Sometimes we’re surprised by an invitation from a friend to come celebrate something with her. Like in this case, my friend invited me to dinner in her new house – that same evening! So I needed a quick card that wouldn’t take me the whole day to finish. The Tilda Winterbird cards & tags pad offered just the right solution, I embellished one of the cards while following the original pattern of the card itself, simply adding texture and dimension.
Most of the flowers and other embellishments are from nameless brands in my stash, but two of them are by Prima Marketing: the rose in the right hand corner is from Prima’s Rondelle collection; the larger cream flower just above that is from their Songbird collection.
A short while ago I created a Christmas mini album, using Kaisercraft’s ‘Tis the Season paper pad. Of course I had some scraps left over and I put them to good use, creating another one of my micro albums. And it’s turned out very cute – especially when you see it next to its ‘big sister’! 🙂
Of course there are a lot of my scrap mats in this little micro, and you can check out my tutorial on those if you want to try your hand at them as well.
Enjoy the video!
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This past year has been my first “full” year of paper crafting: it all started with the calendar I created for my mother back in November 2012, which seriously infected me with the “paper crafting virus” 🙂 . It has been a year of wonderful creativity and I’m very grateful for the many new techniques (new to me, at least…) I’ve been able to learn. Looking forward to 2014, I’m hoping to plan my craft projects more around the different seasons: not just taking into account the uniquely different feel of winter-spring-summer-autumn, but also bringing some of the holiday seasons into the mix. Not with every single project of course, I mean, sometimes you just want to use a certain design paper because it’s simply too gorgeous not to 🙂 – but generally speaking I feel it should be doable.
So, starting right now, at the end of 2013, I’m very happy to present you all with my very first Christmas mini album!
I used the Tis the Season paper collection by Kaisercraft and inked around all the edges with Vintage Photo distress ink by Tim Holtz. I’ve also incorporated some so-called scrap mats again, a technique I actually came up with (and named) myself. If you want to know how to make them, feel free to check out my tutorial!
If you’d like to know how such an album would look with pictures in it, check out the pictures underneath the video PLUS the 2017 update here! 🙂
Right, ’nuff said, on to the video!
Inside front cover – decorated this time, plus a picture (of little me 🙂 ) added to the photo mat:
Die-cutting the picture and finishing its edges with glitter glue adds interest to your photo mat! I also stamped the year in the lower right corner, in copper-colored ink:
A couple of blogposts ago I published my tutorial for a tri-shutter card. Since I’ve now sent out all my Christmas cards, it’s time to show you this holiday season’s version of a tri-shutter card – plus, how I made good use of the leftover scraps, as usual :-). Hopefully to inspire!
The paper I used was Holly Jolly by My Mind’s Eye. Enjoy!
Here’s five lovely Christmas paper stacks, a demo to inspire your Christmas holiday crafting wish list :-). (You will be able to watch yet a sixth – My Mind’s Eye’s Holly Jolly paper pad – when I’ll post my Christmas card video, probably next week).
So, enjoy your holiday shopping in your local craft store or on the interwebs!
It’s that time of the year again – we’re preparing to send out our Season’s Greetings to all of our family and friends. So I did some research on the web and studied different kinds of homemade cards. The type of card that I chose checked all the boxes for me: you can use one template to create lots of unique cards; each card doesn’t take you more than one hour to create; you can decorate approx. 20 cards with one 6×6 inch paper pad to keep things cost effective.
Of course I’m sharing this with you all, so you can get some production going on your own homemade Christmas cards! The video below takes you through my tutorial for a so-called trishutter card. I’m showing you the finished products in a future blog post however, since I don’t want to give away any spoilers to the cards’ recipients ;-). There is a tiny little sneak peak in the video however…
Although at the moment designing and creating mini albums, cards and altered objects are my main focus when it comes to paper crafting, I really like the occasional mini (or even micro) booklet as well. This one for instance, with its 1 5/8 x 2 1/4 inches (4,3×5,7 cm) is the tiniest I’ve created yet. And it still has pockets & tags! 🙂
I used Madeline design paper by Prima Marketing, the same as with my Madeline cinch mini. This would also make it a great companion piece to this mini, for instance as an alternative birthday card.
So please enjoy the two-minute video!
By the way, in the video I refer to my Bohemian Bazaar mini booklet – which you van check out in more detail in my blogpost on the Bohemian Bazaar mini album.
Want to create your own micro booklet? Then check out my tutorial on this blog!
Here’s a little tutorial on how I make so-called ‘scrap mats’. This is what I call the photo mats that I create from leftover scraps of design paper.
You see the thing is, I just like to use up as much of my design paper as I can – I guess it’s a combination of enjoying as much of a particular paper stack as possible on the one hand, and frugality on the other. I mean, you’d be surprised how much photo mat real-estate the right combination of scraps generates! (What can I say, I’m just weird that way 😉 )
Meanwhile, the results have been quite cool, imho. So check it out and find out how to create these mats yourself!
So what if it’s not Father’s Day anytime soon! I just wanted to give my dad a special card, just to let him know I love and appreciate him, and I was going to do it right now. 🙂
My father loves his nature, flowers and animals, so I took a sheet of cream-colored A4 paper, added a couple of pieces of the perfectly fitting Flora and Fauna design paper and got to work! Oh, and also, I harvested some of the pears and apples growing in my garden so as to make a cute autumn harvest basket for my dad. Needless to say, he loved it!
I’m so excited to share my latest project with you all! As you may have noticed in some of my previous posts, I have a “thing” for creating mini booklets. Not just because they’re cute, but also because it’s a nice way to use leftover scraps of paper. Recently I decided to take it to the next level and I came up with a full-blown micro album! 🙂 By which I mean the perfect miniature version of a mini album I had created previously. And I’m so very pleased with the result!
So here’s my Little Miss micro album. As a bonus, I added a “scene” to the video featuring its big sister, my Little Miss mini album. 🙂
What do you do with the sheets and scraps of design paper you have left over?
When my mother saw the Butterflies & Stars keepsake album I had recently designed for a friend, she immediately commissioned one herself, as a present for her cousin. There are some differences between the two albums though. For instance, this Flora and Fauna album is somewhat larger than its predecessor; the designs of both its base pages and its cover pieces are different as well.
All in all it took 21 sheets of A4 cardstock for the construction of the pages and tags and about 23 sheets of double-sided design paper (12×12 inches). For the cover I took two 12×12 inch pieces of cardboard, created five unique pieces and arranged them just so.
Two pieces of linen bookcloth strengthen the folds of both spines. The magnets I used for the closure are by Basic Grey, they’re absolutely the strongest crafting magnets I could find!
My mother’s cousin is a dear 80-year-old who loves her garden and everything in it, so my mother wanted somewhat of a “garden theme with little birds and bees and butterflies”.
Fortunately K&Company’s gorgeous Flora and Fauna design paper was already eagerly awaiting me in my stash, begging me to be used – and the very pale lavender color of the cardstock turned out to be the perfect combination. I also used some of the matching embellishments and design elements that go along with this paper – which I’ll show you in de video.
Anyway, long story short, the keepsake album turned out rather beautifully and I’m more than happy with it myself. If you’d like to create an album like this yourself, check out the tutorial for my Springtime Dreams Keepsake Album, for it has the same basic page design!
Rondelle collection
Songbird collection
