Creating a dimensional card requires lots of different cuts & folds. These can be done by hand of course, but sometimes I prefer using the various niftily designed dies that are on the market. Like the Create-a-Card die series by Crealies(.nl). For a demonstration of how to work with these dies, you can check out my free videotutorial for the stepcard I created with Crealies’s Create-a-Card die #8.
Today I’m sharing the dimensional card I created with their Create-a-Card die #18, which is a very playful type of card: I’ve seen several different and very creative ways of decorating these kinds of cards. As for my version, it’s a first try so I kept it fairly simple, but I did want to give the dimensional parts of this card their own decorated background. So I added a second layer of cardstock – as explained in the video below. Added advantage of this double layering is that it creates the look of an actual card when folded closed – for without this second (outside) layer there would be no ‘front’ and ‘back’, only ‘inside’, due to all the cuts & folds that make up the dimensional parts.
Hope this makes sense; in any case, just check out the video below and hopefully you’ll see what I mean, 😉 Anyway, these kind of cards are a fun and welcome variation to add to your general card designs; and even without the die you can make the necessary cuts and score lines fairly easily with a craft knife and a scoring board.
Hope you feel inspired, stay crafty and see you next week! 🙂
As you may have noticed, one of my favorite design paper brands is Graphic 45. Which is why I’m super excited – and a little nervous! – for this blog post, for it is my first time ever submission for a Graphic 45‘s Design Team Audition! 🙂
I am delighted to be able to share some of my favorite projects – old and new – that showcase my style, including a tutorial via Snapguide, and I hope you’ll all feel inspired by them!
Project 1: ATC Book Box Wall Ornament – with Graphic 45’s Sweet Sentiments
Graphic 45’s ATC Book Box (ivory) offers many, many creative possibilities and it was an absolute joy to work with it!
It inspired me to create a brand new project: an Easter Wall Ornament. It has a removable decorative show piece showcasing many fussy-cut images from the collection’s gorgeous signature sheet.
Without this show piece it is still a very decorative but also practical little box for anything you’d like to store – and keep handy at the same time. Like your keys. Your phone. Your business cards. Or your lipsticks! 🙂
To create it, I (gently) cut the box part from the book cover part, turned it 90 degrees and reattached it. By firmly wrapping the cover part with design paper I made sure it stayed straight, preventing it from folding like a book.
I used a ribbon tied through an eyelet to hang the wall ornament on the wall.
Below are some pictures, and the show & tell video:
To see more of the details, click the picture below for an enlargement:
Fussy-cut tag, adorned with fussy-cut floral (lifted with some dimensional tape):
Detail of the ornament, without the show piece:
Bottom
The chipboard pieces on the front are backed up with design paper, continuing the main pattern on the back:
Hanging from my bed room wall
Show & tell video:
Project 2: New Job Card – with Graphic 45’s Time to Celebrate
As soon as I laid eyes on the Time to Celebrate collection, I fell in love with its vibrant spring colors. I immediately created a card with it for my friend who got a new job. She’s quite the lady, so this paper fit her perfectly! 🙂
I love making cards with Graphic 45 papers and for this one I worked with both the 8×8″ design paper and the 6×6″ patterns & solids pad. I used the Best Wishes chipboard piece of the collection, and added some embellishments from my stash: flowers, ribbon, feathers, and flat-back pearls. I stamped Nieuwe Baan (= Dutch for New Job) to finish it.
I layered the inside of the card with both design paper and cardstock, and added two stamps that I cut from the design paper – one of which I lifted with some dimensional tape. I also added two small butterflies from my stash.
Quick video overview:
Project 3: Double-stacked Mini Album ‘Celebrate Every Day’
I love to design and create new or special kinds of mini albums. For example, I’ve designed three different types of folio albums, I love to design large gatefold-style keepsake albums and I’m also an enthousiastic creator of micro albums. The project I’m entering here is yet another kind of (large) keepsake album, which I designed last August. I’m calling it a double-stacked mini album.
