flipped through dozens of letter styles finding just the right ones to add character to my card design.

Christmas Card Title Details with Duetica Piper font

I really like how the two “C’s” nestle in so cozily next to each other. Notice the subtle differences in their styles. I also liked mixing and matching the various “a’s” and “s’s” in this design. My favorite touch was how the “i” in Christmas feels like a flickering Christmas candle, and the flourish in the letter “o” suggests a curl of smoke rising above.

As I said, it only took a couple of minutes to compose this one-of-a-kind design. All that was left to do was to output the title from the Duetica studio as a PNG image file and import it into Photoshop where I could add it to my photo and other graphic elements. Since the design was a font image file, I was not limited to a single size. It was easy to stretch it and size the title for my card design, until it was a perfect fit. Finally, a quick upload to Costco, and our Christmas cards were well on their way (except for the envelop licking and stamp sticking). I can hardly wait to see what some real scrapbookers and cardmakers do with the Duetica system and fonts.

Of course, if you love working with paper and ribbon, you might have just as easily printed out this title and used it as an element on your page. The variations in the letters give it an artistry and customization usually available only in hand-rendered art!

We hope you will join us this year in exploring just how creative lettering can be with the Duetica Lettering Arts Studio. Just drop us an email at design@duetica.com. Have a great 2011!

Blessings!
Mark and Adrienne

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WELCOME!

Posted on November 18, 2010 by Duetica Team

Hello.  If you are reading this, you are probably a professional craft or graphic designer.  We have most likely contacted you about providing samples for this web presence.  Thanks for dropping by to check us out!

The Duetica Lettering Arts Studio and the technology behind it, allows scrapbook and craft designers to incorporate lettering in their designs in a bold new way.  We are presently looking for designers to have some fun with our innovative lettering techniques and make some scrapbook pages, greeting cards, or project samples that we can post to show others what they can do with the Duetica platform.

If you’re artsy-talented, love playing with new tools and techniques, and want to have some crafting fun with us creating samples, please send an email with your contact info to design@duetica.com.

We’ll be officially launching our Blog soon, but thank you again for visiting today. We hope that you’ll become part of our launch.

Blessings!
Mark and Adrienne

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