New Design: Medium-sized Gatefold Album

My latest gatefold mini album isn’t as large as all of my previous ones; in fact it’s a very decent carry-on size of 14.5 x 15.3 cm (5Âū x 6”). I chose Bo Bunny’s summer-colored Serendipity collection, which is full of birds, feathers & nests, but with kind of a twist.

Also, this time I didn’t just mat the pages; I worked with lots of photo mats, which I blended with design papers while creating my own page mosaics. Use repositional tape for the photo templates, so you can easily remove them and replace them with pictures of exactly the same shape and size.

This one is a fun one again: it only takes three page assemblies to make it, but with lots and lots of page flaps, pockets and tuck spots! Of course there’s a tutorial for all of you who’d like to create and customize your own. Bonus: you get a free cutting guide with all of the photo templates and mats I used, so if you want you can completely imitate my photo mosaics – though of course you can design your own too! (or create more than one and utilize both techniques 🙂 ).

My First Corner Pop-up Card

I always like 3D cards that will fit into regular envelopes. I don’t know, it’s the mystery of it I guess – I mean, how is such a thing even possible? 🧐ðŸĪŠ

This week’s corner pop-up card was great fun to make, and my aunt was really happy with it! I used Scrapberry’s Happily Ever After papers, in lovely lavenders, pinks and lime greens.

Oh, and this was another ‘first time’ for me, for I got my green screen and immediately played around with it – not actually knowing enough yet of course, which is why the green parts of my card turned out transparent and I had to skip the cool backgrounds in the actual demo part! Oh well, I’ll live.

Craft With Me: A Layered Spring Card

When time constraints are plaguing you and you still want to send out a lovely handcrafted card, try only decorating the front. And layer to your heart’s desire!
Keep the bulk down though, if you want it to fit in its envelope.

This week’s card was created with papers & punch-outs by Studiolight and some leaf dies by Crealies. I also used two of the latest Stickles glitter glue colors.

Layering is mostly about two things:

  • Placement of elements
  • The order in which to glue everything down.

In this week’s video I’m letting you into my ‘craft kitchen’ so you can craft with me. Enjoy!

Flower Pot Box Card

This year’s Mother’s Day is kinda strange – with the corona lockdown situation and all – so even if you never send out any Mother’s Day cards, this year you will have to make an exception! Never have our mothers deserved some encouragement with a beautiful card more than now – so come on, get your craft on and make her this fun card.

What I’m sharing with you this week is a variant of the box card. It’s slightly different from the regular box cards, the same basic technique but still some new crafty tricks are required – which will offer a nice new challenge. And because it’s Mother’s Day during these lockdown times, I’m offering this special variant guide for free, as a bonus with my Box Card tutorial #26!

You can find my box card tutorial – including the free bonus cutting guide & instructions for this variant! – in my shop, it’s already waiting for you. Think about all those lovely papers in your stack; you know, the ones your mother told you she loved. And you only need 1 sheet of cardstock to make this anyway. So what’s the big deal, just go ahead and check it out. You know you want to 😉 .

Dear Diary Gatefold Album + Bonus Project

If you’re in the mood for a larger project, I’ve got just the thing for you! 🙂 For here’s my latest design, a gatefold mini album with a small box pocket and a bonus project, a mini folio!

If you’re going to work many hours you should choose the loveliest papers you can find, for you’ll be looking at them for quite some time 😉 My choice this time was the Dear Diary collection by Mintay Papers. Very lovely indeed.

So, enjoy the show & tell video, and of course some pictures below. Tutorial available!

Free: Mailable Mini Album Tutorial

Back in February I shared one of my Mailable Mini Album designs, and invited you to let me know if you’d like me to do a tutorial. Well, you guys let me know 🙂

So, here it is, enjoy!

Easter encouragements

Usually I don’t send out Easter cards, but this week I decided I would, because of these strange times we live in. After all, we can all use some spring-themed cards with some encouraging words.

So here are my five cards (one more than I’m sharing in the video!), created with the Easter Greetings collection by Craft and You, and some encouraging words 🙂

Starting off with card #5: “Praying for you” and “You have been given this mountain to show others it can be moved.”
“This too shall pass”
“You are never alone”
“Let your faith be bigger than your fear”

New Design: Harmonica Micro Album

Hi all!

I’m very happy to be able to share my latest design in one of my favorite categories, the Micro Album. This one I’m calling a Harmonica Micro, by which I mean that each of its four page assemblies consists of harmonica-style panels, held together with a cute and practical belly band.

You only need two 12×12″ sheets of double-sided design paper to decorate, which makes it a very frugal little project. 🙂

So check out the video for all of the details, and if you’d like to make it yourself, an elaborate tutorial is available for you in my shop.

Have fun!

Words of Encouragement: The Lord Accepts My Prayer

In week 3 of social distancing my tip for you all is to make an effort to keep your social contacts alive. Make that (video) call, especially when you’re introverted and don’t necessarily feel that need! Do it anyway.

The bible verse I’m reading this week is Psalm 6.

And the image was digitally collaged & edited by me, showing our Lord coming to our rescue and chasing away our enemy – in this case the pandemic. 🙂

May the Lord bless you all and keep you safe.

Psalm 6

Printed Tags Tutorial

In these times, when we’re all spending much more time at home than usual, we’re perhaps in need of some extra inspiration for our papercraft projects. So I thought I’d offer you all a free video tutorial on how to create beautiful printed tags, meant especially for people who aren’t very tech-savvy but do wish they knew how to do these things.

And the good news is, this is relatively simple! The only things you need are a computer, a printer, and some kind of word processor software, like Microsoft Word, Apple Pages or other kinds (though if you even know of the other kinds, you probably don’t need this tutorial anyway 😉 )

Let me know if you want me to do more of these “digital basics” tutorials, for instance, on how to find nice pictures and sentiments to print.

Be well, see you next time!

Words of Encouragement: For I know the plans I have for you

In my second week I’m finding something akin to a new rhythm, and thanks to some helpful rearrangements in my schedule, I’m feeling far less isolated than last week. In the video I’m sharing with you what steps I took, and the tips that I distilled from that.

Of course there’s also a bible verse that comes with that, this time from Jeremiah 29.

May God keep you all safe in these bizarre times.

Words of Encouragement: Accepting both Good and Trouble

Sharing from Job 42 this time: Shall we accept good from God, and not trouble? On how God restored Job’s health AND his earthly richess, after a period of devastating illness and loss.

Also: meet my sweet Jemimah 🙂

May God restore you all!