This week I’m actually posting from beautiful Gran Canaria (one of Spain’s Canary Islands just off the southern coast of Morocco), so I’m at least really feeling summer’s Promise of Bloom 🙂
Because of my holiday there will be no video this week, but I will share two very Summer-spirited cards with you.
My tip for you this week is one of Affordability & Frugality: the design paper you’re using does not have to be expensive, nor of ‘Brands of Renown’ so to speak, for you to be able to create some lovely cards!
For instance, the paper I used here was somewhere in the obscure dollar bin of a very affordable (and therefore not the hippest) line of shops in the Netherlands. So the paper may be brandless, but applied well it is able to remind us of a festive summer garden party nonetheless!
So, don’t skip everything that has no brand worth mentioning, but go treasure hunting and see what you can come up with! For some inspiration, check out the other projects that I created with paper lines belonging to those Cheap & Brandless Ones… 😉
Enjoy, and see you next week!
Card 1: Two bi-fold doorlets, held together with a bow
Doorlets opening up to the journalling spot inside – on which I wrote a personal wish to my aunt
Card 2: Tri-fold card with magnetized closure
Opening up to a journalling spot inside. Just like card 1, this card can stand on its own when opened.
Don’t you love spring? With nature – sometimes tentatively – stretching all of its green arms out to the sun, and the first flowers showing us this year’s latest Spring Colors (yes they’re the same as last year’s Spring Collection, but then again, that was gorgeous and absolutely worth the annual re-runs! 🙂 ).
So I was very happy to create this super springy New Home card, using the 2014 colorful spring collection by Webster’s Pages, called Nest. Which I also used to create my Springtime Dreams Keepsake Album, so if you’d like to see more of this collection go check out that album!
I also used some vellum on the inside of this card, for some added interest, using the same technique as I did with the aforementioned Springtime Dreams project.
Creating a dimensional card requires lots of different cuts & folds. These can be done by hand of course, but sometimes I prefer using the various niftily designed dies that are on the market. Like the Create-a-Card die series by Crealies(.nl). For a demonstration of how to work with these dies, you can check out my free videotutorial for the stepcard I created with Crealies’s Create-a-Card die #8.
Today I’m sharing the dimensional card I created with their Create-a-Card die #18, which is a very playful type of card: I’ve seen several different and very creative ways of decorating these kinds of cards. As for my version, it’s a first try so I kept it fairly simple, but I did want to give the dimensional parts of this card their own decorated background. So I added a second layer of cardstock – as explained in the video below. Added advantage of this double layering is that it creates the look of an actual card when folded closed – for without this second (outside) layer there would be no ‘front’ and ‘back’, only ‘inside’, due to all the cuts & folds that make up the dimensional parts.
Hope this makes sense; in any case, just check out the video below and hopefully you’ll see what I mean, 😉 Anyway, these kind of cards are a fun and welcome variation to add to your general card designs; and even without the die you can make the necessary cuts and score lines fairly easily with a craft knife and a scoring board.
Hope you feel inspired, stay crafty and see you next week! 🙂
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 bookletas 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!
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… 🙂
As of yet scrapbook layouts have not been my core business when it comes to paper crafting, but I do love to do them when inspiration hits me. For some examples of my personal style, may like to check out my layout-in-altered-frame, but also my two calendars: 12 months of Place in Time, and 12 months of Time to Flourish.
The focus of this new layout is my mother’s dog Nita, a beautiful black labrador mix. The picture itself immediately reminded me of Kaisercraft’s Limelight paper collection, which echoed the green and black, plus the white florals. A perfect fit!
Having already created two projects with Kaisercraft’s lovely Secret Admirer paper collection – a Folio Album and a Romantic Drawer box – I had hardly any papers left over, except some scraps.
But since I had really fallen for these gloriously colorful papers, I couldn’t bring myself to throw away even what little I had left. And good thing I didn’t, for as it turns out they had four lovely cards still within in them! 🙂
(Above was created with a step card die by the Dutch brand Crealies. Click photo for link to free video tutorial)
When it comes to design paper, I’m a bit of Collector. By which I mean that collecting specific older collections that are no longer manufactured, particularly scratches my collecting itch. It’s the Hunt you see, scouring the most obscure local scrapbook stores, the forgotten corners of the internet, and the hidden treasures of people who are destashing all of a sudden. And then the thrill when I find that one last sticker sheet, belonging with an ancient collection in my stash!
Of course I do regularly buy some of the latest collections, but even those I tend to leave alone for quite some time. Not consciously, but usually it’s only when they are somewhat older and no longer in print, the urge to create something with them hits me.
The Secret Admirer collection by Kaisercraft is one such treasure. It’s a Valentine’s Day collection from 2012, and I designed my Cross-haired Memories Folio Album with it, which I showed you a while ago. Of course I had some papers left over, so in this and the next post I’m sharing the projects I created with them.
Today it’s a 1-sheet project, with a particularly gorgeous 12×12″ Secret Admirer sheet. I found this mini drawer box in one of our dollar bins, and after painting it, I used the Mystical sheet to mat. Added some labels and flowers, and there it was, a beautiful, romantic set of drawers. Love it!
