This week I’m sharing how to use your most beautiful photos and post cards – instead of design paper – to mat your cards! It’s not only lovely, but also very quick & easy. Think last-minute birthday cards, Christmas cards, etc.
Check out the video below and share your thoughts with me in the comments! ☕️
Here’s a free photo tutorial I did on Instagram, on a deconstructed envelope card. I designed it for a group of people who all wanted to write personal birthday wishes in one card. Simply click on the arrows in the IG post to browse through the tutorial pictures.
If you’d like more detailed instructions + the required measurements, check out the – very affordable! – downloadable PDF tutorial in my Etsy shop.
Also, check out the video below for a closer look!
And here’s the video, including a – much quicker – variation on this design:
As you know by now – and if not, check out my previous post – I love to send my friends some tea over the mail. But I also figured out a way to send them some perfume, integrated into some new card designs. A little while ago I wrote some short blog posts on these three designs, but this week I’m not only summarizing them in a video, I’ve also filmed a short tutorial on one of the designs.
So check out three designs I came up with (thus far) to send people some fragrant love!
The past couple of months I’ve created several tea cards, i.e. cards in which I incorporate a bag of tea. I always enjoy making this type of card, because I love sending a ‘hug in a mug’ over the mail 🙂
I do try to come up with several different ways of sending said bags of tea, and I thought it might be fun for you if I shared my most recent ideas. So, I’ve summed them all up in the video below.
The video also includes two short, practical tutorials on my so-called integrated pocket technique.
If you want still more tea card ideas, check out all of my previous tea card posts.
Feel free to let me know if you have any questions!
…and don’t ever forget it! 🙂 😉
Lately I’ve been shopping my stash and decided to create some nice things with Graphic 45’s Time to Celebrate collection.
The seven most recent projects with this collection were all cards, but I decided to include a cute little micro booklet here as well, below the next Instagram post. I’ve really been enjoying these pretty colours!
Here’s the show & tell video on my YT channel:
And here’s the micro booklet. I created it several years ago, but I think it’s still cute 🙂
Do you have any all time favorite design paper collections? (and if so, go and Use Them! 🙂 )
Broad ribbons can easily be turned into belly bands – or even pockets if you glue the bottom closed. In other words, they are perfect to hold a little tidbit, like a tag, a picture – or of course, if you’re like me, a bag of tea! Below the Instagram post you’ll find my step-by-step proces!
Here’s the double-sided sheet from Graphic 45’s lovely Bird Watcher colllection that I used:
And here’s my process:
And here’s the final result:
What do you think, would you consider using a ribbon as a pocket / belly band?
Hello again my dear crafty readers! 🙋🏻♀️
It has been a while since I posted, for which I offer my apologies. This is partly due to time contraints and the overall ‘busy-ness’ of life, and partly because I’m more active on Instagram nowadays. Also, I don’t create as many projects as I used to. Nevertheless, I do still design and create colorful works of paper and will continue to share the inspiration.
So I thought I’d try a new way of sharing my projects with you, by linking to them from my Instragram. Please follow me there if you can, because at some point in the future Instagram and Youtube will probably become my two main ways of sharing my papercraft design projects.
For now however you can continue coming here, and I’ll embed either my Youtube videos or (if there is no video) my Instagram posts.
If you’re not familiar with Instagram yet: the tiny little dots on the bottom of the picture show that there is more than one picture for you to check out. You can click the little arrow on the right side of the picture to ‘swipe’ to the rest of the pictures.
Below the picture you find the description box, in which I’ll put some information about each project.
Let me know what you think!
Happy Holiday season everyone!
Let’s create some easy-to-make Christmas cards together: shop your stash (I did! 😃) and make good use of the tips, tricks & tutorials I’m sharing with you in the below videos! Let me know what you think in the comments.
Have a very merry Christmas and a blessed New Year!
You can watch my free video tutorial for my deconstructed envelope card here:
Hope you found these tips & tutorials helpful, either for your Christmas cards or for any other occasion!
There have been years that I’d finished all of my Christmas cards by September – having started as early as July – and heaps of them at that. (You can check them out here.)
But not this year. This year I’ve only just finished my very first Christmas card last week. What can I say, I’m not crafting as much as I used to – though one of my new year’s resolutions is More Crafting, so I remain hopeful. 😇
I have to say it was fun to create again, after many moons with hardly any papercrafting at all (except for the occasional card here & there, which I posted here, on my blog).
