Just added some great summer art prints to our Butterfly Crafts collection.  This gorgeous vintage butterfly clip art originated from a 1880’s Natural History Butterfly print (four stages of butterfly transformation).

Butterfly Craft	Resources Collection
	How to  Make a Simple Butterfly Mosaic  (free tutorial)
Butterfly Soap (for inspiration)
	How to Make Your Own 3D BUTTERFLY ARTWORK (Free Tutorial)
How to Draw a Butterfly at an angle (free step-by-step instructions)
	Butterfly Square – Free Knitting Pattern
Butterfly Wing – Face Painting  (free video tutorial  of this beautiful design)
	Free Butterfly Clip Art (photos & Illustrations)

Copyright , Fine Craft Guild .com. All Rights Reserved. Amazing/Eco Home Decorating & Craft ideas and tutorials, for you.

Gung Hay Fat Choy!!! 

Happy Chinese New Year!!!

To celebrate this wonderful Chinese new year, I thought to complement my free greeting card give away with a matching desktop background… I’ve adjusted the dimensions, toned down the colors and offered you a big solid blog of lovely metallic blue so that you can actually still find your files on your computer desktop. 

To obtain the desktop version of this eCard, please join our Newsletter and you will automatically be led to our exclusive resource section with free craft patterns, tutorials and designs.

© FineCraftGuild.com 2011

Copyright , Fine Craft Guild .com. All Rights Reserved. Amazing/Eco Home Decorating & Craft ideas and tutorials, for you.

Chinese New Year this year will be February 3, 2011. It will be the Year of the metal Rabbit, a lovely year indeed, as bunnies are considered lucky!

Well, lucky you are as I made a new Chinese year greeting card for you, that you can download for free.  The Chinese symbol on the bottom right of the card means luck, rather than rabbit. 

Rabbit said to bring prosperity

and success in love

To get a bit larger file, click on the image and you get your free eCard.  If you prefer to obtain a larger, printable version of this free new year greeting card, just join our Newsletter and you will automatically be given access to an exclusive list of free craft patterns.

Happy New Year!

The Year of the Rabbit

The inner nature of this lovely animal is what determines what this year will look like: a period of sophistication, culture, grace, beautiful manners and sensitivity.  This 2011 year of the white Rabbit, your intuition will blossom. But don’t be just intuitive: plan and prepare. 2011 calls for unhurried work with concentration, so your projects can succeed. 

Rabbit Personality

While people born under the Rabbit typically get along well with everyone, they are essentially reserved. They are really happy in intellectual activity. An aggressively competitive environment makes them anxious and does not suit their sensitivity.   They create peaceful, comfortable environments around them. Craving and creating security, they wish to avoid unsettling/unpredictable situations that do not match their delicate inner nature.  Excellent attentive hosts who care for those around them and who pay attention to detail in everything. They are calm and compassionate. When Rabbit people believe in something, they are serious, perseverant and capable.

© FineCraftGuild.com 2011

Copyright , Fine Craft Guild .com. All Rights Reserved. Amazing/Eco Home Decorating & Craft ideas and tutorials, for you.

Free Twitter backgrounds for Valentine’s Day, a whole hand full of them, as designed by Alma Loveland at Olli bird.

Here are my 3 favorites. I particularly dig the middle one; very free, very whimsical.

Like them? Right-click to download. Easy.

Also suitable as blog, website or computer screen backgrounds.

Other Valentine Day Crafts for Kids

Decorated Wooden Heart Frame
Tiny Paper ‘I Love You’ Garland (or use other famous love quote)
3 Valentine Cards: Easy, Intermediate & Advanced
Handmade Valentine Cards Ideas
and for moms running out of time, I’ve added:
Free Downloadable Valentine Cards for Kids

Other Valentines Day Crafts

Love Book – Free Modern Scrapbooking Template
Valentines Day Crafts: Candy Boxes (video tutorial)
Handmade Scrapbooking Valentine Card – Envelop – Absolutely gorgeous! (see picture)
Painting Real Heart Art For Valentines Day (originals now all sold, but hopefully still inspirational)

Digital Valentine Craft

Free Font for Valentine Greeting Cards
Valentine’s Day Backgrounds — makes great wrapping paper too
Easy to Make Valentine’s Card – Photoshop Tutorial

Copyright , Fine Craft Guild .com. All Rights Reserved. Amazing/Eco Home Decorating & Craft ideas and tutorials, for you.

“You’re such a sweetie”, it reads.

I am asking all moms: ‘What’s not to love about this?’ All you have to do is print these Valentines and add the names of 20 kids. Done.

I am dedicating this free downloadable to all moms who are being jumped upon, at the last minute, by some other mom (who has too much time on her hands) and decides that all the kids in the class have to give Valentine cards to all the other kids!!! Moms: here is your easy solution.

Rather than to learn how to make 20+ handmade valentine cards in 2 hours, all you do is print these. I reckon they would even look good in B/W. Your child could color them in in red/pink/blue add a red/pink/blue ribbons. And you’re done: beautiful Valentines for the kids.

Actually, I think that adults in your life who you think of as ‘sweethearts’, such as your mom’s best friend, would like to get sweet little Valentine greeting cards like these too. Rather than pairing them with a candy, add a few gourmet chocolates in a pretty bag instead. I would like this.

A big ‘THANK YOU!!’ to Jessica Renee Shaw who designed these free downloadable Valentine cards.