As a bonus projects, I used the tiny scraps I had left from my previous project to decorate a chipboard box, turning it into a great stamp little storage!
Recently I created my own storage box out of chipboard, which was great fun! Its dimensions are 22 x 17 x 7 cm (8⅝ x 6¾ x 2¾”), for that way it would hold all the memorabilia from my father’s funeral. Not just the loving condolances cards I received at the time (2014), but also the lyrics to the songs we played at the funeral, and the memorial prayer card. Since my father loved the ocean I chose a maritime theme and used the Summer at the Beach paper collection by Studio Light. This collection offers a great choice of 3D cut-apart sheets and diecut sheets, which is perfect for decorating and creating layouts.
This kind of box is also ideal as a gift box: you can personalize the theme and put the actual gift inside. Because of its dimensions, it’s perfect for a book or a daily planner or some such, for most of them will fit (please do measure the book you’d like to give first, and adapt your box measurements if necessary!). This is what I did with a second box I created for a friend: I chose Bo Bunny’s Garden Journal paper collection to decorate, and put a book inside for her.
In the video and pictures below I’m showing you both boxes: the maritime storage box as a memorial keepsake, and the spring-themed book gift box for my friend. As I said, they were great fun to make and if you’d like to create one yourself, there’s an affordable tutorial available in my Etsy shop!
Have fun creating, stay crafty!
Summer at the Beach paper collection by Studio Light
Happy New Year everyone!I’m very happy to be able to start this new year by sharing with you my first new design of 2016: a Removable Folio Album! 🙂
This folio can house 60 pictures, folds in and out like an accordian and… can be completely removed from its cover to grant maximum freedom of movement! As a bonus feature, the cover can fold a full 360 degrees!
Recently I showed you a new step card I created, and today I’m sharing a little video tutorial on how to create one yourself.
In the first 2 minutes I’m showing you a finished and fully decorated step card, the rest of this 7 minute video contains the tutorial.
Please be aware that I created this card with a step card die (by Crealies); you can of course also cut & score everything yourself, but that is not included in this video tutorial.
If you have any questions, please let me know!
Thank you for liking and subscribing, have fun crafting and see you next week!
It’s always super fun to design new mini albums! This time, I created an album with two sets of pages, one above the other. Hence, a double-stacked mini album😉 . Almost all pages offer new page designs that I haven’t used in my previous albums.
There are six page assemblies, three above, three below, which together offer twelve interactive page layouts plus some large photo mats. 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 is crisp and clean on the outside, so it will easily fit into your book case.
I found that this design is perfect to create a large album with 6×6 inch papers and only a handful of 12×12 inch sheets. This makes it a lot more cost effective than an album with lots of large pages. The relatively wide spine offers ample room for you to embellish on the inside.
On its last two pages I used some special-folded paper ornaments. Both are covered in the downloadable written tutorial in my shop. For one of them I also made a free video tutorial, which will be available next week in a new blog post.
For this particular album I used the Optimist collection by Prima Marketing, including their sticky tabs, ATC cards, flowers, leaflets and brads.
I hope you’ll all enjoy this design just as much as I do!
If you wish to create this double-stacked album yourself, check out the written tutorial in my Etsy shop, which has 148 pages and 429 (!) pictures.
Please like, share & subcribe to this blog, my Youtube channel and my Pinterest! You can also follow me on Twitter.
Want to know what other people created with the tutorial? Check out the fanpage and see for yourself! 🙂
The Time to Flourish collection by Graphic 45 is really versatile. You could do a calendar of course, a mini album, or special greeting cards to send your friends and family actual month-based well-wishes. Back in May I created a birthday card and a Mother’s Day card, and today I’m happy to share with you two summer birthday cards, this time for the month of August.
One is a double layout card, the other an extra large card which measures an actual 8×8″ (20 x 20 cm)! I used a lot of layering with the design paper, cutaparts, chipboard pieces, die-cut flowers and some embellisments, mostly from the Time to Flourish collection.
Card 1: Two bi-fold doorlets, held together with a bow
Card 2: Tri-fold card with magnetized closure
Opening up to a journalling spot inside. Just like card 1, this card can stand on its own when opened.
Don’t you love spring? With nature – sometimes tentatively – stretching all of its green arms out to the sun, and the first flowers showing us this year’s latest Spring Colors (yes they’re the same as last year’s Spring Collection, but then again, that was gorgeous and absolutely worth the annual re-runs! 🙂 ).
Recently I created my own storage box out of chipboard, which was great fun! Its dimensions are 22 x 17 x 7 cm (8⅝ x 6¾ x 2¾”), for that way it would hold all the memorabilia from my father’s funeral. Not just the loving condolances cards I received at the time (2014), but also the lyrics to the songs we played at the funeral, and the memorial prayer card. Since my father loved the ocean I chose a maritime theme and used the Summer at the Beach paper collection by Studio Light. This collection offers a great choice of 3D cut-apart sheets and diecut sheets, which is perfect for decorating and creating layouts.
