Gift idea: Christmas Paper Bag Album

Before you read any further: this album is for sale for a special opening price, so please check it out on my Showroom page! (International customers: please pay attention to the fact that international shipping fees will have to be added).

Tis the Season, yea! 🙂 I haven’t got my Christmas tree yet, but nevertheless it’s that time of the year again, which means holiday-themed projects for crafters all over the world! Soooo many gorgeous new Christmas collections and I haven’t even bought a single one this year. Not because I don’t want to create anything for Christmas, on the contrary. But since I bought like a gazillion Christmas collections last year, I’m afraid I’ll be not-buying any new Christmas collections the coming years until I’ve used up the ones I already own…. (Right. Like that’s going to happen! But: at least this year it is! 🙂 )

Anyway, here’s a so-called paper bag mini album, the pages of which are basically created from paper bags – and some cardstock. I really love this type of album, for it requires less basic construction than the usual cardstock albums, so you can relatively quickly move on to decorating and embellishing – which, you know, is grrrrreat! 🙂

The paper collection I used is North Countryby Prima Marketing, plus some separate sheets from other collections. I also used this paper line for my Christmas cards this year.

My North Country Christmas cards

As I stated in my previous post, it’s never too early to create Christmas cards! 🙂

I used the 8×8 inch North Country paper pad and created 26 fairly large Christmas cards. I used different techniques, like die-cutting, stamping, layering, ribbons and of course my scrap mats. This older Prima collection doesn’t seem to have been used a lot, if the very small number of Youtube videos on it are any indication. So here’s my contribution to this apparently very small collection of North Country projects 🙂

Hopefully this helps you find some inspiration to create your own!
Happy crafting! 🙂

My first X-mas project of the year

One can never be too early to create their Christmas cards, so let’s kick off with my first card this year! 🙂

It’s a silver & pink winter-themed gatefold card of 5 1/8 x 5 1/8 inch, tied closed with a cute pink ribbon. The paper that I used is by a nameless Dutch brand, which I bought a couple of years ago in one of our home decor shops. Very affordable, so a lot of bang for your buck! 🙂

This is also an entry for Challenge #221 on the Dutch Card Lovers challenge blog, so I’ll translate this post into Dutch as well 🙂


Je kunt niet vroeg genoeg aan je kerstkaarten beginnen, dus hierbij mijn persoonlijke startschot van het kerst- en nieuwjaarskaartenseizoen! 🙂

Deze zilver & roze winterkaart is 13×13 cm en heeft klapdeurtjes die met een bijpassend lintje zijn dichtgestrikt. Het papier is merkloos, gewoon van de Xenos – lekker betaalbaar en toch leuk! 🙂

Met dit kaartje doe ik trouwens mee aan Challenge nr. 221 op het Dutch Card Lovers challenge blog – spannend! 🙂

I used pink glitter glue around the edges of the paper and strengthened the ribbon holes with glittered gray eyelets. / Roze glitterlijm langs alle randjes en een glittergrijze eyelet om de gaatjes te verstevigen waar het lint doorheen gaat.

Opening the card reveals a small, border-punched pocket that holds a tag, matted with white cardstock to write your personalized Season’s Greetings. / Als je de deurtjes van de kaart opent kom je bij een smalle pocket, afgewerkt met een randpons. In de pocket een roze tag, met daarop stevig wit papier voor je persoonlijke kerstboodschap.

I used the same pink glitter glue around the edges of the tag again. There’s also a cute little pink bling brad, just for fun! / Dezelfde roze glitterlijm siert ook de randen van de tag. En: er zit een gezellig bling splitpennetje voor de afwerking – ook roze natuurlijk! 🙂

And for a nice finish, I matted the back of the card as well. / En voor een mooie afwerking ook designpapier op de achterkant van de kaart.

