Hi all!

As you may have noticed, one of my favorite design paper brands is Graphic 45. Which is why I’m super excited – and a little nervous! – for this blog post, for it is my first time ever submission for a Graphic 45‘s Design Team Audition! 🙂

I am delighted to be able to share some of my favorite projects – old and new – that showcase my style, including a tutorial via Snapguide, and I hope you’ll all feel inspired by them!

Project 1: ATC Book Box Wall Ornament – with Graphic 45’s Sweet Sentiments

Graphic 45’s ATC Book Box (ivory) offers many, many creative possibilities and it was an absolute joy to work with it!

It inspired me to create a brand new project: an Easter Wall Ornament. It has a removable decorative show piece showcasing many fussy-cut images from the collection’s gorgeous signature sheet.

Without this show piece it is still a very decorative but also practical little box for anything you’d like to store – and keep handy at the same time. Like your keys. Your phone. Your business cards. Or your lipsticks! 🙂

To create it, I (gently) cut the box part from the book cover part, turned it 90 degrees and reattached it. By firmly wrapping the cover part with design paper I made sure it stayed straight, preventing it from folding like a book.

I used a ribbon tied through an eyelet to hang the wall ornament on the wall.

Below are some pictures, and the show & tell video:

To see more of the details, click the picture below for an enlargement:

Fussy-cut tag, adorned with fussy-cut floral (lifted with some dimensional tape):

Detail of the ornament, without the show piece:

Bottom

The chipboard pieces on the front are backed up with design paper, continuing the main pattern on the back:

Hanging from my bed room wall

Show & tell video:

Project 2: New Job Card – with Graphic 45’s Time to Celebrate

As soon as I laid eyes on the Time to Celebrate collection, I fell in love with its vibrant spring colors. I immediately created a card with it for my friend who got a new job. She’s quite the lady, so this paper fit her perfectly! 🙂

I love making cards with Graphic 45 papers and for this one I worked with both the 8×8″ design paper and the 6×6″ patterns & solids pad. I used the Best Wishes chipboard piece of the collection, and added some embellishments from my stash: flowers, ribbon, feathers, and flat-back pearls. I stamped Nieuwe Baan (= Dutch for New Job) to finish it.

I layered the inside of the card with both design paper and cardstock, and added two stamps that I cut from the design paper – one of which I lifted with some dimensional tape. I also added two small butterflies from my stash.

Quick video overview:

Project 3: Double-stacked Mini Album ‘Celebrate Every Day’

I love to design and create new or special kinds of mini albums. For example, I’ve designed three different types of folio albums, I love to design large gatefold-style keepsake albums and I’m also an enthousiastic creator of micro albums. The project I’m entering here is yet another kind of (large) keepsake album, which I designed last August. I’m calling it a double-stacked mini album.

This sophisticated album has six page assemblies, three above, three below – which together offer twelve unique interactive page layouts plus some large photo mats!

The insides of the large front and back covers make up their own interactive pages, twice as large as the regular ones. The album has a magnetized closure and although I sometimes go all out with embellishments on mini album covers, I intentionally kept this one crisp and clean on the outside, to showcase the papers – with the added bonus of it easily fitting into a book case.

Below are some pictures, plus the show & tell video I did last September. I’ve also done a video tutorial for one of the origami page elements in the album, which I’ll also embed below.

Inside front cover:

Bonus Project: Briefcase Micro Album – with Graphic 45’s Bohemian Bazaar 

This is one of my first designs with Graphic 45 papers and I’m still proud of it, which is why I’m adding it to this audition, even though it’s from 2014 🙂 .

I designed this cute little micro album to look like sort of a briefcase. It measures only 11 x 9 x 5,5 cm (4¼ x 3½ x 2″) and sports six small pocket pages. Each of those holds a tag or a cutapart from the collection.
I created a ‘suitcase handle’ from cardstock lined with book muslin, which I attached with two brads and two small D-rings. The album is held closed with a magnet closure.

Because I really enjoyed showcasing the gorgeously colorful paper, I only added a few embellishments both inside and outside, keeping it clean and stylish and letting the paper speak for itself.

The album is designed to open vertically, not horizontally, just like an actual briefcase. This enables you to thumb through the pages with both hands, kind of like you would a rolodex or some records or some such (yeah I know, this reference totally dates me… 😉 ).

The intended way of opening and perusing this micro album is vertically:

And here’s the (2014) video show & tell video:

Tutorial: How to Create a Micro Booklet – with Graphic 45’s Time to Celebrate

I really love my micro projects, and for the tutorial part of this audition I’m entering a second micro project, next to the Briefcase Micro Album above (Bonus Project). I designed this cute micro booklet as a fun alternative for a card or gift tag. It holds several tiny tags on which you could write your birthday wishes and/or little personal messages. Thanks to its small size it’s easy to send by mail, to carry in one’s purse, to add to a bunch of flowers, etc. – for it measures only 6.5 x 7 cm (2½ x 2¾”).

As an added bonus, it’s perfect for using up the scraps of your awesome scrapbook design papers! (I don’t know about you but I hate to throw away even the tiniest sliver…)

For this project I chose my beloved Time to Celebrate paper line again – couldn’t help myself, it’s just too gorgeous 🙂 .

Please check out my Snapguide* tutorial for this fun project! It’s embedded below, so simply click the tutorial’s pictures or the arrows underneath to move back and forth through the tutorial – very convenient! 🙂

*: Edit 2021: It seems that Snapguide no longer exists, and without warning they apparently removed their entire tutorials database. So I’m sorry, but the aforementioned tutorial for this little booklet is no longer there. If you’d like to know how to make one though, check out this earlier video tutorial of mine.

Hope this inspired you to create one or more yourself, for it’s really a fun little project!

Short show & tell video:

In conclusion

This has been my entry for the Graphic 45 Design Team Audition 2016! 
I hope you’ve enjoyed reading this post as much as I have creating it!

Like to see more? Click here for all of my Graphic 45 projects! 🙂

Thank you to all who follow me on this blog and/or on Youtube or other social media, I really appreciate all of your support.
Now please wish me luck 🙂 – for I’m really hoping and praying I’ll make the cut! I would be so honored with a spot on the ever-awesome G45 Design Team and am really looking forward to a chance of working with this great team of designers and crafters – and of course with Graphic 45’s great products and beautiful vintage paper collections – which are great to work with and always smell so good… 🙂

Bye all, see you next blog post!