Romantic Nursery Baby Boy Mini Album

When my cousin had her first baby, a cute little baby boy, I wanted to make her something special. I decided to make her a mini album to keep her most precious pictures and notes of baby’s first couple of months. I wanted a somewhat romantic baby theme, with nostalgic colors instead of bright blue pastels, which I found in Marianne Design‘s lovely Romantic Nursery design paper.

The mini album has three page assemblies, which makes it a bit thinner than my other mini albums which usually have six or eight. It still has plenty of room for photos and other memorabilia though, with all its pockets, tags and even hidden photo wallets. Of course I inked around all the edges, this time with Vintage Photo distress ink by Tim Holtz.

And here’s the video, please feel free to let me know what you think!

 

So what kind of baby shower gifts have you been looking for, or even created yourself?

 

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Altered baby gift box

If you want to give someone a really personalized gift, then altering an object is not only a great gift idea, it’s also a very reasonably priced one. Take this box for instance, it was sold as a plain white box with a white-coated, stamped piece of burlap on its lid. Not super expensive, and with lots of gift-giving potential.

In this case it was for a baby shower, so I altered it using lots of baby blue goodness and other cute stuff.
And here’s another idea: you can give this gift together with some of your less creative friends – and have them stuff the finished box with all kinds of nice little baby clothes, socks, pacifiers etc! This way, you will be able to give a sophisticated gift – with the personal touch as a bonus.

Of course you can do this on all kinds of other occasions: think birthdays, weddings, house warmings, Thanksgiving, Halloween, Christmas, etc.

So check out the video, and take all the inspiration you like from it!

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Teddy Bear Baby Card

Recently I found the most adorable baby scrapbook sheets while browsing through the clearance bin in my local scrap shop. They were from the Teddy Bear collection by K&Company, a collection I think is so old I can hardly find any information about it on the interwebs…

Naturally I decided I needed to have them 🙂 and to be on the safe side I chose a third sheet from an entirely different collection that coordinated well with the other sheets. So when my cousin’s new son was born soon after, I was very happy to use this cutest-of-the-cute paperline and created an interactive card.

My goal was to let the design paper speak for itself: it was already so cute & cuddly in and of itself, it didn’t need any fancy layering or embellishing!
So here’s the card I designed.

This gatefold card is kept closed by a swing tab. To create the swing tab I fussy-cut one of the bears from the paper, backed it up with some cardstock and attached it to the card with a brad.

I chose a nail brad on purpose, hiding it in plain site by attaching it to the spot in which a teddy bear would normally have some kind of nail or screw to function as a hip joint – especially the really ancient models… 😉
Centered on the inside is a pocket. For some added interest and to really show off the paper I kept the ‘marching’ teddy bear intact, fussy-cutting around it rather than simply cutting the piece to size to mat the pocket.

Hiding inside the pocket is a little card-inside-a-card. First I matted this little card, then embellished it with two separate teddy bears that I fussy-cut from the design paper.  

I lifted the smaller teddy with some dimensional tape.

 

I matted the back and stamped Handmade with love. This mat is actually from a fourth design paper collection: Romantic Nursery by Marianne Design. I left the inside plain so I could write a personal message.

 

I matted the back of the card with some button paper, which was the third sheet I found in the clearance bin. I thought it coordinated remarkably well with the two sheets of teddy bear paper!

 

I really enjoyed working with these three treasured sheets of design paper I found. What kind of projects have you created to show off a particular paper collection?

Baby shower gift idea: altered mini drawer chest

I was very happy to do one of my altered drawer boxes again, my second one actually, because they’re cute, look lovely and are easily made. I bought it in one of our craft stores (in the Netherlands); it’s made of plain wood and its size is 8x8x3 inches (20x20x7,5 cm).

This time I used Romantic Nursery design paper to alter it into a baby shower gift, so it’s completely different from my first one. It still amazes me how much a simple change in color and style can lead to a difference of day and night for the same object! A difference I find utterly enjoyable by the way, for this way one object can please many different people and can be made to fit a multitude of occasions – and moreover, it inspires creativity!

 

So here’s the video, including a little “how to” information, enjoy!

Have you ever altered a box or some other object? How did you do it?

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Peek-a-boo baby shower card

This dreamy Congrats-On-Your-New-Baby card is 8×8 inch (20×20 cm) and created with DCWV’s Once Upon A Time design paper. As you may have noticed from my other card projects, I like to combine them with actual postcards. In this case, a postcard that I bought at an art museum – which adds to the dreamy atmosphere I was aiming for with this design, imho.

As you may have guessed this special card is entirely of my own design and harkens back to my very first scrapbooking project, a 2013 calendar.

So check out my 3-minute video – which includes a little paper walkthrough of the gorgeous Once Upon A Time 8×8 inch stack!

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Paper walkthrough: Romantic Nursery

Here’s a super lovely baby design paper stack, created by Eline Pellinkhof with Marianne Design, a Dutch designer. It’s A5, which makes it a little bit bigger than the usual 15×15 inch paper pads.

Click here if you don’t see the 2-minute video below.

Explosion box alternative: Explosion Card (with baby socks)

Here’s an alternative for an explosion box that I came up with – which will come in handy if you want to send it over the mail!

The paper I used was Sweet Threads 6×6 inch design stack by BasicGrey. I distressed the paper with “tattered rose” distress ink by Ranger (Tim Holtz)  – which looks something like vintage pink. Or – a tattered rose, if you will 😉

Tattered Rose

Just make sure you put something inside the card that will create enough tension to make the card “explode”. Like the cute little baby socks I sent to a very happy pregnant couple!

Click here if you can’t see the video below.

 

Klik hier als je de video hieronder niet kunt zien.

Dutch translation

Deze uitklapkaart heb ik bedacht als handig alternatief voor de zgn. Explosion Box (een bijzonder type kadokaart), vooral als je het iemand over de post wilt toesturen!

Je hoeft alleen maar te zorgen dat het kadootje dat je erin doet genoeg papierspanning veroorzaakt om de kaart open te laten springen. Zoals de schattige babysokjes die ik hier heb gebruikt! Zorg er hoe dan ook voor dat het kadootje dat je in de kaart stopt voldoende papierspanning veroorzaakt, anders springt hij niet open en is het een gewone uitvouwkaart. Een goed voorbeeld van wat werkt zijn de superschattige babysokjes die ik heb gebruikt!

Het papier is Sweet Threads 15×15 cm, van BasicGrey. Het papier heb ik gedistressed met distress ink van Ranger (Tim Holtz), in de kleur “tattered rose”  – wat zoiets betekent als gehavende roos en in feite gewoon een vorm van oud-roze is 😉

 

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