Here’s an idea for a birthday card for a man. It has style, is on trend, is magnetized, and there’s no girly fuss đ . As a bonus, it is fairly easy and quick to make!
Supply list
1 sheet of cardstock, A4 or 30.5 x 30.5 cm (12×12″)
1 double-sided sheet of design paper. I used the Dreamer collection by 7 Dots Studio, the sheet is called City Lights.
1 magnet, 1 washer/thin metal disc (or: 2 magnets)
2 brads
Kaisercraft birthday stamp
Stampendous birthday stamp
wet glue
double-sided tape
corner rounder or corner chomper
distress ink. I used Black Soot by Tim Holtz.
paper trimmer
scoring tool
bone folder
Tutorial
Feel free to let me know if youâd like me to do a (free) tutorial for this type of card! (even years after this post is fine with me, just drop me line or leave a comment â Iâm always in for new blog and/or video ideas đ )
More detailed tutorials on a growing number of projects are available in my Etsy shop.
Continuing from last week’s one-sheet-challenge, I came up with another challenge for myself – again, in the spirit of Spring and everything New đ
This time it was: How to Create Two Ring-bound Mini Albums out of Four Sheets of Design Paper (and some cardstock)
I don’t know about you but there are some paper collections I only ever bought a couple of sheets of. Like in my case, the Once Upon a Springtime collection by Graphic 45. (At the time I was so happy when I had managed to scavenge a few sheets of this wondrously lovely collection from the hidden corners of our local scrap shop. If only I had known they would reboot this entire collection all over again in 2015! đ )
Another example of owning only a few sheets of a particular paper collection: sometimes I’ve got some sheets leftover from some large project.
Well, what to do with these if you’re not in the mood for cards? Here’s what: create two adorable little minis, and create them in two versions: a photo version and a notebook version.
You’ll need only four 12×12″ sheets of double-sided design paper and eight sheets of A4 cardstock. Plus some embellishments, and of course some tools and crafting supplies.
These little albums are relatively easy and fairly quickly to make, and they make great gifts! For instance, I filled one with photos and gifted it to my mother for Easter. The other I turned into a birthday gift for a colleague, who would now have a great little notebook to keep in her purse, with still room for a few treasured pictures if she wishes.
Like this idea? Great, check out my video below! And if you’d like to create some yourself – admit it, you have several four-sheet-sets left in your stash!! – hop on over to my Etsy shop to get the tutorial! It will be available from April 8th, it has 37 pages and 99 pictures and guides you through the process of creating the mini albums step-by-step.
It’s springtime! đ Although it’s still pretty cold where I live here in the Netherlands, you can already feel a certain ‘softness’ in the air as days are lengthening and nature is preparing to wake up. I don’t know about you, but I’m totally game for spring!
And this year we’ll have a fairly early Easter. Normally I don’t send out any Easter cards (it’s simply not a Dutch tradition) but this year I felt like letting at least a couple of people know that I’m thinking about them and wish them some great times with the upcoming holiday.
I found this lovely sheet of paper by We R Memory Keepers, from their Cotton Tail collection, and it immediately took my thoughts to all the wonderful things that make up springtime and Easter.
So in the spirit of spring, I decided to design something new. I challenged myself to use only one piece of 12×12 inch cardstock for the construction of this card! Of course you will need some extra materials, but not a lot and the main items on that list are 1 extra sheet of cardstock for tags (A4 will suffice), and 1 sheet of 12×12 inch design paper. That’s about it! This design will enable you to create an elaborate and interactive card that is still quite affordable in terms of the supplies you need – awesome right?! đ
Also, this card is perfect for more than one sentiment and personalized message, it can function as a gift card holder and it will come in very handy as a vehicle for a group gift, when a group of people are giving one gift together.
And last but not least, you could also use it as a mini album page insert!
Good news: I’m making this design available to you all in my Etsy shop – and like the card itself this tutorial is also very affordable, so check it out!
And here’s the show & tell video, enjoy and let me know what you think!
If you want to try your hand at this interactive wallet card yourself, please check out the tutorial I wrote for you, which you can find in my Etsy shop.
NEWS flash: this tutorial is now also available in Dutch – email me if you’re interested! Plus, several card kits to make this particular card are now available as well! đ
Recently Jessica, a young lady from the USA whom I had never met before, contacted me via Youtube, proposing a project swap. I loved this idea, as well as the great spontaneity she showed with this initiative, and we agreed to a friendly card challenge. I set the theme, she added some parameters. So here’s the homework we gave ourselves:
Create an interactive, not too bulky wallet-type card around the theme Encouragement. The projects would have to be true to our individual styles and personalities. Extra criterium was to try and make the message to the other person as personal as we could – without us actually knowing eachother⌠So we’d have to find our inner Encourager, as it were. đ
So, in the video below you can check out what I came up with! This wallet card measures 5.75 x 5.75″ (14.5 x 14.5 cm) and is of my own design. It has pockets, tags, layered layouts and several interactive closures. It’s perfect for more than one sentiment and personalized message, it can function as a gift card holder and it will come in very handy as a vehicle for a group gift – when there are several personal messages by different people and/or gift cards needing to be tucked away into one awesome card đ
I used Kaisercraft’s Lady Rose collection, which is stunningly beautiful, feminine and timelessly on trend. Plus, it has some great and encouraging sentiment labels which fit this challenge perfectly!
