And here’s the second Easter card I made this year. Like I said in my last, I forgot to post them when it was actually Easter.
But April 27th is also a great day to post, for here in the Netherlands it’s King’s Day today, and the whole country celebrates in orange colours. So, here I am, with a – mostly – orange card! 😇
Paper used: Summer Breeze collection by Studiolight.
I realize Easter is already over, but I forgot to post this – as well as my other Easter card, which I will post next. After all, it’s the thought that counts – and you can use these techniques of layering and adding a small booklet to the front, as inspiration for your own cards. For any occasion you can think of! 🙂
Papers used: Easter Greetings collection by Craft and You.
Double-sided design paper sheets are the perfect material to create a quick step card. The one I used is from the Summer Breeze collection by Studiolight.
You can either find a template online and print/draw, fold and cut it yourself, or you can use a step card die. With the card’s basic shape taken care of, the only thing left is to decorate!
For instance: cut an ATC card and stamp a sentiment. I also added some heat embossing to the sentiment, for some extra interest. Then apply some kind of glitter glue all along the edges and adhere as a center piece.
Use some hot glue or other heavy adhesive medium to adhere larger decorations, like these bulky roses.
Don’t forget the backside of the card! I know it’s just the back, but you can still add some nice little detail to surprise the careful examiner 😊
For instance, add some transparent texture paste through a stencil on part of the back!💡
Add some final diecuts and smaller decorative elements, and you’re done – quick & easy!
Today I’m sharing a birthday card with Stamperia’s lovely vintage Time is an Illusion collection. There’ll be some more cards the coming days, for I – finally! – finished the new mini album (mini tome, rather 😅) using four of Stamperia’s vintage collections. And as per usual I’m using the leftovers to create all kinds of nice cards and booklets.
This one is in fact a pretty simple card to make: you only have to decorate the front, and you only need three pieces of design paper to layer. Decorate any way you like. Done.
For instance, I used some dimensional tape between the layers of design paper to achieve a 3D effect. I also put some Tim Holtz Distress Grit Paste through a flourished stencil, and colored it with Distress Embossing Glaze – which also adds some nice shine & gloss.
Do you like Stamperia papers? What is your favorite collection?
Tip: You don’t always need to create a full-blown birthday card, a nice tag will go a long way too – especially when added to a gift to carry your birthday wishes.
Here’s an easy little gift tag and the steps to create it. I designed it to go with some birthday flowers for a friend.
Easy peasy! 😃
Stamperia have come out with some gorgeous vintage and steampunk paper collections. I’ve been working with four of those collections for my latest mini album, which I’ll be showcasing here soon.😃
In the meantime I’ll be showing you some smaller projects I’ve been working on with said papers.
Take this cutie. Since I love to send a friend some tea – kind of a hug-in-a-mug – I created this lovely little Tea Booklet. For its front, back & spine I made use of a pre-imaged paper sheet Stamperia provided in their Lady Vagabond collection.
I matted the inside of the booklet with some beautiful patterns and decorated with some fussy-cut elements.
My spine was 5/8″ (1.5 cm) wide to accomodate a bag of fresh tea. You can make the spine as wide or as narrow as you need. The narrower the spine, the easier it fits into a normal envelope. However, if like me you’d like to send out some tea, you’ll need a little width.
Have you ever created a tea card? I’d love to know you ideas!
I tend to compartimentalize my mixed media crafting: one day I do my spraying, inking and/or painting, one day I use my stamps, stencils & texture pastes, and lastly I turn it into a card or tag to send out or give away. This not only keeps it fun and practical, it also saves time when you actually need a quick card or tag.
In this post I’m sharing several of these follow-up projects, starting with the finished background, followed by the final project. You can find the making of some of these backgrounds in previous blog posts btw, should you be interested.
