I’m so happy to be able to share my latest mini album design! It’s an 8½ x 8½” (22 x 22 cm) gatefold keepsake album, which I’ve titled Be Your Creative Self – which sentiment is totally inspired by the paper collection I’ve been working with: World’s Fair, the glorious 2015 collectionby Graphic 45.
This is a luxurious gatefold keepsake album, a square one this time – the others have all been in portrait mode. Its pages are a little bit larger than 8×8″, so that you can work with those great 8×8″ design paper pads.
This Be Your Creative Self album contains twelve interactive page layouts, including the inside covers. It has a magnetized closure and has a very crisp and clean cover, no embellishments at all, to really showcase this magnificent paper line.
It was a heck of a job to get it done, but soooo, so much fun! If you’d like to create this great album yourself, a tutorial is available on Etsy, with over 400 clear pictures of the step-by-step process!
Enjoy the video and pictures below, and let me know what you think in the comment section!
As you may have noticed, one of my favorite design paper brands is Graphic 45. Which is why I’m super excited – and a little nervous! – for this blog post, for it is my first time ever submission for a Graphic 45‘s Design Team Audition! 🙂
I am delighted to be able to share some of my favorite projects – old and new – that showcase my style, including a tutorial via Snapguide, and I hope you’ll all feel inspired by them!
Project 1: ATC Book Box Wall Ornament – with Graphic 45’s Sweet Sentiments
Graphic 45’s ATC Book Box (ivory) offers many, many creative possibilities and it was an absolute joy to work with it!
It inspired me to create a brand new project: an Easter Wall Ornament. It has a removable decorative show piece showcasing many fussy-cut images from the collection’s gorgeous signature sheet.
Without this show piece it is still a very decorative but also practical little box for anything you’d like to store – and keep handy at the same time. Like your keys. Your phone. Your business cards. Or your lipsticks! 🙂
To create it, I (gently) cut the box part from the book cover part, turned it 90 degrees and reattached it. By firmly wrapping the cover part with design paper I made sure it stayed straight, preventing it from folding like a book.
I used a ribbon tied through an eyelet to hang the wall ornament on the wall.
Below are some pictures, and the show & tell video:
To see more of the details, click the picture below for an enlargement:
Fussy-cut tag, adorned with fussy-cut floral (lifted with some dimensional tape):
Detail of the ornament, without the show piece:
Bottom
The chipboard pieces on the front are backed up with design paper, continuing the main pattern on the back:
Hanging from my bed room wall
Show & tell video:
Project 2: New Job Card – with Graphic 45’s Time to Celebrate
As soon as I laid eyes on the Time to Celebrate collection, I fell in love with its vibrant spring colors. I immediately created a card with it for my friend who got a new job. She’s quite the lady, so this paper fit her perfectly! 🙂
I love making cards with Graphic 45 papers and for this one I worked with both the 8×8″ design paper and the 6×6″ patterns & solids pad. I used the Best Wishes chipboard piece of the collection, and added some embellishments from my stash: flowers, ribbon, feathers, and flat-back pearls. I stamped Nieuwe Baan (= Dutch for New Job) to finish it.
I layered the inside of the card with both design paper and cardstock, and added two stamps that I cut from the design paper – one of which I lifted with some dimensional tape. I also added two small butterflies from my stash.
Quick video overview:
Project 3: Double-stacked Mini Album ‘Celebrate Every Day’
I love to design and create new or special kinds of mini albums. For example, I’ve designed three different types of folio albums, I love to design large gatefold-style keepsake albums and I’m also an enthousiastic creator of micro albums. The project I’m entering here is yet another kind of (large) keepsake album, which I designed last August. I’m calling it a double-stacked mini album.
This sophisticated album has six page assemblies, three above, three below – which together offer twelve unique interactive page layouts plus some large photo mats!
The insides of the large front and back covers make up their own interactive pages, twice as large as the regular ones. The album has a magnetized closure and although I sometimes go all out with embellishments on mini album covers, I intentionally kept this one crisp and clean on the outside, to showcase the papers – with the added bonus of it easily fitting into a book case.
Below are some pictures, plus the show & tell video I did last September. I’ve also done a video tutorial for one of the origami page elements in the album, which I’ll also embed below.