And here’s the video of the card Jessica created for me! So thank you again Jessica, for your lovely card and your great initiative – an encouragement in and of itself! And for those of you who’d like to see what Jessica’s up to, check out her website, which you can find at AT2 Design.
Recently I found the most adorable baby scrapbook sheets while browsing through the clearance bin in my local scrap shop. They were from the Teddy Bear collection by K&Company, a collection I think is so old I can hardly find any information about it on the interwebs…
Naturally I decided I needed to have them đ and to be on the safe side I chose a third sheet from an entirely different collection that coordinated well with the other sheets. So when my cousin’s new son was born soon after, I was very happy to use this cutest-of-the-cute paperline and created an interactive card.
My goal was to let the design paper speak for itself: it was already so cute & cuddly in and of itself, it didn’t need any fancy layering or embellishing!
So here’s the card I designed.
This gatefold card is kept closed by a swing tab. To create the swing tab I fussy-cut one of the bears from the paper, backed it up with some cardstock and attached it to the card with a brad.
I chose a nail brad on purpose, hiding it in plain site by attaching it to the spot in which a teddy bear would normally have some kind of nail or screw to function as a hip joint – especially the really ancient models⌠đ Centered on the inside is a pocket. For some added interest and to really show off the paper I kept the ‘marching’ teddy bear intact, fussy-cutting around it rather than simply cutting the piece to size to mat the pocket.
Hiding inside the pocket is a little card-inside-a-card. First I matted this little card, then embellished it with two separate teddy bears that I fussy-cut from the design paper. Â
I lifted the smaller teddy with some dimensional tape.
I matted the back and stamped Handmade with love. This mat is actually from a fourth design paper collection: Romantic Nursery by Marianne Design. I left the inside plain so I could write a personal message.
I matted the back of the card with some button paper, which was the third sheet I found in the clearance bin. I thought it coordinated remarkably well with the two sheets of teddy bear paper!
I really enjoyed working with these three treasured sheets of design paper I found. What kind of projects have you created to show off a particular paper collection?
I created this paper bag album with Prima’s soft-colored, romantic Princess design paper. I added several Prima flowers from the Princess collection and others, did some die-cutting and used a cutapart sheet from the Delight collection, also by Prima. The one you see on the front of the album (see picture) I printed myself, choosing the sentiment, the font and font color and size. So you don’t need a stamp to add some sentiments, printing is a fine and very versatile alternative! (Tip!)
Of course there’s some of my scrap mats in there as well đ
Enjoy the video!
For the basic construction of this album I used a tutorial by Kathy Orta, which you can check out on Youtube. The construction of the spine is of my own design however.
You can check out my Christmas paper bag album here.
Sometimes people send me some photographs, maybe a picture of me and them during a party or a family event, or just a photo update of their little baby. And sometimes they use these pictures as cards – writing a personal message to me on the back. This doesn’t happen super often, but enough to make me want to store these pictures neatly together. Also, I’d like to preserve any notes or personal messages on the backs of these photos.
So I came up with a quick and easy design for a folio: thin, light-weight and without any photo mats since I wasn’t going to glue anything down. I just needed pockets that would fit 10 x 15 cm (4×6″) pictures, and I chose to create twelve – a number that would fairly easily fit onto two pages, keeping the folio super thin. Also, twelve is perfect if you wanted to do something like a year in review or baby’s first year, or some such.
I’m calling this design Loose Change, for it’s intended specifically for pictures you do not want to glue down, and want to change regularly.
This design of course enables you to preserve any hand-written notes on the backs!
I’m very pleased to share with you today a unique design that I recently finished. I’m calling it a Folio Album, and this particular one I dubbed Neverending Memories. It’s a great design that allows you to store (or take with you) your piece as a neat mini album (the album aspect of the folio album), while folding it out on your table when you want to showcase your photos in one fairly large but still very manageable overview (the folio part).
I used 17 sheets of 12×12″ decorative paper to create it, which keeps it well within range of one pack of design paper – keeping it reasonably affordable to create. I used the stunningly teal Winterbird design paper collection by Tilda. You’ll also need some cardstock of course, as well as some embellishments of your choice.
It’s somewhat easier to create than an actual mini album, since there’s no binding of pages, nor any chipboard that needs to be turned into an album cover & spine. I really enjoyed designing it, and had great fun creating it!
And:Â I went the extra mile and wrote a tutorial for you all đ . It has 120 pages and holds 430 pictures! You can check it out in my Etsy shop, where it’s offered as a direct download pdf file.
