Here’s a nice little mini photo wallet gift card I designed for a friend’s birthday. Along the way it turned into sort of an alternative to sending someone a bunch of flowers – sort of, with a huge wink. 😉
I used a 6×6 inch (15×15 cm) paper stack called Sweet Threads by Basic Grey, which has lovely colors.
Click here if you don’t see the video below.
Hieronder ook de Nederlandstalige video.
Also, check out my alternative version here!
So I decoupaged some Easter eggs a couple of days ago. Saturday, the day before Easter, I decided I definitely needed some candles to go with them. So, here they are!
I used the same napkin technique, only this time with different glue of course, in order to be able to light them safely. It’s a special candle podge, which will prevent your napkins from catching fire – instead, they’ll neatly melt along with your candle. Perfect.
So, here’s the three decoupaged candles, and my springtime living room to match! 🙂
Dutch translation:
Drie geservette kaarsen in Paas-/lentethema zorgen voor extra kleur en gezelligheid! Let op: om kaarsen te servetten moet je wel speciale lijm gebruiken om ongelukken te voorkomen (zie foto hierboven).
I don’t know about you, but I don’t like to throw away my lovely scrapbook paper. Not even the smallest pieces! No doubt there’s lots of creative things to be done with them, I just haven’t figured all of them out yet 😉
But: here’s one!
Click here if you can’t see the video below.
Klik hier als je geen filmpje ziet.
Een beetje scrapper vindt het niet leuk om papier weg te gooien en zou het liefst alles bewaren, ook de kleinste stukjes. Dan is het wel handig om wat ideetjes achter de hand te hebben voor wat je dan met die snippers zou kunnen doen. De meeste ervan moet ik zelf ook nog uitvinden, maar hier is er alvast eentje!
Walking you through these lovely design & specialty paper stacks by K&Company.
To save some time and – hopefully – keep it interesting, I fast-forwarded several video segments. Although this did indeed speed up the process, it also seems to have increased some of the instability in the video – My apologies!
Opnieuw een gezellige papierdemo, zodat je beter kunt inschatten of je het wilt hebben 😉
Excuses voor het hier en daar onrustige beeld – om toon en tempo vlot te houden heb ik sommige stukken permanent vooruitgespoeld; pas na afmonteren zag ik dat het beeld daardoor ook instabieler werd.
Usually I don’t decorate my Easter eggs – assuming there are any Easter eggs in my house at all, which isn’t necessarily the case each year, I simply buy them in the color I want. This year however, when I bought myself some eggy Easter branch ornaments after all, I decided to decorate the few white ones.
I used yellow and two shades of pink, since at the moment gold, yellow and pink (of the vintage kind, like Tim Holtz’s Tattered Rose distress ink that you can see in my explosion card post) are the colors I’d already decorated my living room with.
There were four white Easter eggs in the stash that I bought, in three different sizes. I decorated them by applying the napkin technique and adding some gold stickles, and here’s the results!
By the way, I found some mirror-imaged stickers with a cute spring theme – and I decided couldn’t not use them: how often do we find mirror-imaged stickers right? So, I stuck them onto a piece of card board with a small piece of thread to create a loop. Then I added a little gold stickle on a few spots. And lo and behold: Yet Another Easter Ornament to hang from my “tree” (which is actually a lamp, as I’m sure you’ve already noticed from the picture above).
Dutch translation:
Tot nu toe versierde ik nooit paaseieren – als ik überhaupt al paaseieren in huis had. Dit jaar vond ik echter een paar mooie, makkelijk op te hangen paaseieren, van het een kwam het ander en ineens hing mijn multifunctionele staande lamp vol. Deze lamp staat er normaalgesproken bij als een soort populier, met de takken helemaal omhoog, en doet verder alleen dienst als kerstboom (takken helemaal uitgevouwen). Vanaf dit voorjaar heeft ie een nieuwe functie: de Paasboom, met de takken ergens halverwege populier en kerstboom!
Er zaten een paar witte eitjes tussen de gekleurde en ik besloot om die dan toch maar te gaan versieren. Ze waren van kunststof en verven werd me te ingewikkeld (moet je eerst weer gaan primen en zo). Daarom koos ik voor de servettechniek. Omdat de rest van mijn woonkameraccessoires ook geel, goud en oud-roze zijn heb ik servetten in geel en twee tinten roze gebruikt. En vervolgens afgewerkt met gouden glitterlijm.
