Author Archives: CraftKatie

New Design: Holly Jolly Mini Folio

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Here’s a fun Christmas holiday project, which will be easy to take with you in your purse because it’s relatively small. It will hold at least 47 pictures, which is perfect not only for said Christmas holidays 🙂 but also for all other occasions, like birthday events, weddings, baby’s first year, summer vacations, back-to-school brag books, remembrance of loved ones and – why not – rock concerts or visits to the zoo 🙂

The only thing you’d have to change to achieve all of those are your paper collections – and we all know What Fun that is! 🙂 Mine was the Wassail collection by Basic Grey, an older collection not available anywhere anymore I think, but you can of course substitute any awesome Christmas collection you like.

So watch the video to find the inspiration to create one yourself, or help yourself to my written pdf tutorial, sporting 70 pages with step-by-step explanations and 160 clear pictures. This makes it absolutely suitable for beginners as well.

Merry Christmas!

Two Christmas Mini Album Cards

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Christmas is nearing ever more, so this week I’m sharing two great interactive wallet cards decorated in a truly Woodland Winter atmosphere. You can find the tutorial here.

You can of course use embellishments as elaborate as you like with these cards, as I did with previous iterations of this design, like the Time Machine version:

This time I used only paper decorations, some came with the collection and others I added myself, by way of decorative borders and die-cuts.

This is a pretty elaborate design, which makes it a great group gift or group card (to give as a group, with each individual adding their own wishes). It can also hold at least 5 pictures, which makes it kind of a mini album card 🙂

Have a great December month!

Some Quick Christmas Card Tips

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This week I’m sharing my annual Christmas card tips with you again, this time for those of you who would like to make their own Christmas cards but don’t have time or energy to design and create a lot of elaborate, unique cards.

Tip #1: Only decorate the fronts of your cards, and leave the insides and backs plain;
Tip #2: Use a die-cut card block, filled with all of the materials you need to create a set of nice cards, like design paper and a lot of die-cut punch-outs. You can add your own glitter glue and dimensional tape to add some more interest of course.

So check out the examples I created using such a card block, this one by Studiolight, and I hope you feel encouraged to make some of your own!

Technique Tutorial: Matting Triangular Pockets

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It’s that time of the year where we do lots of crafting – Christmas cards, Christmas albums, and in some of your countries you’ve just finished celebrating Halloween and Thanksgiving. All occasions where you may have taken lots of pictures. So, this week I’m sharing a technique tutorial on how to mat triangular pockets: how do you get them in exactly the right size, shape and angle?

Check out the video below to crack that secret code! 🙂

Quick & Easy Card Tip!

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#stillintimeforchristmas 🙂

If you’d love to create your own Christmas cards and don’t know how, or simply don’t have the time to spend several hours on only one card, this week’s post is for you!

The concept is so simple that I felt I couldn’t even make an entire video around it. So, in this blog exclusive, I’m basing my idea on two of my earlier tips: 1. Digitally designing your own patterns and layouts, and 2. using a printed picture instead of design paper.

This week’s project combines those two tips. I first designed a digital collage around a baby girl theme. For this I always use collections of digital elements I purchase from designers, and then combine these elements into unique collages with an app on my iPad, in this case PicCollage. You could also use other apps, or work with Powerpoint on your PC.

I then have my digital collage printed at a professional photo printing service. You could of course also print it yourself.

The final step is to mat the picture onto a nicely colored double card.

Easy peasy! 🙂

I did mine up as a baby card, but this would of course also work perfectly for Christmas!

New Baby Boy Micro Album

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Recently I finished creating and editing my latest video course, on how to create a micro album! It’s based on my original Fresh & Bright micro album, but with Moda Scrap’s very cute The Color of Puppies paper pad.

With the purchase of your video course you get the original PDF-tutorial as a free bonus. You can of course watch the video lessons as often as you like, no limits there!

This baby boy version is actually kind of a sequel, for 2 years ago his granny commissioned a baby girl version for his (then expected) sister. Needless to say that these are the cutest of projects, both because they are tiny and because the paperlines are all so darned adorable 🙂

So, enjoy this demo video, and check out my shop for either the PDF tutorial (#18a) or the video course (#18b)!

How to Create with a Cut-apart Sheet

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This week I’m sharing a free video tutorial again, on how to create a quick & easy card using only 1 cut-apart sheet and some cardstock. The paper I used was from the When We First Met collection by Piatek Trzynastego, a Polish brand.

Near the end of the video I’m sharing a bonus idea on what to do with the one leftover piece of your cut-apart sheet: easy, make another card! 🙂

Enjoy the video, hope you’ll find it inspiring!

One cutapart leftover? No problem, create a whole new card with it!

Free Tutorial: Working with Nail Decals

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Handpainting your own nails is one thing – and I need lots more practicing! – but using decals instead is a whole different category! It’s easy, quick, with consistency in image quality and – most importantly – your nails will look gorgeous!

This week I show you how I apply them to fake nails; you could of course apply them to your own nails, but that is more difficult unless you’re seriously ambidextrous…

Low budget tip: Working your scraps into a fun project!

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So, what to do with all of these leftovers from your papercraft projects? Design paper scraps, cardstock scraps and even chipboard scraps – do you throw them all out? That could work, clutterfree living is a ‘thing’ nowadays after all.

However, you can also choose the Frugal Crafter’s perspective: when I consider my scraps, I don’t see waste, I see paper real estate! That’s why this week’s post is about a practical way to work with several different kinds of leftovers and create a very fun project with them. And it will be very budget-friendly indeed 🙂

Also, it’s a new video tutorial on how to create my so-called scrap mats. I have done one before but that was many many moons ago, so I thought it time for a fresh one…

I’m working with the leftovers of my recent Double-Stacked Too album, with papers from the Serenade and Clippings collections by Basic Grey.

Scrap mats make brilliant background mats for your projects

Another Mailable Mini – But Different

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I guess I’m into some mailable minis… So here’s a different design altogether! You only need 1 sheet of cardstock and some design paper. The flatter you keep your decorations, the easier it will fit into an envelope and off through the mail.

In this video I’m showing you an example of such a 1-sheet album, and I’m also taking you with me through my decorating process.

Btw, you can turn this project into a mini album page for my Double-Stacked Too mini album design. There’s a video class series for that entire album available here.

Hope to have inspired you to create a fun & quick project!