This sophisticated album has six page assemblies, three above, three below – which together offer twelve unique interactive page layouts plus some large photo mats!
The insides of the large front and back covers make up their own interactive pages, twice as large as the regular ones. The album has a magnetized closure and although I sometimes go all out with embellishments on mini album covers, I intentionally kept this one crisp and clean on the outside, to showcase the papers – with the added bonus of it easily fitting into a book case.
Below are some pictures, plus the show & tell video I did last September. I’ve also done a video tutorial for one of the origami page elements in the album, which I’ll also embed below.
Inside front cover:
Bonus Project: Briefcase Micro Album – with Graphic 45’s Bohemian Bazaar
This is one of my first designs with Graphic 45 papers and I’m still proud of it, which is why I’m adding it to this audition, even though it’s from 2014 🙂 .
I designed this cute little micro album to look like sort of a briefcase. It measures only 11 x 9 x 5,5 cm (4¼ x 3½ x 2″) and sports six small pocket pages. Each of those holds a tag or a cutapart from the collection.
I created a ‘suitcase handle’ from cardstock lined with book muslin, which I attached with two brads and two small D-rings. The album is held closed with a magnet closure.
Because I really enjoyed showcasing the gorgeously colorful paper, I only added a few embellishments both inside and outside, keeping it clean and stylish and letting the paper speak for itself.
The album is designed to open vertically, not horizontally, just like an actual briefcase. This enables you to thumb through the pages with both hands, kind of like you would a rolodex or some records or some such (yeah I know, this reference totally dates me… 😉 ).
The intended way of opening and perusing this micro album is vertically:
And here’s the (2014) video show & tell video:
Tutorial: How to Create a Micro Booklet – with Graphic 45’s Time to Celebrate
I really love my micro projects, and for the tutorial part of this audition I’m entering a second micro project, next to the Briefcase Micro Album above (Bonus Project). I designed this cute micro bookletas a fun alternative for a card or gift tag. It holds several tiny tags on which you could write your birthday wishes and/or little personal messages. Thanks to its small size it’s easy to send by mail, to carry in one’s purse, to add to a bunch of flowers, etc. – for it measures only 6.5 x 7 cm (2½ x 2¾”).
As an added bonus, it’s perfect for using up the scraps of your awesome scrapbook design papers! (I don’t know about you but I hate to throw away even the tiniest sliver…)
For this project I chose my beloved Time to Celebrate paper line again – couldn’t help myself, it’s just too gorgeous 🙂 .
Please check out my Snapguide* tutorial for this fun project! It’s embedded below, so simply click the tutorial’s pictures or the arrows underneath to move back and forth through the tutorial – very convenient! 🙂
*: Edit 2021: It seems that Snapguide no longer exists, and without warning they apparently removed their entire tutorials database. So I’m sorry, but the aforementioned tutorial for this little booklet is no longer there. If you’d like to know how to make one though, check out this earlier video tutorial of mine.
Hope this inspired you to create one or more yourself, for it’s really a fun little project!
Short show & tell video:
In conclusion
This has been my entry for the Graphic 45 Design Team Audition 2016!
I hope you’ve enjoyed reading this post as much as I have creating it!
Thank you to all who follow me on this blog and/or on Youtube or other social media, I really appreciate all of your support.
Now please wish me luck 🙂 – for I’m really hoping and praying I’ll make the cut! I would be so honored with a spot on the ever-awesome G45 Design Team and am really looking forward to a chance of working with this great team of designers and crafters – and of course with Graphic 45’s great products and beautiful vintage paper collections – which are great to work with and always smell so good… 🙂
Today I’m sharing a second iteration of one of my wallet card designs. I used the Simple Stories Say Cheese collection, including some tags and cutaparts, to create a lovely birthday card. The bright, high-contrast colors of this paper line make it very suitable for winter birthdays – like my friend’s, who has her birthday in February. So I printed some fun birthday sentiments on the large tags – though you could also do some stamping or even use them as photo mats. The inside of the card offers room for journaling or a personal birthday message.