Printable Sweet Valentines

Other Valentine Ideas

Quil Some Hearts – get Inspiration from the paper art by Yulia Brodskaya

Make a Tiny Paper ‘I Love You’ Garland (or use other famous love quote)

Free Valentine Font For Greeting Cards

Valentines Day Crafts: Candy Boxes (video tutorial)

3 Valentine Cards: Easy, Intermediate & Advanced

Painting Real Heart Art For Valentines Day

Easy to Make Valentine’s Card in Photoshop

Copyright , Fine Craft Guild .com. All Rights Reserved. Amazing/Eco Home Decorating & Craft ideas and tutorials, for you.

We would all like to go home for thanksgiving this year. However, for some of us, it’s not possible. Download this free Thanksgiving Greeting card to delight your loved ones abroad and far away….

This card could also be used as a tag for any Thanksgiving gifts you  may wish to hand out, or as a unique Thanksgiving dinner table placecard holder. Treat all your guest to something lovely with a personal greeting card, which indicates both their names (and thus seating arrangements) and a personal greeting.

How to Get your Free Thanksgiving Card

Sign up for our monthly newsletter (see top left of this page), and you will automatically be led to our Free Craft Ideas & Patterns page. 

(note: this card is free for personal use only. Do not duplicate for any commercial reason without written permission. Thank you.)

Personalize Your Free Thanksgiving Card

Personalize this card with some nice calligraphy. Here are some famous Thanksgiving quotes you could add to your free printable greeting card, besides your personal message.

Thanksgiving Quotes

Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all the others. - Cicero

"So once in every year we throng
Upon a day apart,
To praise the Lord with feast and song
In thankfulness of heart." -Arthur Guiterman, The First Thanksgiving

"Thanksgiving Day is a jewel, to set in the hearts of honest men; but be careful that you do not take the day, and leave out the gratitude."  -E.P. Powell

When eating bamboo sprouts, remember the man who planted them. -Chinese Proverb

"As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them." -John Fitzgerald Kennedy

"If the only prayer you said in your whole life was, "thank you," that would suffice."
-Meister Eckhart

"Thanksgiving, after all, is a word of action." -W.J. Cameron

"He who thanks but with the lips
Thanks but in part;
The full, the true Thanksgiving
Comes from the heart." -J.A. Shedd

"Thanksgiving Day comes, by statute, once a year; to the honest man it comes as frequently as the heart of gratitude will allow." -Edward Sandford Martin

"For flowers that bloom about our feet;
For tender grass, so fresh, so sweet;
For song of bird, and hum of bee;
For all things fair we hear or see,
Father in heaven, we thank Thee!" -Ralph Waldo Emerson

"The unthankful heart… discovers no mercies; but let the thankful heart sweep through the day and, as the magnet finds the iron, so it will find, in every hour, some heavenly blessings!" -Henry Ward Beecher

What’s Next?

** If you like this card, leave me a comment, or share this page on your social media.
** Check out our other Thanksgiving pages:
1. Thanksgiving dinner table center piece
2. Thanksgiving coloring pages: scarecrow (easy) and mandala (difficult)
3. More Thanksgiving coloring pages: Thanksgiving Winnie the Pooh & friends
4. Thanksgiving activities with students (kindergarten/elementary school)
5. Traditional Thanksgiving Wallpaper
6. Non-traditional Thanksgiving Wallpaper
5. Free Thanksgiving cards ~ (this article)
All templates and tutorials are free for private use only.
** As well, I’m looking for Thanksgiving trivia… Anyone??

Copyright , Fine Craft Guild .com. All Rights Reserved. Amazing/Eco Home Decorating & Craft ideas and tutorials, for you.

Hi all. I predicted this: more great Thanksgiving wallpaper ideas have come in my head.

I hope you like today’s effort, featuring our corn harvest. After yesterday’s funky thanksgiving designs, I thought to post a few traditional thanksgiving wallpaper designs today.

This free thanksgiving wallpaper is sized for a 1280 x 1024 pixel monitor. If you need a different sizing to suit your computer screen, just let me know by email.

I made two versions: one places the corns on a black background, the other on a harvest green background. Which do you prefer? You can download either image for your thanksgiving wallpaper to have a nicely dressed up desktop.

Like this?

Please share it with your social media. Links below.

Thanksgiving Craft Ideas & Decorating Projects

Non-traditional thanksgiving wallpaper

Thanksgiving dinner table center piece

(Featuring section of original photo by George Bosela)

© Thanksgiving wallpaper: FineCraftGuild.com 2009 – do not reproduce – for personal use only

Copyright , Fine Craft Guild .com. All Rights Reserved. Amazing/Eco Home Decorating & Craft ideas and tutorials, for you.

OK. I thought that I was ‘done’ with digital scrapbooking and design for a while, but I guess not. Yesterday, these two little monsters in the form of a ‘Witchy Witch with Bats’ and a ‘Rather Hissy Cat’ had to be realized by way of FREE TWITTER or COMPUTER BACKGROUNDS.

Like them? I made them not  too scary, not too traditional and orangey, but opted for a tat more interesting brown and blue-ish purple. And black, of course. Like my choice of Halloween colors for your background for Twitter, Vista, Myspace or computer desktop ??!!

The designs below are free for personal computer use:

You can upload them as your seasonal Twitter background this month.   Or you could use them as the background image for your computer.  As you wish.

The instructions on how to use the images for Twitter as backgrounds is described in my prior article on Twitter backgrounds.

If you have other ideas for what you would like as a Halloween background, leave me a comment and if I have some more time, I’ll design some more Twitter backgrounds.

To see all the free Twitter backgrounds I have designed so far, click the Twitter Backgrounds category link.

To see all the free craft tutorials, ideas and giveaways I have posted for Halloween, click the Halloween category link.

btw. Send me a link where I can see how you are using the Halloween background.

Copyright , Fine Craft Guild .com. All Rights Reserved. Amazing/Eco Home Decorating & Craft ideas and tutorials, for you.