New Design: Holly Jolly Mini Folio

Here’s a fun Christmas holiday project, which will be easy to take with you in your purse because it’s relatively small. It will hold at least 47 pictures, which is perfect not only for said Christmas holidays 🙂 but also for all other occasions, like birthday events, weddings, baby’s first year, summer vacations, back-to-school brag books, remembrance of loved ones and – why not – rock concerts or visits to the zoo 🙂

The only thing you’d have to change to achieve all of those are your paper collections – and we all know What Fun that is! 🙂 Mine was the Wassail collection by Basic Grey, an older collection not available anywhere anymore I think, but you can of course substitute any awesome Christmas collection you like.

So watch the video to find the inspiration to create one yourself, or help yourself to my written pdf tutorial, sporting 70 pages with step-by-step explanations and 160 clear pictures. This makes it absolutely suitable for beginners as well.

Merry Christmas!

December Deluge 1: Quick Mini Album “Caramel Christmas”

Hi guys!

This December month I’ll post many projects on my blog, to give you some inspiration and ideas for your Christmas projects – and also to help you spend your holiday time creatively. This week, Part 1 of this December Deluge of creative ideas 🙂

I’ve got a cute little Christmas mini album to share with you all: it’s kind of a mini mini album. For with its 4â…› x 5â…›” (10,5 x 13 cm) it’s not quite micro yet, but smaller than average nonetheless. It’s fairly easy to make, for each page has the same design, and there’s only four pages.

I’m calling this one Caramel Christmas, mainly because of the color scheme of the paper pad I was using (some nameless Dutch brand) – it just reminded me of Christmas sweets like toffee, or coffee candy. Or caramel! 🙂

Both the album’s size and its small number of pages guarantee that you’ll only need one 6×6″ design paper pad btw – probably only about half at that.

All in all this is what you might call back to basics, or perhaps Mini Album 101 🙂 If you’ve never created a mini album before, I hope this one inspires you to try your hand at it after all! No time like the present right? 🙂 And if you’d like to know how to create this, you can check out the tutorial in my shop – which has 60 pages and 126 pictures.

Enjoy the video & pics below!

Btw, as stated above,  I’ll be posting a lot more Christmas projects this month, so stay tuned!
Next up: December Deluge pt. 2 – A 1-sheet Micro Wallet!

 

 

 

My first Christmas mini album

This past year has been my first “full” year of paper crafting: it all started with the calendar I created for my mother back in November 2012, which seriously infected me with the “paper crafting virus” 🙂 . It has been a year of wonderful creativity and I’m very grateful for the many new techniques (new to me, at least…) I’ve been able to learn. Looking forward to 2014, I’m hoping to plan my craft projects more around the different seasons: not just taking into account the uniquely different feel of winter-spring-summer-autumn, but also bringing some of the holiday seasons into the mix. Not with every single project of course, I mean, sometimes you just want to use a certain design paper because it’s simply too gorgeous not to 🙂 – but generally speaking I feel it should be doable.

So, starting right now, at the end of 2013, I’m very happy to present you all with my very first Christmas mini album!

I used the Tis the Season paper collection by Kaisercraft and inked around all the edges with Vintage Photo distress ink by Tim Holtz. I’ve also incorporated some so-called scrap mats again, a technique I actually came up with (and named) myself. If you want to know how to make them, feel free to check out my tutorial!

If you’d like to know how such an album would look with pictures in it, check out the pictures underneath the video PLUS the 2017 update here! 🙂

Right, ’nuff said, on to the video!

 

Inside front cover – decorated this time, plus a picture (of little me 🙂 ) added to the photo mat:

Die-cutting the picture and finishing its edges with glitter glue adds interest to your photo mat! I also stamped the year in the lower right corner, in copper-colored ink:

Liked this mini? Then check out its little baby sister, my Christmas Micro album! 🙂

MERRY CHRISTMAS TO YOU ALL, AND THE HAPPIEST OF NEW YEARS!