Category Archives: Spring/Summer

A Scented Gift Box of Cards

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Fairly recently I added a sweet little paper pad to my (ever-growing) stash. It was the Spring Collection by what I think is a new Dutch brand, called Precious Marieke. It has lovely shades of purple and lavender, lots of florals and butterflies, and it really breathes spring or summer.

I decided to create an entire set of cards with this lovely paper line, and since I wanted to gift them to my friend for her birthday, I also needed a box to put them in.

So I upcycled the packaging of some scented candles. I painted it and matted it with the Precious Marieke design paper. And here’s what’s great: the enticing cinnamon scent of the candles was still clinging strongly to their former-packaging-now-gift-box!

So there you have it, a great tip to give someone an actual scented gift box! 🙂

By the way, creating a set of cards is also a great way to use an entire paper pad, without having to bother with leftovers you can’t get yourself to throw away but which are of no real use either 😉

Enjoy the video and pics!

 

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Layered Card with Once Upon a Springtime

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Using some leftover pieces from my few Graphic 45’s Once Upon a Springtime sheets, I created this layered card for my aunt’s birthday.

This gorgeous paper is great to work with! Its base layer is what I call a scrap mat, i.e. a mat created from scraps of paper. If you wish to try this technique for yourself, feel free to check out my (free) video tutorial!

Other techniques I used were fussy-cutting, layering, matting, and stamping. I also used some liquid pearl around the edges of the journaling part on the inside of the card. And last but not least, I’m showing off my new 1½” butterfly punch and my new Yep, I made this stamp. 🙂

Hope you feel inspired to create a gorgeous card with relatively few materials too! 🙂

Enjoy the video, and your weekend; stay crafty!

 

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Springtime Dreams Keepsake Album Deluxe

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When I first created my Butterflies & Stars Keepsake Album Deluxe back in the fall of 2013, I had no idea it would become quite the scrapbooking hit on Youtube – as per today, it has gotten nearly 460,000 views and the number is still growing! Wow!

Unfortunately I have no explanation for this, since I have not been able to repeat these results… Its sister albums Flora & Fauna, Fairytale Treasures and Country Garden all had their shares of views, and so did my other projects, but none of them ever came anywhere near that unique number. I guess Youtube moves in mysterious ways… Oh well…

Anyway, I received (and am still receiving) a lot of requests for a tutorial on this type of album, this ‘double-spined’ gatefold-like type of album that I’ve dubbed Keepsake Album Deluxe.

And I have some great news for all of those lovely people: I’ve now been able to create this tutorial, and it is huge! It sports 132 pages with 418 pictures!
And it’s available to you now as a digital download in my Etsy shop.

To write a tutorial I of course had to create the project, for I had to take pictures of every step of the process. So here’s the latest edition of my Keepsake Album Deluxe, created using Webster’s Pages’ Nest collection, and I’m calling it Springtime Dreams. 🙂

Enjoy the video and let me know what you think! 

 

Want to know what other people created with the tutorial? Check out the fanpage and see for yourself! 🙂

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Mother’s Day and Happy Birthday with G45’s Time to Flourish

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I’ve been working with Graphic 45’s Time to Flourish collection since the end of last year, when I was creating the first six months of an 8×8″ calendar. (I’ll show you the second half of that calendar this summer, since I haven’t finished it yet.)

Meanwhile, I added some 12×12″ inch Time to Flourish sheets to my otherwise 8×8″ collection, to mix & match a bit and create four nice cards. Today I’m happy to share the first two, centered around the month of May. They were great fun to make, especially with all the cutaparts, tags and chipboard pieces that come with this collection! I also enjoyed playing around with two different sizes of the same May sheet, the results of which you can see in the video.

So here’s two layered cards, one for Mother’s Day, the other for a birthday, both centered around the month of May.
For some more month-based greeting cards, check out my August versions!

Please like & subscribe, and let me know what you think!
(If you click on the title of this blog post you’ll find the comment section underneath the post).

Twice Upon A Springtime: Two Cute Little Minis

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Continuing from last week’s one-sheet-challenge, I came up with another challenge for myself – again, in the spirit of Spring and everything New 🙂

This time it was: How to Create Two Ring-bound Mini Albums out of Four Sheets of Design Paper (and some cardstock)

I don’t know about you but there are some paper collections I only ever bought a couple of sheets of. Like in my case, the Once Upon a Springtime collection by Graphic 45. (At the time I was so happy when I had managed to scavenge a few sheets of this wondrously lovely collection from the hidden corners of our local scrap shop. If only I had known they would reboot this entire collection all over again in 2015! 🙂 )

Another example of owning only a few sheets of a particular paper collection: sometimes I’ve got some sheets leftover from some large project.

Well, what to do with these if you’re not in the mood for cards? Here’s what: create two adorable little minis, and create them in two versions: a photo version and a notebook version.

You’ll need only four 12×12″ sheets of double-sided design paper and eight sheets of A4 cardstock. Plus some embellishments, and of course some tools and crafting supplies.

These little albums are relatively easy and fairly quickly to make, and they make great gifts! For instance, I filled one with photos and gifted it to my mother for Easter. The other I turned into a birthday gift for a colleague, who would now have a great little notebook to keep in her purse, with still room for a few treasured pictures if she wishes.

Like this idea? Great, check out my video below! And if you’d like to create some yourself – admit it, you have several four-sheet-sets left in your stash!! – hop on over to my Etsy shop to get the tutorial! It will be available from April 8th, it has 37 pages and 99 pictures and guides you through the process of creating the mini albums step-by-step.

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Happy Easter – With a Pocket-style Card Constructed from One Sheet of Cardstock!

