The coming week I’m sharing five days of Christmas cards with you all! 🙂 Starting today, with style #1: Luxurious.
Materials used:
This week I’m sharing a reprisal of my Folio Album III design, originally called Mimosa. It was commissioned by Nora, the German lady for whom I also created the Remember Me box pocket album. Nora loves many things, among which cats, hot air balloons, old books and the color purple. For this new, elaborately decorated version of my Folio Album III therefore, I used Bo Bunny’s gorgeous 2016 collection Beautiful Dreamer, with themes of hot air balloons, bicycles, birds, books and old clocks, in nostalgic warm purples, greens and golden browns.
This folio album has a very flexible spine, sports many photo flaps and mini wallets and will hold about 65-70 pictures. Its main feature however is that you can entirely separate the book from its cover! 🙂
Check out my (written) tutorial if you want to create one yourself. It has very clear instructions and is illustrated by 255 pictures of the step-by-step process for all of you visual learners. It also comes with an bonus materials list for this Beautiful Dreamer version!
Enjoy the video of my project share and feel free to leave a comment or question below!
Now that Christmas is only three weeks away (can you even believe how time flies?!) I thought I’d share a nice Christmas card tutorial with you all. This time it’s a card of which one of its border follows the shape of your paper pattern.
I’ll teach you how to set it up, how to back it up with cardstock, and also how to mat it on the inside. And I’ll show it all to you in under 9 minutes! – though it will probably take you a couple of hours to actually create it 🙂
And the great thing is, you don’t even have to use Christmas papers, look at how gorgeous this wintery Unicorn paper by Stamperia is! 🙂
Enjoy this free video tutorial, and feel free to send me the links to yours!
Hey guys, just wanted to let you know that it’s sale time in my shop! Buy my tutorials for a total amount of at least €20,- and get 50% off, of ALL of my tutorials!
That has never happened before and will not happen again any time soon, so now’s your chance 😉
So, it’s that time of the year again 🙂 You can never be too early creating your Christmas Cards. The coming weeks, like every year, I’ll sharing lots of Christmas card tips with you, helping you along to get yourself unstuck and go create your own! It really doesn’t have to be difficult, nor expensive! To prove this, I’m kicking of this C-card season with several easy-to-create lowbudget Christmas cards that I decorated with only 1 sheet of design paper! And of course a few extra embellishments, but you can even do without those if you want to – or perhaps have to because of budget reasons.
So go ahead and check out the video, and then go ahead and Create!
This week I’m sharing another one of my tea card ideas. As you may know by now, I love to send my friends a warm and cosy hug-in-a-mug over the mail, for instance when I know they’re coming home from a long and hard road trip, late at night. Nothing says “Go ahead and elax for some Me time” like a glass filled with nice, hot tea you just got from your friend who’s thinking of you.
I try to come up with different designs every time, especially when sending it out to the same person (like my dear friend Christa 🙋🏻), and this week it is a pocket card. After all, not everything has to be complex and difficult. Just go for it, keep it simple and decorate to your heart’s desire. Pay attention to the details though, like having the color of your tea bag coordinate with your design papers 🙂
Enjoy the video and pics below! And do leave a comment, I really like to hear from you all.
While Autumn has arrived and stretching its legs with some really cold temperatures here in the Netherlands, I thought I’d design and share a little Four Season’s mini album. I used Graphic 45’s calendar collection Time to Flourish, which of course automatically offers seasonal colors and themes.
The cover design makes it a cute little suit case with a magnetized closure and a ribbon grip, that will stand on its own. Each of the ten pages are pockets, holding a tag that has been decorated on both sides but still leaves room for wallet-sized pictures.
All in all a very cute little gift – think Thanksgiving, Christmas, simply Summer or basically any seasonal holiday 🙂
Like to make one yourself? Go ahead and purchase my tutorial, offering lots and lots of clear pictures, guiding you through the creative process step by step. And for people who have worked with several of my album tutorials: this time I’ve used a different binding system, so not the hidden hinge binding, but the stack the deck binding. If you don’t know how that would work, check out my tutorial.
Enjoy the video and let me know in the comments what you think!