Stay crafty, see you next project!
Blijf lekker creatieven, en tot het volgende project!
🙂

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A Christmas micro album

A short while ago I created a Christmas mini album, using Kaisercraft’s ‘Tis the Season paper pad. Of course I had some scraps left over and I put them to good use, creating another one of my micro albums. And it’s turned out very cute – especially when you see it next to its ‘big sister’! 🙂

Of course there are a lot of my scrap mats in this little micro, and you can check out my tutorial on those if you want to try your hand at them as well.

Enjoy the video!

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My first Christmas mini album

This past year has been my first “full” year of paper crafting: it all started with the calendar I created for my mother back in November 2012, which seriously infected me with the “paper crafting virus” 🙂 . It has been a year of wonderful creativity and I’m very grateful for the many new techniques (new to me, at least…) I’ve been able to learn. Looking forward to 2014, I’m hoping to plan my craft projects more around the different seasons: not just taking into account the uniquely different feel of winter-spring-summer-autumn, but also bringing some of the holiday seasons into the mix. Not with every single project of course, I mean, sometimes you just want to use a certain design paper because it’s simply too gorgeous not to 🙂 – but generally speaking I feel it should be doable.

So, starting right now, at the end of 2013, I’m very happy to present you all with my very first Christmas mini album!

I used the Tis the Season paper collection by Kaisercraft and inked around all the edges with Vintage Photo distress ink by Tim Holtz. I’ve also incorporated some so-called scrap mats again, a technique I actually came up with (and named) myself. If you want to know how to make them, feel free to check out my tutorial!

If you’d like to know how such an album would look with pictures in it, check out the pictures underneath the video PLUS the 2017 update here! 🙂

Right, ’nuff said, on to the video!

 

Inside front cover – decorated this time, plus a picture (of little me 🙂 ) added to the photo mat:

Die-cutting the picture and finishing its edges with glitter glue adds interest to your photo mat! I also stamped the year in the lower right corner, in copper-colored ink:

Liked this mini? Then check out its little baby sister, my Christmas Micro album! 🙂

MERRY CHRISTMAS TO YOU ALL, AND THE HAPPIEST OF NEW YEARS!

A stack of tri-shutter Christmas cards!

A couple of blogposts ago I published my tutorial for a tri-shutter card. Since I’ve now sent out all my Christmas cards, it’s time to show you this holiday season’s version of a tri-shutter card – plus, how I made good use of the leftover scraps, as usual :-). Hopefully to inspire!

The paper I used was Holly Jolly by My Mind’s Eye. Enjoy!

Five Christmas paper stacks (walkthrough)

Here’s five lovely Christmas paper stacks, a demo to inspire your Christmas holiday crafting wish list :-). (You will be able to watch yet a sixth – My Mind’s Eye’s Holly Jolly paper pad – when I’ll post my Christmas card video, probably next week).

So, enjoy your holiday shopping in your local craft store or on the interwebs!

The paper collections shown in this video are:

  • Tis the Season (Kaisercraft)
  • Kris Kringle (S.E.I.)
  • Christmas Day (Carta Bella)
  • Waiting for Santa (Webster’s Pages)
  • North Country (Prima Marketing)

Plus two separate 12×12 sheets:

  • Glistening labels & tags (Authentique)
  • Infuse (Basic Grey)

Tri-shutter Xmas card tutorial

It’s that time of the year again – we’re preparing to send out our Season’s Greetings to all of our family and friends. So I did some research on the web and studied different kinds of homemade cards. The type of card that I chose checked all the boxes for me: you can use one template to create lots of unique cards; each card doesn’t take you more than one hour to create; you can decorate approx. 20 cards with one 6×6 inch paper pad to keep things cost effective.

Of course I’m sharing this with you all, so you can get some production going on your own homemade Christmas cards! The video below takes you through my tutorial for a so-called trishutter card. I’m showing you the finished products in a future blog post however, since I don’t want to give away any spoilers to the cards’ recipients ;-). There is a tiny little sneak peak in the video however…

So enjoy the tutorial and Happy Scrapping!