Here are my design steps:
1. I started by shopping my stash and I found this fresh & modern looking design paper by S.E.I., called Kris Kringle. It is no longer available, however I’m hoping it will inspire you – either to shop your own stash for some great finds, or to shop for similar design papers that evoke the same atmosphere if you like these specific papers.
2. Some baby blue cardstock became a nice base for the card, echoing the occasional light blue the design papers offered and off-setting the rest of the colors nicely.
3. I wanted a special card design so I decided on this slanted tri-fold shape and folded it ‘zigzaggingly’ (I don’t know the official term but I think you’ll catch my drift 😉 ).
4. One of my label dies came in handy to add a stamped sentiment to the front of the card.
5. Tri-fold shapes are always fun because they give you six panels to mat and play with your design papers! You’ll have to keep your embellishments flat however, otherwise your card won’t fit into its envelope. Stamping is a good option of course, as would be (heat) embossing or adding some ink sprays.
In conclusion
All in all I had fun, maybe even more than I expected. It was nice to think about a specific friend and design a card with them in mind. What shape hadn’t they seen from me yet, what colors would they like and what kind of sentiment would they appreciate. Happy thoughts to be pondering.
I’ve found again and again that tailor-making a craft project for a specific person adds an extra dimension of inspiration and fun to my craft projects. Maybe this can be the way forward for me – and who knows, perhaps for you too! – for the foreseeable future, to find some much needed inspiration again!
I might even do some video tutorials again on my Youtube channel (which I always embed on the blog too), so let me know if you’d like one for this type of card – or mini album insert of course, whichever might fit your needs best!
In one of my previous posts, my first one on the K.I.S.S. way of papercrafting (Keep It Simple, Stupid), I gave some examples on keeping your cards simple yet lovely and your crafting easy-going and timesaving. One of the examples I gave is to make use of post cards – the kind you buy somewhere – and incorporate those into your card projects.
This week I’d like to elaborate on that a little bit, with another example. The trick, for me, is to buy a postcard with some kind of special depiction or sentiment: not your general ‘Happy Birthday’ card with a bunch flowers, funny drawings or a joke, but one depicting something meaningful – to you and/or the person to whom you’ll be sending the card.
For this week’s birthday card project, I chose a postcard that I bought in an art museum, it was depicting a special piece of fashion by Viktor & Rolf. I picked it because the person I was going to send it to, appreciates fashion, art & lifestyle.
I matted it on top of two layers of design paper, in a matching color scheme. I stamped congratulations (in Dutch), but added no extra decorative elements, adhering to the K.I.S.S. principle.
I matted the inside with several papers from the same design paper collection – Reflections by Echo Park (no longer available) – and added a journalling spot on top.
I also matted the back, and decorated with a sentiment sticker.
So, even though I invested a little more time and energy into this card than I did the previous example (in the aforementioned earlier blog post) I still kept it K.I.S.S.: the card design was simple yet elegant, and I had a lovely time creating it.
Have a great week, don’t overthink things! 🙂
This week’s card was created with Together, a 6×6 design paper pad by Mintay. It’s an older design paper collection, but you’ll have to forgive me not buying anything new any time soon, due to my rather large stash 😅
I love the color palette of these papers, the soft corals and aquas, laced with some sage green and beiges, it all comes together perfectly with the dreamy air balloon theme. I used this collection before, when I worked on a little pre-made album, you can check out the video on that here.
As a specific theme for this card I chose tea time, which I incorporated by way of some cute little stamps on the front.
I also stamped a floral element in coral on the front, which you can see peaking out behind the little layout I did on top of it.
I kept the inside extremely simple, matting with a floral design first and then choosing a second piece of design paper that offered some natural room to write. I did decorate, but subtly: I only added some liquid pearl around the edges of the journalling spot.
I also matted the back of course.
Although technically this wasn’t one of my so-called tea cards, which I always design around an actual bag of tea (check out all of my tea card designs here), I did add a tea bag to the envelope when I sent the card to my friend. And created a little custom tea tag to go with it 🙂
All in all I loved to work on this card. The lovely colors and graphic designs of the papers, together with the simplicity of the design, made for a great afternoon of crafting.
So I guess the main tips this week are: choose to work with what brings you joy, and don’t be afraid to keep it simple! (On that note, also check out my previous post, on the K.I.S.S. method and applying it to paper crafting).