One of the ideas I’m considering for my blog and Youtube channel, is something I mentioned briefly in one of my recent videos, namely: to log my journey towards buying less papercraft stuff, and shopping my stash more instead.
Although 2021 will not be a No Buy year for me by any means – I’m also a paper collector after all 😉 – I still want to use more of what I already own, instead of growing my collection while never using it.
Well, we’ll see how it goes. Like I said, it’s a journey. 😉
Also, it gives me the opportunity to share the (joy of the) collecting side of papercrafting: how to store, categorize and most importantly keep track of everything my paper supply comprizes. I’m of course hoping this will be of some use to you too!
Anyway, here’s to the start of this new year for me, I hope you’ll accompany me on my travels for as long as you like 🥂 🙂
Anything specific you’d like me to show in my next posts? Let me know in the comments!
Most of us can’t go to our nail techs these days, so here’s a way to do some great nails yourself! You can do it straight onto your own (polished) nails, or if you have any falsies, use them instead.
For all of you who are anything like me and are in dire need of some quick, last-minute Christmas cards, I’m sharing four tips to create them!
In my previous post I already shared a step-by-step on how to make the cards in the above picture.
So to summarize: tip 1 is the regular papercraft way of card-making: create designs from cardstock, then mat each seperate part with design paper.
The next two pictures show tip 2: die-cut a sentiment or an image from specialty paper and stick it onto a mixed media background. Then mat on top of cardstock.
With holographic paperWith glitter paper
Here are the materials I used for both of the above backgrounds:
Tip 3: create a mixed media background, but don’t use it as a background. Instead, die-cut something from it and stick it onto some white cardstock. Clean. Simple. Elegant.
Tip 3: Mixed media die-cut on white cardstock
These are the sprays I used for these:
Tip 4 is of course a mixed media die-cut on a mixed media background. Add some glitter accents if you like.
Bonus tip: if you’re not a mixed media kind of crafter, you can use design paper instead! This will give you the same elegant and sophisticated effect, both on white cardstock and on design paper.
Now off you go, hurry up with those last-minute Christmas cards! 🙂
A relatively quick and easy way to create Christmas cards is using mixed media techniques. For this week’s card I first created an inked background, then I die-cut from other pieces of inked paper. This week I’m sharing step by step how to do it.
Keep in mind that although there are quite a few steps, it all takes very little time. For instance, to create the background, you simply spray some ink and let it dry. If you use a drying tool like Ranger’s heat tool, this will take you about 10 minutes. And so on, and so forth. So enjoy!
Step by step
Create some backgrounds. I used two A5-sized papers and two A6-sized papers, both mixed media cardstock. I used three different sprays in what I felt was a “Christmas color range”, two by Tim Holtz and one by Dylusions.
The technique I use for this is: I spray one piece of cardstock, then press it onto a second piece of cardstock of the same size. You now get a nice blend, get the most out of your inks (it’s used for double the surface area) and a fun bonus is that they are eachother’s mirror images.
A5 size: 15 x 21 cmA6 size: 10.5 x 15 cm
Intermezzo: You can now either go on with the step by step below, or you can layer the smaller cards on top of the larger ones and decorate:
2. Die-cut an image or a large sentiment from one of your inked backgrounds. I used the Layered Pine Trees by Tim Holtz. Play around with the placement of the dies, to get a nice colorplay.
3. Fussy-cut around the edges of one of the holes your die left, to get a bonus decoration.
4. Glue the first die-cut to one of your larger backgrounds to get the placement you like. Then die-cut a sentiment from the same piece of inked background, place it below the decoration (or wherever you like basically 😉 ).
The way I placed the elements, on the right, offers the possibility to now fold my card in half and have a beautifully inked double card.
5. In the end however I decided to simply cut it in half, doubling the number of inked backgrounds I had (I did the same with the other large background).
6. If applicable: layer your elements. Then add glitter to your liking.
7. Glue all elements to your background. You have now created a nice piece to mat onto any cardstock you like.
Done!
If you want to see how I used the other Christmas-colored backgrounds I showed above, check out my next post! 🙂
For my first batch of 2020 Christmas cards I planned on scrapping up an entire 6×6 inch paper pad and make 7 cards in the style I showed in my previous blog post.
To that end I have a tip for you: to avoid being overwhelmed by an entire pad, just rip out all of the sheets and make little 3-sheet stacks – for you’ll need 3 sheets for each card (plus some cardstock of course).
