Quick, easy and lovely: String-tied Layered Cards

It doesn’t always have to take many long hours of work to create a beautiful card. In this week’s tutorial I’m sharing an idea for a quick & easy card design, for which you only need some pieces of paper, a piece of string and some tools.

You can use colored cardstock, design paper or a mixed media background to be the showstopper piece. I created my backgrounds with Distress inks by Tim Holtz.

A nice detail of this design is the piece of string, which you wrap around your card and tie into a bow on the inside of your card.

All in all I think you may actually create this card in under ten minutes – provided you already made your mixed media backgrounds at some time in the past, and have them at the ready (if you’re not opting for design paper or colored cardstock).

If you don’t have a die-cutting machine, you could also stamp a sentiment, or adhere a chipboard piece like in the picture below. In case you don’t own an embossing machine, you can easily skip the embossed layer entirely, also like the card below (shown in more detail in the video).

Enjoy the video tutorial! – which is, like this card design, short & sweet 🙂

Three cards with 2½ sheets of PS I Love You papers

Sometimes I like newly brought out design papers but don’t necessarily want to buy the entire collection. This is why I only bought two sheets of Kaisercraft’s recent PS I Love You (double-sided) collection, so I could still savour their gorgeous new design patterns, wondering what I could make with them.

As it turns out, 2 entire sheets with 2 extra 6×6″ pieces are enough to create three lovely cards, matted on the front, the back and the inside 🙂

So hopefully you find this as encouraging as I – for now you can perhaps also more easily enjoy more of these gorgeous new design paper collections that come out evert month! (yea!)

 


Summer is coming! Two cards to celebrate!

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.