Hierboven het resultaat!
Season’s greetings!
Wishing you all a glorious Easter, reflected each spring in the lovely colors the Lord paints our beautiful Earth with, celebrating the New Life conquered for us by Jesus’s death and resurrection! (in case you forgot Easter’s true meaning due to all the distractions of Easter eggs & bunnies 😉 )
I tried to capture a fraction of this colorful Glory in this picture, which I edited with Paintshop Pro XI. Of course featuring one of my very own top model guinea piggies – her name is Queen Ester, and isn’t she gorgeous! 🙂 (Meanwhile, she’s grown into a curly-haired beauty)
Enjoy a blessed Easter!
Je zou het niet zeggen, maar het is Lente! Tijd om te genieten van de mooie voorjaarskleuren waarmee God onze aarde elk jaar schildert, kleuren die het Nieuwe Leven uitdrukken dat Jezus voor ons heeft veroverd door Zijn dood en opstanding! (voor het geval je door alle paaseieren en paashazen de echte betekenis van Pasen vergeten was 😉 )
Ik heb een fractie van die kleurenpracht proberen te vangen in deze bewerkte foto, bewerkt met Paintshop Pro XI – met in de hoofdrol trouwens een echt caafje, mijn eigen Queen Ester! (Inmiddels uitgegroeid tot een prachtige langharige dame)
Ik wens iedereen een vrolijk en gezegend Pasen!
Although a t-shirt is not necessarily a fashion statement in and of itself, you still want it to express something of your unique personality. Sometimes the shirts that wait for you in your local fashion shop just won’t do. They are either ridiculously expensive ($70,= for what in the end still is a t-shirt?!) or they have a silly image, logo or text that simply doesn’t appeal to you at all.
That is why now and then I customize, by choosing or creating an image to my own liking and having it printed on a shirt, hoodie or tank top.
Of course a holiday picture or a photo of my family wouldn’t do, but… there are other options. How about picking a painting or piece of art that you like – or better yet: created yourself – or a text that you love, or, like me, scenes from your favorite comics!
So here’s six pieces of clothing that I had customized, plus two more that I did myself. I edited every image by giving them nice frames, and sometimes blending them with another image or adding a different background. Then I had them printed on pieces of clothing.
Black hoodie + black t-shirt
Green Lantern comics fans will recognize the picture I used here as the logos of each of the Lantern corps (except the Black). Being an ardent comics fan, I’m very pleased with how this one turned out and I actually wear this thing a lot – and I never wear hoodies! 🙂
Again a Green Lantern theme, although more subtle than the previous one: the Green Lantern logo blended with a fantasy landscape, which I did with Paintshop Pro XI:
White t-shirt 1
A scene from Nonplayer this time – with digitally customized borders – this is such a fan-tas-tic comic I don’t know where to begin to describe it! (apologies for the frumpy look: I searched and searched for this darned little tee, and finally recovered it – from the laundry hamper! :oops:)
White t-shirt 2
Back to Green Lantern, with a view from Odym:
Black t-shirt
An underwater action shot from Fathom:
(image from the website’s cart right before I ordered)
The print turned out nice enough even though the colors were too blue, but the shirt itself wasn’t quite as lovely as shown on the site, due to its straightness and lack of waist. Bummer. So there’s a risk when ordering online…
White t-shirt 3 – bought a white shirt in a store, then took it to a sportswear printing company and mailed them the image. This turned out to be one of the cheaper options, although I had to drive there twice (once to deliver my shirt to them, the second time a couple of days later to pick it up).
This image is from Seven Warriors (a great comic!), which I edited by giving it some customized borders with Paintshop Pro XI, creating the “wiping” effect you can see here:
Of course there is always an alternative option:
D.I.Y.!
Use your home printer to print your image on special photo transfer paper, cut it to size (following the image borders as close as you can!) and then simply iron it onto your t-shirt.
This is relatively cheap, but I consider this more of a one-time-use solution because usually after only one or two laundry sessions your image will start to crack or fade, or both.
The examples below show pictures of two of the guinea pigs from my caviary, that I digitally gave new backgrounds; I usually wear these only once or twice a year, when I go to a cavy show ;-):
So who says that customizing your t-shirt is only for family happenings or company team building sessions?! Be your own unique self and start customizing those boring white t-shirts in your closet!