In the end I made only one card in the style I planned; then I went with the creative Flow and made five more cards, all in their own unique styles. Oh well, plans are made to be thrown out right.
The point being, don’t let those pesky little paper pads get the advantage – you’re the boss, so rip them apart and use every single last one of those lovely sheets. You go!
It’s that time of the year again, time flies even if you’re not having as much fun as you hoped for… It has been a bizarre year indeed, so we have perhaps even more reason to spread some color and joy by sending out beautiful handmade Christmas cards 🎄
To help you kick off you holiday crafting, let’s start with a lovely yet easy card design. You only need 2 pieces of cardstock (each a different color) and 1 sheet of 12×12 inch design paper.
One of the cardstock pieces will be your card base: cut to 6×12″ and fold in half. I chose a bright yellow. Use the other cardstock piece to be the first layer to mat on the front, back and inside; for this I chose green.
Now cut three mats from the design paper, and mat on top of the cardstock mats – so we’re double-matting. I worked with a sheet from the red, yellow & green Christmas Treats collection by Piatek.
Decorate the front any way you please and go as dimensional as you like; me, I was contented with simply showcasing this beautiful paper. I only added to things: a die-cut Christmas wish (for which I used the B-side of my double-sided design paper); and I went around the edges with glitter glue. I always use Ranger’s Stickles for that, these are simply the best I’ve encountered on the market.
You can decorate on the inside as well of course, but keep two things in mind: don’t go bulky, for otherwise your card won’t close anymore; and leave at least some room to write your Christmas wishes 🙂
On the inside I added two different pieces of washi tape and some blings, in the bottom right corner
I never decorate the back of my cards, but I always mat them, and often with lovely papers that could easily have gone on the front too!
So, I hope you feel inspired to start making your Christmas cards as well! Next time I’ll show you how to easily use up an entire 6×6″ paper pad to create a bunch of them (with a video!). 🧑🏼🎄
With the current year nearing its close – and what a bizarre year that has been – I’m considering some new ideas for my blog and Youtube channel. Counting the fact that we haven’t been able to go out shopping and hunting for new craft collections on the one hand, and given the fact that many of us may have lost (part of) our incomes, I figured next year might be a No Buy Year for me, as far as craft supplies are concerned. Or, to be more realistic, at least a Buy Less Year.
Shopping my stash would be a great way to go about that, being that by now my stash probably rivals the inventories of many a small “Craft Shoppe” (sorry, not sorry).
So to give that a try before dedicating an entire year to it, I shopped my stash for my latest mini album. What I found was an almost forgotten treasure: TheSweetest Thing – Lavender collection by My Mind’s Eye. I only had ten design paper sheets, a couple of brads and a journalling card, but I decided to make do and use them all. I also borrowed a chipboard piece from a different collection and threw in an bunch of flowers and some feathers for good measure.
And here’s what I created: a sweet little two-page album in landscape mode! Tutorial available for all of you stash-shoppers with probably many a ten-sheet paper collection 🙂
And should you find mostly 12-sheet collections in your own stashes, that’s no problem at all: either add an extra album page, or simply add more photo mats/tags/booklets.
Enjoy! And please leave a comment: will you be shopping your stash more the coming weeks/months?
This week I’m sharing a tip to make the most out of your precious (and often quite expensive!) design papers: use up as much of your leftover scraps as you can and turn them into a new project, in this case a card.
Here are the scraps and leftovers I worked with…
…doesn’t look like much does it? And yet, with some simple techniques and a little bit of creativity you can still make something lovely from them.
So here’s to never having to throw away your leftovers ever again! (unless you want to 😉 )
If you look at Papermania’s Nature’s Gallery collection you may think ‘spring’ or ‘summer’, but it definitely also gives me ‘muted fall colors’ vibes.
So when a group of colleagues asked me to create a ‘nature-themed album’ for a colleague who is retiring this month, I immediately suggested this collection.
They wanted a brag book for about 10-20 pictures and with 15 tags – one for each colleague to write a ‘waving goodbye’ message. So I created a 2-page mini album of about 7×10 inches, which looks elegant and sophisticated – yet is quite thin.
If you want to see it in different colors, check out my earlier version in bold autumn colors here.
There’s an easy to follow tutorial waiting for you in my Etsy shop, should you want to make some yourself! (They’d make great Thanksgiving or Christmas gifts 🙂 )
Enjoy the video and feel free to leave a comment in the comment section, either here or on Youtube!
