Tag Archives: Etsy

Rose of Encouragement – An Interactive Wallet Card

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If you want to try your hand at this interactive wallet card yourself, please check out the tutorial I wrote for you, which you can find in my Etsy shop.

NEWS flash: this tutorial is now also available in Dutch – email me if you’re interested! Plus, several card kits to make this particular card are now available as well! 🙂

Recently Jessica, a young lady from the USA whom I had never met before, contacted me via Youtube, proposing a project swap. I loved this idea, as well as the great spontaneity she showed with this initiative, and we agreed to a friendly card challenge. I set the theme, she added some parameters. So here’s the homework we gave ourselves:

Create an interactive, not too bulky wallet-type card around the theme Encouragement. The projects would have to be true to our individual styles and personalities. Extra criterium was to try and make the message to the other person as personal as we could – without us actually knowing eachother… So we’d have to find our inner Encourager, as it were. 🙂

So, in the video below you can check out what I came up with! This wallet card measures 5.75 x 5.75″ (14.5 x 14.5 cm) and is of my own design. It has pockets, tags, layered layouts and several interactive closures. It’s 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 there are several personal messages by different people and/or gift cards needing to be tucked away into one awesome card 🙂

I used Kaisercraft’s Lady Rose collection, which is stunningly beautiful, feminine and timelessly on trend. Plus, it has some great and encouraging sentiment labels which fit this challenge perfectly!

And here’s the video of the card Jessica created for me! So thank you again Jessica, for your lovely card and your great initiative – an encouragement in and of itself! And for those of you who’d like to see what Jessica’s up to, check out her website, which you can find at AT2 Design.

 

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Loose Change – A Twelve Pocket Folio

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Sometimes people send me some photographs, maybe a picture of me and them during a party or a family event, or just a photo update of their little baby. And sometimes they use these pictures as cards – writing a personal message to me on the back. This doesn’t happen super often, but enough to make me want to store these pictures neatly together. Also, I’d like to preserve any notes or personal messages on the backs of these photos.

So I came up with a quick and easy design for a folio: thin, light-weight and without any photo mats since I wasn’t going to glue anything down. I just needed pockets that would fit 10 x 15 cm (4×6″) pictures, and I chose to create twelve – a number that would fairly easily fit onto two pages, keeping the folio super thin. Also, twelve is perfect if you wanted to do something like a year in review or baby’s first year, or some such.

I’m calling this design Loose Change, for it’s intended specifically for pictures you do not want to glue down, and want to change regularly.
This design of course enables you to preserve any hand-written notes on the backs!

In case you’d like to create one yourself, there’s a tutorial waiting for you in my Etsy shop.

Thanks for watching and please feel free to leave a comment below! You can also help support this blog by clicking the Like button 🙂

Neverending Memories – A Folio Album (new design!)

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I’m very pleased to share with you today a unique design that I recently finished. I’m calling it a Folio Album, and this particular one I dubbed Neverending Memories. It’s a great design that allows you to store (or take with you) your piece as a neat mini album (the album aspect of the folio album), while folding it out on your table when you want to showcase your photos in one fairly large but still very manageable overview (the folio part).

I used 17 sheets of 12×12″ decorative paper to create it, which keeps it well within range of one pack of design paper – keeping it reasonably affordable to create. I used the stunningly teal Winterbird design paper collection by Tilda. You’ll also need some cardstock of course, as well as some embellishments of your choice.

It’s somewhat easier to create than an actual mini album, since there’s no binding of pages, nor any chipboard that needs to be turned into an album cover & spine. I really enjoyed designing it, and had great fun creating it!

And: I went the extra mile and wrote a tutorial for you all 🙂 . It has 120 pages and holds 430 pictures! You can check it out in my Etsy shop, where it’s offered as a direct download pdf file.

Have fun watching 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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Life’s a Picnic – an interactive mini album (tutorial available!)