Have fun watching the video and let me know what you think!
Want to know what other people created with the tutorial? Check out the fanpage and see for yourself! đ
Some paper collections are gender neutral – or rather, as I’d like to call it, gender encompassing đ : fitting for both men and women, boys and girls. Certain themes will fit almost any occasion and any person, and nature would be one of those categories.
Bo Bunny’s Trail Mix is a fun design paper collection centered around the great outdoors. It has lots of wood, birds, flowers, trees and the coordinating Notepack die-cuts even offer wild animals! Trail Mix fits both male and female recipients of almost all ages and I have used it as such. The first project for which I used this paper was a little mini album for a ten-year-old boy. This tag card was created for a middle-aged (but young at heart đ ) woman.
Tag Card – show & tell with pictures
The front of the card shows a pocket with a punched border. It’s been matted, with a label from Bo Bunny’s Trail Mix Notepack die-cuts on top of that. The top corners of the card have been rounded with the Deco/Stub Corner Chomper by We R Memory Keepers.
The pocket holds a tag – which itself is a die-cut from the Trail Mix Notepack. The card itself has been matted with two pieces of decorative paper, for some added interest and color.
I printed the name of the recipient onto the tag. I added some details, by applying droplets of diamond glitter glue to the flowers on the tag. On the back of the tag I wrote my personal message to her.
The label on the pocket is lifted with some dimensional tape. I stamped the label “Speciaal voor jou” – which is Dutch for “Especially for you.”
Because my personal note was written on the back of the tag in the front pocket, I could mat the back of the card with some nice design paper from the collection.
I emphasized a ldetail in the pattern by tracing it with some Glossy Accents: a little bird, sitting on a tree branch.
What gender encompassing paper collections can you recommend?
Recently I went through my design paper supply (which has grown to quite the little stash) and stumbled upon Basic Grey’s Lucille paper pad. Lucille is a romantic paper with vintage fashion overtones, colorful but a little toned down and very sophisticated. A fabulous design paper, and I decided I instantly had to use it to create a mini album! đ
This 6 x 6.5″ pocketstyle mini album has 14 interactive layout pages, including the insides of both covers. The covers are chipboard with a reinforced binding for durability. The pages are constructed from multiple layers of heavy-weight cardstock and patterned papers. Features include large pull-out photo mats, special closures (like magnetic, or swing tabs), lots of flaps and pockets holding journaling tags and photo mats and much more! Details abound throughout this album such as punched borders, micro booklets, flowers, brads, specialty die-cuts, ribbon and trim, and specialty cut-aparts. There are 5 large pull-out photo mats and several flaps and tags inside with room for approx. 45-50 small and regular-sized photos.
And: I wrote a tutorial for those of you who’d like to make one yourselves – my first for a mini album! đ You can check it out in my Etsy shop.
Check out my baby version and Christmas version of this pocketstyle album design – their page design is not exactly the same, but they give you a pretty good idea of how different styles and colors would look. If you’d like to see a version with photos inside, check out my Ancestry mini album!
Anyway, enjoy the complete show & tell video, and have a great week!
Well, it wasn’t very long ago that I told you about my New Year’s resolution to open my own web store. At the time I thought it would take me at least a couple of months longer, and I was striving to get it up by March or April. But sometimes you surprise yourself by taking an unexpected leap forward – as in my case, for my Etsy shop is now up and running!
So woohooo! I’m a shop owner! đ
There’s not many product listings in it yet of course, only three to start with, since it’s only been up like a minute. One if which is a downloadable tutorial by the way, of my Explosion of Joy explosion box.
From now on I’ll be writing more tutorials, which is a time consuming process so I won’t be able to add one every week so to speak. However, I can promise you at least two more in the upcoming 2 months, with the third planned in March/April.
Anyway, I’m very excited of course, this is truly a new direction for me! Hopefully it’s the start of another great way to share my designs with you all and making them more available and accessible to those of you who wish to create your own projects but don’t know how đ
So here’s the video, with clear instructions on how to find my shop on your own – that is, if you haven’t bookmarked it after your first visit of course! đ
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This style of explosion box combines two of my previous styles of decorating: 1. designpaper only; 2. photos only.
This one makes for a great gift idea if you’re giving this as a group of people, like your entire family, or a group of colleagues – like in this case with this particular explosion box. For it has both design paper and photos, and a new element: several personalized messages, printed onto the design paper itself!
And by the way, there’s an explosion box tutorial available in my brand spanking new Etsy shop – called Creator’s Image Studio! đ This tutorial was based on the Explosion of Joy explosion box, but it resembles this one in most of the designs and techniques, so check it out in my Etsy shop!
I’ll post an “official” shop announcement video in my next blog of course, but I thought I might mention it now, since the first tutorial in the shop is on an explosion box đ .
So enjoy the video – please like if you do & feel free to leave a comment! And don’t forget to check out the explosion box tutorial in my Etsy shop!