There’s more than one way to present someone with a bottle of wine. There’s gift bags and gift boxes, and then there’s the altered wine box!
Like this one below, one of my very first napkin technique projects – when I was still taking my first steps in this undiscovered decoupage country. Meanwhile, I’ve learned a lot more about the possibilities of designing with this technique, but I’ve yet to alter my second wine box. So, just to give you an idea of the sheer endless possibilities, here are some pictures of my first.
In addition to the napkin technique I painted this particular wine box with a color I mixed myself. Again, this opens even more possibilities. To think at the time I didn’t even know the half of designing your own decorations – and I’m learning still more with every project!
For this box I chose a theme with boats and water since I had a man in mind as the recipient. This colleague was pleasantly surprised by the original gift by the way! (I also put a bottle of wine in there of course) 😉
Here’s an alternative for an explosion box that I came up with – which will come in handy if you want to send it over the mail!
The paper I used was Sweet Threads 6×6 inch design stack by BasicGrey. I distressed the paper with “tattered rose” distress ink by Ranger (Tim Holtz) – which looks something like vintage pink. Or – a tattered rose, if you will 😉
Just make sure you put something inside the card that will create enough tension to make the card “explode”. Like the cute little baby socks I sent to a very happy pregnant couple!
Click here if you can’t see the video below.
Klik hier als je de video hieronder niet kunt zien.
Dutch translation
Deze uitklapkaart heb ik bedacht als handig alternatief voor de zgn. Explosion Box (een bijzonder type kadokaart), vooral als je het iemand over de post wilt toesturen!
Je hoeft alleen maar te zorgen dat het kadootje dat je erin doet genoeg papierspanning veroorzaakt om de kaart open te laten springen. Zoals de schattige babysokjes die ik hier heb gebruikt! Zorg er hoe dan ook voor dat het kadootje dat je in de kaart stopt voldoende papierspanning veroorzaakt, anders springt hij niet open en is het een gewone uitvouwkaart. Een goed voorbeeld van wat werkt zijn de superschattige babysokjes die ik heb gebruikt!
Het papier is Sweet Threads 15×15 cm, van BasicGrey. Het papier heb ik gedistressed met distress ink van Ranger (Tim Holtz), in de kleur “tattered rose” – wat zoiets betekent als gehavende roos en in feite gewoon een vorm van oud-roze is 😉
I’d had my eye on this one for a while before I bought it – and when it finally was a couple of days on sale I made sure to make the most of it: I bought not one but two sheets of each gorgeous design. This way I won’t have to choose between using either the front or the back sides: I can simply use them all! 🙂
Enjoy another one of my Paper Walkthroughs!
Now and then I will showcase some of the paper stacks that I use, or plan to use in the future, for all of you who consider buying some beautiful paper but can’t make out enough details of these tiny thumbnails they show you everywhere. I don’t know about you, but I always like to know what I’m buying, and I’m happy to share what I’ve already found out.
So here’s the first of what I’ll call my Paper Walkthroughs!
Click here if you don’t see the video below.
Dutch: Af en toe zal ik door een van mijn eigen papierblokjes heenlopen, zodat je beter kunt bepalen of je het eventueel ook wilt gaan gebruiken. Daar heb je waarschijnlijk meer aan dan aan die piepkleine fotootjes op internet.
Klik hier als je de video hieronder niet kunt zien.
— Nederlandstalige video onderaan!
To this day I’m not quite sure what, in “scrapbooking speak”, exactly counts as a mini album; based on what I’ve seen so far, I tentatively conclude that it means something like “any photo album smaller than 12×12 inch (or 30×30 cm)” – which is the standard size for the design paper stacks we all love so much. This of course would automatically mean that virtually every photo album we make is called a “mini album” even if it’s 11×11 inch, the logic of which escapes me somewhat – but since I haven’t yet found any proof to the contrary, I’m sticking to this definition. 😉
Anyway! On to the album! Excuse me, mini album. 🙂
I was inspired by one of Kathy Orta’s mini albums, added some of my own ideas and together with the gorgeous Couture paper stack by SEI it led to a pretty nice result. But don’t take my word for it, see for yourself. And by all means, let me know what you think!
Click here if you don’t see the video below.
Hieronder de Nederlandstalige video. Klik hier als je niks kunt zien.