1. Birthday tag
2. Textured birthday tag
3. Alcohol ink on gesso birthday card
4. Black background cards
5. Printed close-up photo of above art project, matted on cardstock
6. Marbled Distress Paint on black card
Crafting a paper project is one thing, but feeling confident about actually designing it, that’s quite another. You cannot teach creativity, but what I can do is taking you along in my thought process while I design a special kind of card.
Using a sheet of Mintay’s Next Trip collection, I’m designing a card with a spine, meant to hold a hand-made tea bag filled with delicious tea.
You can watch me come up with measurements – while I explain all kinds of different design options – where to cut and fold, and how to get the most out of your one sheet of design paper. You will also see me design an actual belly bridge, vs. the more common belly band :-), one which is able to accomodate quite a bulky tea bag.
In the video I’m also using a tea bag die, but you can of course also cut and fold your own little tea bag. If you don’t know how to do that, there’s a complete instruction on how to replicate this particular one, including measurements, in my Tea Bag Micro Album tutorial.
Hope this is helpful to you, let me know in the comments!
PS: I’m not creating as many projects as I used to, it’s just a phase I’m guessing. This past 1.5 year has beaten my creativity down somewhat. I’ll still be here though, and on Youtube. Just not every single week. Sorry! 😔
To my Dutch followers: if you want to see what I’ve been up to lately, check out my second YT channel, which is entirely in Dutch, and my second IG account (English) 🙂
It doesn’t always have to take many long hours of work to create a beautiful card. In this week’s tutorial I’m sharing an idea for a quick & easy card design, for which you only need some pieces of paper, a piece of string and some tools.
You can use colored cardstock, design paper or a mixed media background to be the showstopper piece. I created my backgrounds with Distress inks by Tim Holtz.
A nice detail of this design is the piece of string, which you wrap around your card and tie into a bow on the inside of your card.
All in all I think you may actually create this card in under ten minutes – provided you already made your mixed media backgrounds at some time in the past, and have them at the ready (if you’re not opting for design paper or colored cardstock).
If you don’t have a die-cutting machine, you could also stamp a sentiment, or adhere a chipboard piece like in the picture below. In case you don’t own an embossing machine, you can easily skip the embossed layer entirely, also like the card below (shown in more detail in the video).
Enjoy the video tutorial! – which is, like this card design, short & sweet 🙂
Recently I bought two of the Sydney Grace x Temptalia eyeshadow palettes, and found the packaging so lovely that I couldn’t bring myself to simply get rid of those wondrous sleeves, never to be seen again.
So, I turned them into a tea gift booklet, that I sent out to my friend. And let me tell you, that re-purposing was far more satisfying than simply throwing them out. 🙂
I didn’t use any design paper this time, just the two sleeves. For the inside and the two tiny booklets, I made my own mixed media background, using Tim Holtz’s spray and oxide inks.
In the below video I’m sharing this tea gift project, and the steps to create it. Enjoy!
Every time I finish a craft project, I have design papers left over. Doesn’t matter whether it was a large mini album, or just a card; always there are sheets of loveliness I have to decide on what to do with them. Will I have to throw them out, of can I come up with yet another idea?
Fortunately as crafters we can always create something else with these extra papers, sometimes ending up with more than one bonus project.
A few weeks ago I created quite an elaborate desconstructed envelope card from 3 sheets of design paper + a cutapart sheet. But even after such a large card, I managed to squeeze out three extra cards from the paper pieces I had leftover!
So, hopefully I can inspire you with these ideas, to do the same and make use of every inch of paper real estate you can manage 🙂
Enjoy the video, happy crafting!
Here’s a fun idea for a New Home (or Welcome Home) card: send them a cute little home decor piece, by way of a 3D house which also functions as a tea light holder! 🙂
I’m sharing a video tutorial below, but first a photo tutorial with the steps to create this project. I used a die from AliExpress, but you could of course also imitate this by drawing a row of four houses yourself and fussy-cutting them.
And here’s the video tutorial, enjoy!