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It’s springtime! 🙂 Although it’s still pretty cold where I live here in the Netherlands, you can already feel a certain ‘softness’ in the air as days are lengthening and nature is preparing to wake up. I don’t know about you, but I’m totally game for spring!

And this year we’ll have a fairly early Easter. Normally I don’t send out any Easter cards (it’s simply not a Dutch tradition) but this year I felt like letting at least a couple of people know that I’m thinking about them and wish them some great times with the upcoming holiday.

I found this lovely sheet of paper by We R Memory Keepers, from their Cotton Tail collection, and it immediately took my thoughts to all the wonderful things that make up springtime and Easter.

So in the spirit of spring, I decided to design something new. I challenged myself to use only one piece of 12×12 inch cardstock for the construction of this card! Of course you will need some extra materials, but not a lot and the main items on that list are 1 extra sheet of cardstock for tags (A4 will suffice), and 1 sheet of 12×12 inch design paper. That’s about it! This design will enable you to create an elaborate and interactive card that is still quite affordable in terms of the supplies you need – awesome right?! 🙂

Also, this card is perfect for more than one sentiment and personalized message, it can function as a gift card holder and it will come in very handy as a vehicle for a group gift, when a group of people are giving one gift together.
And last but not least, you could also use it as a mini album page insert!

Good news: I’m making this design available to you all in my Etsy shop – and like the card itself this tutorial is also very affordable, so check it out!

And here’s the show & tell video, enjoy and let me know what you think!

 

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Princess Paper Bag Mini Album

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I created this paper bag album with Prima’s soft-colored, romantic Princess design paper. I added several Prima flowers from the Princess collection and others, did some die-cutting and used a cutapart sheet from the Delight collection, also by Prima. The one you see on the front of the album (see picture) I printed myself, choosing the sentiment, the font and font color and size. So you don’t need a stamp to add some sentiments, printing is a fine and very versatile alternative! (Tip!)

Of course there’s some of my scrap mats in there as well 🙂

Enjoy the video!

For the basic construction of this album I used a tutorial by Kathy Orta, which you can check out on Youtube. The construction of the spine is of my own design however.

You can check out my Christmas paper bag album here.

Group Gift Explosion Box

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This style of explosion box combines two of my previous styles of decorating: 1. designpaper only; 2. photos only.
This one makes for a great gift idea if you’re giving this as a group of people, like your entire family, or a group of colleagues – like in this case with this particular explosion box. For it has both design paper and photos, and a new element: several personalized messages, printed onto the design paper itself!

And by the way, there’s an explosion box tutorial available in my brand spanking new Etsy shop – called Creator’s Image Studio! 🙂 This tutorial was based on the Explosion of Joy explosion box, but it resembles this one in most of the designs and techniques, so check it out in my Etsy shop!

I’ll post an “official” shop announcement video in my next blog of course, but I thought I might mention it now, since the first tutorial in the shop is on an explosion box 😉 .

So enjoy the video – please like if you do & feel free to leave a comment! And don’t forget to check out the explosion box tutorial in my Etsy shop!

 

 

Country Garden Gatefold Keepsake Album Deluxe

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So, here’s my latest gatefold Keepsake Album De Luxe, and a pretty large one: about 8,5 x 11 inches, which is almost A4. It was commissioned by a lady who had asked me to incorporate some pictures of her dogs, which gives me the opportunity to show you some “complete layouts”, i.e. at least some of the pages and tags have photographs – plus embellishments.

The paperline is Country Garden by Bo Bunny, a somewhat older design stack but timeless and a very pretty summer line!

If you’d like to create an album like this yourself, check out the tutorial for my Springtime Dreams Keepsake Album, for it has the same basic design!

If you liked this, you may like my other gatefold albums deluxe as well!

Thanks for watching, please like & subscribe!

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A Rose Garden Trio of Birthday Cards

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Here’s three different cards created from one paper stack: Rose Garden by First Edition. All three designs are my own; it was great fun to come up with them and create them. The Rose Garden paper is truly lovely, very feminine and romantic. Very suitable for my aunt and my cousin, who have their birthdays in August.

The designs are very stylish, their contruction kept lean and with very little embellishments. It’s my way of allowing the beauty of the paper to speak for itself.

There’ll be a tutorial of the third card in one of my upcoming September projects (Natural History Adventure Ultra Mini Album), where it’ll be a mini album page design. But it works as a card just as well! So stay tuned if you want to learn how to make one… 😉

Anyway, here’s the video – hope you feel inspired by these cards 🙂

Please like & subscribe! 🙂

 

Quick scrap: Butterfly tag card

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One of the interesting thing about tags is that you don’t have to use them as tags necessarily. I’ve seen people make mini tag albums with them, hang them from Christmas trees, use them as photo mats.

And here’s yet another use: they also make great birthday cards – you can in fact make one in less than an hour, which would make it a quick scrap project in my book! 🙂

Materials used: cardstock, design paper (Bo Bunny’s Country Garden), Tim Holtz On the Edge dies (Butterflight and Plaque & Postage), embossing folder, embellishments, Tim Holtz distress ink (Frayed Burlap).

Let me know if you have any questions!

Quick Scrap: Eight cute bookmarks

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Here’s several ideas for some bookmarks, large & small.
Bookmarks are the ideal quick scrap project: it’s quick, fun and perfect for using up those lovely scraps you have left over from your other projects. Also, they make a great gift, for instance as a companion piece to a novel that you’re gifting someone (or, in my case, a hardcover comic 🙂 ).

These bookmarks have no bulk whatsoever of course, for they have to fit tightly between the pages of your novel. Except for their very top, for that will be the show piece, sticking out above your book 😉

As always, enjoy the video and let me know what you think. Also: like & subscribe 🙂