I already knew you could stamp over a painted or inked background. But what if you want to stamp a light color, like white or cream, and you don’t have opaque inks? You could stamp with paint of course, but what if you want that grungy blended color gradient effect? Stamping with (white) paint over an inked background would only give you clear and harsh boundaries between the stamped image and the background.
Fortunately there is a third way, which I’m sharing today in my blog. I got it from one of Tim Holtz’s demos by the way, so check out his blog if you want to see and hear him demo it.
Step by step
Apply a relatively thin acrylic paint to your stamp, like Distress Paint. Or, use some water to thin your regular acrylic paint. Now, be very quick to stamp it onto an empty background tag, because once the paint dries on your stamp, you won’t get the paint off any longer, for it will dry permanent…
Once the paint is dry, ink up your tag with some water-based inks and make an inked background. I picked the six colors of Ranger’s Distress ink you see in the picture above, and used a blending tool. Simply blend over the stamped parts: the paint will work as a resist for water-based inks, so your stamped image will appear through the ink! This works particularly well with darker colors of ink.
3. Now you can use regular ink, like some Archival ink, in a darker color to stamp other images over your background.
In the top right corner you can see I used cream-colored Distress paint, but this time not on a stamp but through a stencil. This gives the same resist effect when you ink over it with water-based inks. I even used water-based ink through an alphabet stencil over it, and the paint resisted that too.
The Archival ink I used for the large typewriter-script stamp on the other hand is oil-based, so it did cover the Distress Paint. This is a great and easy way to play around with layers of colors and patterns and add some extra dimension.
Alphabet stencil: water-based ink is resisted by the cream-colored paint, so diamond pattern still on top. Script stamp: oil-based ink covers everything, and is NOT resisted by paint, so diamond pattern is covered by the script pattern.
Below is the end result I reached – for now; some day I may add a sentiment or die-cut or some dimensional decorative element, should I decide I’m going to use it as a card and send it out. But for now I’m very pleased with it as is!
Although I’m a bit of a design paper collector and like to have a lot of choice when deciding which project to create next, I’m also a frugal crafter. I simply don’t like to throw away design paper that could still be used.
But if you only have like one piece of paper left of any substance, the question may rise what to make with it. This week’s post is all about that: I had one piece of design paper of about 4×12″ (10 x 30 cm) left over from my Harmonica Micro Album, plus some small snippets.
Here’s what I created with it – and you can create it with me.
If you want to learn how to work with alcohol inks, I can highly recommend watching Tim Holtz’s demos on his blog. After which: start practising!
A great starter kit would be a pack of Yupo papers, at least 2 colors of alcohol ink, and a high percentage alcohol. If your budget allows it: add Ranger’s Blending Solution too, for it will offer you some more options when working with the inks.
I have to say these inks are fun to work with, the colors are vibrant and their fluidity is quite different from dye inks or spray inks; it seems a lot thinner and it ‘flows’ differently. You can use a hairdryer to move them around on your paper, or some kind of hand air pump like Ranger‘s Alcohol Ink Air Blower or JoyCrafts’ Ink Blower.
JoyCrafts Air blower for alcohol inks
Personally, I use Tim Holtz’s Distress Marker Spritzer Tool – remember that one? It was designed for something different but it’s also a great alcohol ink blower!
Lastly, you can even blow through a straw – but be careful, for you’ll get dizzy extra quickly due to the alcohol vapors…
Next to blowing your inks around, you can also use an ink blending tool (with a felt piece instead of a foam piece) and dab-dab-dab – either with inks, or blending solution, or a mixture of both. Add some high percentage alcohol to the mix to get even more effects.
Ink blending tools can be bought from several companies, Ranger among others.
Speaking of substrates: always use a non-porous surface. I used Yupo (a plastic ‘paper’) and also a gessoed craft tag. Ranger‘s Alcohol Ink papers are of course also very suitable. Whatever substrate you use, each will have its own unique properties so it’s useful – and fun – to experiment a lot!
Below you’ll find my first set of such experiments:
Craft tag (cardstock) – gesso – alcohol inks – pearl mixative – blending solution – 99% isopropyl alcohol:
What about you? Have you tried alcohol inks yet? Or perhaps you’re an advanced alcohol ink artist? Let me know and share your story in the comments below!