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Recently I went through my design paper supply (which has grown to quite the little stash) and stumbled upon Basic Grey’s Lucille paper pad. Lucille is a romantic paper with vintage fashion overtones, colorful but a little toned down and very sophisticated. A fabulous design paper, and I decided I instantly had to use it to create a mini album! 🙂

This 6 x 6.5″ pocketstyle mini album has 14 interactive layout pages, including the insides of both covers. The covers are chipboard with a reinforced binding for durability. The pages are constructed from multiple layers of heavy-weight cardstock and patterned papers. Features include large pull-out photo mats, special closures (like magnetic, or swing tabs), lots of flaps and pockets holding journaling tags and photo mats and much more! Details abound throughout this album such as punched borders, micro booklets, flowers, brads, specialty die-cuts, ribbon and trim, and specialty cut-aparts. There are 5 large pull-out photo mats and several flaps and tags inside with room for approx. 45-50 small and regular-sized photos.

And: I wrote a tutorial for those of you who’d like to make one yourselves – my first for a mini album! 🙂 You can check it out in my Etsy shop.

Check out my baby version and Christmas version of this pocketstyle album design – their page design is not exactly the same, but they give you a pretty good idea of how different styles and colors would look. If you’d like to see a version with photos inside, check out my Ancestry mini album!

Anyway, enjoy the complete show & tell video, and have a great week!

 

Opened my Etsy web shop!

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Schermafbeelding 2015-01-25 om 14.28.24

Well, it wasn’t very long ago that I told you about my New Year’s resolution to open my own web store. At the time I thought it would take me at least a couple of months longer, and I was striving to get it up by March or April. But sometimes you surprise yourself by taking an unexpected leap forward – as in my case, for my Etsy shop is now up and running!

So woohooo! I’m a shop owner! 🙂

There’s not many product listings in it yet of course, only three to start with, since it’s only been up like a minute. One if which is a downloadable tutorial by the way, of my Explosion of Joy explosion box.

From now on I’ll be writing more tutorials, which is a time consuming process so I won’t be able to add one every week so to speak. However, I can promise you at least two more in the upcoming 2 months, with the third planned in March/April.

Anyway, I’m very excited of course, this is truly a new direction for me! Hopefully it’s the start of another great way to share my designs with you all and making them more available and accessible to those of you who wish to create your own projects but don’t know how 🙂

So here’s the video, with clear instructions on how to find my shop on your own – that is, if you haven’t bookmarked it after your first visit of course! 😉

Don’t forget to like this post and subscribe to my blog. And once on Etsy, you can add my store to your favorite shops for easy access!

You can also share this on Facebook or Pinterest, or email it to a friend. Simply use the buttons below.

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!

 

 

Cuteness in a Box – a Gatefold Micro Album

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Time for some super cuteness! 🙂

This tiny gatefold micro album measures 3½ x 2⅜ x 1½ inches! (9x6x4 cm) It comes with its own little box, with sides that fold open for easy access. The box measures  2⅜ x 4⅛ inches (6.5 x 10.5 cm).

I haven’t got a tutorial yet, but as of this year I’m writing tutorials for several of my upcoming projects, which will be made available through my new webshop (which I’m also working on). So stay tuned! – EDIT 2020: The tutorial is now available!

Design paper used: Ancestry by K&Company. I’ve used this paper before, on a large mini album, so check it out.

And here’s the video, enjoy – and please let me know what you think in the comment section, and by liking & subscribing!

Gift idea: Christmas Paper Bag Album

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Before you read any further: this album is for sale for a special opening price, so please check it out on my Showroom page! (International customers: please pay attention to the fact that international shipping fees will have to be added).