Yeah yeah I know I know, Halloween comes first so why am I even talking about Thanksgiving. Well, simple really: I don’t like Halloween. It’s a creepy holiday celebrating death and the occult. Me, I’m into Life. And that’s the first important reason to be aware of everything that deserves your gratitude – or your thanksgiving, if you will. After that come many more reasons, one of those being the people you are grateful for of being in your life, or whom you’d like to thank for some actual nice thing they have done for you the past year. So why not add a card to that gift you’re buying them? 🙂
That is why this week I’m sharing five of those, to inspire you with some ideas – and well in time for you to make them 🙂 All my cards were made with an older Bo Bunny collection called Ambrosia, but the main thing I hope will inspire you is that paper alone really is enough to make beautiful cards.
Layering was the main technique I used, using the design paper and the diecut pack that came with the collection and playing around with some dimensional tape. Some stamping will always do well of course, to add the main sentiment to your card.
Will you be sending out any Thanksgiving cards this year, or will you add any to your gifts? Let me know in the comment section!
This week I’m sharing my thinking process while decorating an altered box. Some things are planned, but not everything. Most things work out, but not everything – and how to fix those. All in all I was pretty contented with how this little treasure chest turned out, and my friend was thrilled to receive it 🙂
If you want to know how to mat such a box in the first place, then check out one of my previous blog posts – or simply scroll down and find that video at the end of this post.
With its 25 minutes this week’s video is a bit long, and I’m mostly rambling on about what the next decorative element might be and why, plus I’m including several tips along the way. So get into your Chill Out mode, get a great cup of coffee or tea and a little snack, sit back, and most of all: relax and let the tone of my voice wash over you. Who knows, if you watch this in bed you may even fall asleep before the end – in which case: Sweet Dreams! 🙂 💤
How to mat a box:
In previous blog posts I’ve shared several of my decoupaged projects in which I completely covered an object with napkins or rice paper. Think bonbon boxes, candles, porcelain ware and even shoes and a lampshade!
In today’s project I’d like to focus on a slightly different way of decoupaging, that is to say, not covering your obhect entirely but very intentionally only parts, covering the rest with paint. The trick here is to decoupage first, perhaps going against your instincts to paint the object first instead.
The reason is that decoupage papers (rice paper or the top layer of paper napkins) are so thin that any kind of paint color will shine through. The only color you can actually cover your object with before decoupaging, is white. All others will NOT work.
So, first carefully tear your selected pattern from the napkin or rice paper, decoupage it onto your object, then paint carefully in between the patches. I always cover my decoupage projects with either mod podge or some other kind of sealant after.
And there you go!
Hopefully you enjoyed this blog exclusive tip. Check out the pictures below for some examples.
By the way, I’m also including some free video tutorials at the end of this post in which I’m decoupaging two different objects, in case you’d like to watch the technique. Enjoy!
And here’s some decoupaging technique videos:
Last year I designed and created what I call a Box Pocket Mini Album, by which I mean a mini album that holds a special kind of pocket, large enough to hold a notebook, a personal planner, a mini folio or a large stack of pictures.
This week I’m sharing a variation on that album: this time the actual box pocket is in the back of the album instead of the front, and this album has a gatefold magnetic closure. It also has a different ‘do up’ of the inside front cover. Most of these different elements I borrowed from another design of mine, the Springtime Dreams Keepsake Album Deluxe.
I designed this second version of the Box Pocket album for Nora, a lovely lady from Munich (Germany), who commissioned the album as a way to keep her most important memories. You’ll find more details about her story and why she wanted the album in the video below. You’ll also understand why I’m calling this version Remember Me.
Since there already is a tutorial for the original Box Pocket album in my webshop (#33), I decided to add a free bonus cutting guide to that, containing the measurements for the different elements of this new Remember Me version. Anyone who already owns Tutorial #33 can simply go back to their Etsy purchases page and download the bonus cutting guide for free! (It’s just a cutting guide mind you, if you want actual instructions, please check out my Tutorial #10 for the Springtime Dreams album.)
Anyway, thank you for watching and feel free to leave a comment below, in the comment section! 🙂