Although I used several sheets of design papers to decorate, this type of card will also allow you to use only onesheet of double-sided design paper – to see how that might look, check out last year’s Easter iteration!. That way you won’t need much more than two pieces of cardstock and one sheet of design paper!
All in all it was a very fun project which I enjoyed creating just as much as the first one, so check out the affordable tutorial if you’d like to create one too!
As you may have noticed by now I love to collect older paper collections that are difficult to come by. Lush by Kaisercraft is one such design paper collection, stemming from 2010!
I used this lovely paper to create a micro album, following the design of my very first micro pretty much literally in order to write a tutorial for you all.
So have fun watching the show & tell video and Go Create! 🙂
As of yet scrapbook layouts have not been my core business when it comes to paper crafting, but I do love to do them when inspiration hits me. For some examples of my personal style, may like to check out my layout-in-altered-frame, but also my two calendars: 12 months of Place in Time, and 12 months of Time to Flourish.
The focus of this new layout is my mother’s dog Nita, a beautiful black labrador mix. The picture itself immediately reminded me of Kaisercraft’s Limelight paper collection, which echoed the green and black, plus the white florals. A perfect fit!
Having already created two projects with Kaisercraft’s lovely Secret Admirer paper collection – a Folio Album and a Romantic Drawer box – I had hardly any papers left over, except some scraps.
But since I had really fallen for these gloriously colorful papers, I couldn’t bring myself to throw away even what little I had left. And good thing I didn’t, for as it turns out they had four lovely cards still within in them! 🙂
(Above was created with a step card die by the Dutch brand Crealies. Click photo for link to free video tutorial)
When it comes to design paper, I’m a bit of Collector. By which I mean that collecting specific older collections that are no longer manufactured, particularly scratches my collecting itch. It’s the Hunt you see, scouring the most obscure local scrapbook stores, the forgotten corners of the internet, and the hidden treasures of people who are destashing all of a sudden. And then the thrill when I find that one last sticker sheet, belonging with an ancient collection in my stash!
Of course I do regularly buy some of the latest collections, but even those I tend to leave alone for quite some time. Not consciously, but usually it’s only when they are somewhat older and no longer in print, the urge to create something with them hits me.
The Secret Admirer collection by Kaisercraft is one such treasure. It’s a Valentine’s Day collection from 2012, and I designed my Cross-haired Memories Folio Album with it, which I showed you a while ago. Of course I had some papers left over, so in this and the next post I’m sharing the projects I created with them.
Today it’s a 1-sheet project, with a particularly gorgeous 12×12″ Secret Admirer sheet. I found this mini drawer box in one of our dollar bins, and after painting it, I used the Mystical sheet to mat. Added some labels and flowers, and there it was, a beautiful, romantic set of drawers. Love it!
As a bonus projects, I used the tiny scraps I had left from my previous project to decorate a chipboard box, turning it into a great stamp little storage!
Although most people in the Netherlands don’t celebrate Valentine’s Day, I thought I’d post a romantically themed mini album today anyway. 😉 ♥
This album was commissioned by a young man in Singapore who wanted to surprise his girlfriend. He wanted it to be romantic – with pinks, flowers and some love-themed ephemera, etc.
So I chose Kaisercraft’s Oh So Lovely paper collection, which is perfect for precisely such a mini album! It has florals, pinks, wood patterns and some great sentiments!
The album is a pocketstyle mini with 5×5″ (12,5 x 12,5 cm) pages. It sports ten interactive page layouts, including the inside covers, and four large photo mats. I decorated it with the O So Lovely Collectables die-cuts, the ATC cards of the collection (called Captured Moments – Pretty Little Things) and some decorative elements from other brands on the front cover and throughout the album.
For the page designs I mainly followed my Life’s a Picnic mini album tutorial – which by the way has 14 interactive pages so you’ll get 4 extra page designs if you purchase the tutorial!