Tis the Season, yea! 🙂 I haven’t got my Christmas tree yet, but nevertheless it’s that time of the year again, which means holiday-themed projects for crafters all over the world! Soooo many gorgeous new Christmas collections and I haven’t even bought a single one this year. Not because I don’t want to create anything for Christmas, on the contrary. But since I bought like a gazillion Christmas collections last year, I’m afraid I’ll be not-buying any new Christmas collections the coming years until I’ve used up the ones I already own…. (Right. Like that’s going to happen! But: at least this year it is! 🙂 )

Anyway, here’s a so-called paper bag mini album, the pages of which are basically created from paper bags – and some cardstock. I really love this type of album, for it requires less basic construction than the usual cardstock albums, so you can relatively quickly move on to decorating and embellishing – which, you know, is grrrrreat! 🙂

The paper collection I used is North Country, by Prima Marketing, plus some separate sheets from other collections. I also used this paper line for my Christmas cards this year.

Explosion of Joy – a springtime explosion box

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Don’t you love spring? The days are finally lengthening again, birds are coaxing potential mates to their side by singing to their hearts’ content, early flowers are blooming in happy colors and the sun is already tentatively testing the strength of it’s rays. I think God designed springtime to be an awesome reminder for us that their’s always New Life waiting for us after a period of death – no matter how long the winter in your heart may have lasted.

An explosion box is therefore an especially fitting springtime project: it’s literally an Explosion of Joy!  🙂

Enjoy the video – please like if you do & feel free to leave a comment! And – there’s a tutorial available in my Etsy shop!

 

 

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Explosion box with Uptown Flair design paper

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Here’s my second explosion box, decked in the gorgeous summer colors of The Paper Studio’s Uptown Flair design paper. Not only is an explosion box a great alternative for your usual birthday card or gift, it is also kind of a mini album since it will actually hold about 20 pictures!

I had so much fun creating my first explosion box, in the blue jeans colors of the Fiddlesticks paper pad, so I was very happy when I was commissioned to create a second one.

Uptown Flair’s color theme is so inspiring! Almost every sheet of its 12×12 inch paper stack has glitter in its design, which gives it a truly glamorous and festive look and feel. I had already used it on some other projects – two birthday cards, one a mini wallet and the other a photo wallet – but when you make an explosion box you really have to use each and every sheet of paper; which automatically means you get to enjoy working with each individual design.

Take a look for yourself and let me know what you think. If you’d like to create one yourself, please check out the tutorial in my Etsy shop. Oh, and for the link to the “Print your tags” (free) tutorial I refer to in the video, click here.

Click here if you can’t see the video.

 

Klik hier als je het filmpje niet kunt zien.

Dit explosiedoosje is een leuk alternatief voor een verjaardagskaart of zelfs een minialbum – er kunnen nl. ongeveer 20 foto’s in!

Ter inspiratie om zelf ook te maken – er is een Engelstalige werkinstructie beschikbaar in mijn Etsy shop. Ik kan ook een Nederlandse versie voor je maken, tegen dezelfde prijs. Geen tijd/zin om zelf te maken? Je kunt er ook eentje bestellen op dit blog, via de Showroom, papierkeuze/kleur/thema in overleg.

Explosion box with “Fiddlesticks” design paper

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I really love this western-like jeans, lace & wood design paper by My Mind’s Eye. This 6×6 inch (15×15 cm) paper shows fascinating combinations of colors, fabrics and textures and also comes with two sheets of tags. Check out my paper walkthrough to see what I mean; I loved working with it!

This is my first explosion box. The most difficult challenge was probably “how not to use the entire paper pad in one explosion box” – but I managed 😉

An explosion box is a lot of work but its rewards are as great: it really makes its recipients happy, their eyes widening with wonder and glee when they lift its lid! :-)The one I made here is probably its most simple form; I’m already contemplating more layers, more pockets, more doors, more… everything! So keep an eye out for my next design! 🙂

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

 

Klik hier als je het filmpje hieronder niet kunt zien.

Een explosiedoosje is veel werk, maar het is ook wel superleuk om aan iemand te geven door de verrassing die het doosje in zich bergt, en die tevoorschijn “springt” als de nieuwsgierige ontvanger het dekseltje optilt 🙂

Ook eentje bestellen? Kijk in mijn Showroom.