So enjoy the video, and don’t forget to check out the close-ups below of the two Oh So Lovely cards I created with the same paper collection! 🙂
For those of you who celebrate it, have fun preparing for Valentine’s Day 🙂
Today I’m happy to share a tutorial with you all, of a sophisticated birthday card designed for a man. It’ll be great fun to make for all of you who, like me, don’t like to use any fluff when creating something for a guy. I always like to keep it clean and stylishly simple, and this time I’ve created the cleanest and simplest one yet of all of my projects for guys. 🙂
You can watch the show & tell video to see every detail of the card, so enjoy and have fun creating!
Tutorial
Let me know if you’d like me to do a (free) tutorial for this elegant card! (even years after this post is fine with me, just drop me line or leave a comment – I’m always in for new blog and/or video ideas 🙂 )
More detailed tutorials on a growing number of projects are available in my Etsy shop.
Recently I created my own storage box out of chipboard, which was great fun! Its dimensions are 22 x 17 x 7 cm (8⅝ x 6¾ x 2¾”), for that way it would hold all the memorabilia from my father’s funeral. Not just the loving condolances cards I received at the time (2014), but also the lyrics to the songs we played at the funeral, and the memorial prayer card. Since my father loved the ocean I chose a maritime theme and used the Summer at the Beach paper collection by Studio Light. This collection offers a great choice of 3D cut-apart sheets and diecut sheets, which is perfect for decorating and creating layouts.
This kind of box is also ideal as a gift box: you can personalize the theme and put the actual gift inside. Because of its dimensions, it’s perfect for a book or a daily planner or some such, for most of them will fit (please do measure the book you’d like to give first, and adapt your box measurements if necessary!). This is what I did with a second box I created for a friend: I chose Bo Bunny’s Garden Journal paper collection to decorate, and put a book inside for her.
In the video and pictures below I’m showing you both boxes: the maritime storage box as a memorial keepsake, and the spring-themed book gift box for my friend. As I said, they were great fun to make and if you’d like to create one yourself, there’s an affordable tutorial available in my Etsy shop!
Have fun creating, stay crafty!
Summer at the Beach paper collection by Studio Light
A so-called tri-shutter card is easy to make and almost always generates amazed and admiring responses. You can create them at different sizes and shapes (i.e. rectangular or square), simply by playing around with both the horizontal and vertical measurements of your cardstock.
Today I’m sharing a third variation: a birthday card for a golf player, using a Proper Gentleman paper by Graphic 45.
I fussy-cut an actual golf player from the paper and glued it to the left front panel, making sure the glof club was sticking out.
I also die-cut and embossed the first letter of the name of the guy to whom I was going to send it. I lightly went over it with some distress ink, to highlight the embossed parts.
I always use a light color for the central panel, to be able to write or stamp a message. In this case: Congratulations in Dutch.
When creating a card or other project for a guy, I always keep the embellishments at a minimum. No fuss for a man! 🙂
Sometimes it’s difficult to establish whether the male recipient of your card genuinely likes it for its own merits – for though he may truly appreciate and enjoy the gesture, he might still feel neutral at best about the esthetics of your work. Nevertheless, in this case I think the colleague who received this particular card actually deemed it quite likeable 🙂
So, hope you feel inspired for your first new cards in 2016. As I said this design is very easy to make. If you’d like to try it but don’t know how, check out my free video tutorial!
Next week’s video: Boxing Days – A chipboard storage or gift box to create yourself!
Recently I created my own storage box out of chipboard, which was great fun! Its dimensions are 22 x 17 x 7 cm (8⅝ x 6¾ x 2¾”), for that way it would hold all the memorabilia from my father’s funeral. Not just the loving condolances cards I received at the time (2014), but also the lyrics to the songs we played at the funeral, and the memorial prayer card. Since my father loved the ocean I chose a maritime theme and used the Summer at the Beach paper collection by Studio Light. This collection offers a great choice of 3D cut-apart sheets and diecut sheets, which is perfect for decorating and creating layouts.