Inside front cover:
Bonus Project: Briefcase Micro Album – with Graphic 45’s Bohemian Bazaar
This is one of my first designs with Graphic 45 papers and I’m still proud of it, which is why I’m adding it to this audition, even though it’s from 2014 🙂 .
I designed this cute little micro album to look like sort of a briefcase. It measures only 11 x 9 x 5,5 cm (4¼ x 3½ x 2″) and sports six small pocket pages. Each of those holds a tag or a cutapart from the collection.
I created a ‘suitcase handle’ from cardstock lined with book muslin, which I attached with two brads and two small D-rings. The album is held closed with a magnet closure.
Because I really enjoyed showcasing the gorgeously colorful paper, I only added a few embellishments both inside and outside, keeping it clean and stylish and letting the paper speak for itself.
The album is designed to open vertically, not horizontally, just like an actual briefcase. This enables you to thumb through the pages with both hands, kind of like you would a rolodex or some records or some such (yeah I know, this reference totally dates me… 😉 ).
The intended way of opening and perusing this micro album is vertically:
And here’s the (2014) video show & tell video:
Tutorial: How to Create a Micro Booklet – with Graphic 45’s Time to Celebrate
I really love my micro projects, and for the tutorial part of this audition I’m entering a second micro project, next to the Briefcase Micro Album above (Bonus Project). I designed this cute micro bookletas a fun alternative for a card or gift tag. It holds several tiny tags on which you could write your birthday wishes and/or little personal messages. Thanks to its small size it’s easy to send by mail, to carry in one’s purse, to add to a bunch of flowers, etc. – for it measures only 6.5 x 7 cm (2½ x 2¾”).
As an added bonus, it’s perfect for using up the scraps of your awesome scrapbook design papers! (I don’t know about you but I hate to throw away even the tiniest sliver…)
For this project I chose my beloved Time to Celebrate paper line again – couldn’t help myself, it’s just too gorgeous 🙂 .
Please check out my Snapguide* tutorial for this fun project! It’s embedded below, so simply click the tutorial’s pictures or the arrows underneath to move back and forth through the tutorial – very convenient! 🙂
*: Edit 2021: It seems that Snapguide no longer exists, and without warning they apparently removed their entire tutorials database. So I’m sorry, but the aforementioned tutorial for this little booklet is no longer there. If you’d like to know how to make one though, check out this earlier video tutorial of mine.
Hope this inspired you to create one or more yourself, for it’s really a fun little project!
Short show & tell video:
In conclusion
This has been my entry for the Graphic 45 Design Team Audition 2016!
I hope you’ve enjoyed reading this post as much as I have creating it!
Thank you to all who follow me on this blog and/or on Youtube or other social media, I really appreciate all of your support.
Now please wish me luck 🙂 – for I’m really hoping and praying I’ll make the cut! I would be so honored with a spot on the ever-awesome G45 Design Team and am really looking forward to a chance of working with this great team of designers and crafters – and of course with Graphic 45’s great products and beautiful vintage paper collections – which are great to work with and always smell so good… 🙂
A so-called tri-shutter card is easy to make and almost always generates amazed and admiring responses. You can create them at different sizes and shapes (i.e. rectangular or square), simply by playing around with both the horizontal and vertical measurements of your cardstock.
Today I’m sharing a third variation: a birthday card for a golf player, using a Proper Gentleman paper by Graphic 45.
I fussy-cut an actual golf player from the paper and glued it to the left front panel, making sure the glof club was sticking out.
I also die-cut and embossed the first letter of the name of the guy to whom I was going to send it. I lightly went over it with some distress ink, to highlight the embossed parts.
I always use a light color for the central panel, to be able to write or stamp a message. In this case: Congratulations in Dutch.
When creating a card or other project for a guy, I always keep the embellishments at a minimum. No fuss for a man! 🙂
Sometimes it’s difficult to establish whether the male recipient of your card genuinely likes it for its own merits – for though he may truly appreciate and enjoy the gesture, he might still feel neutral at best about the esthetics of your work. Nevertheless, in this case I think the colleague who received this particular card actually deemed it quite likeable 🙂
So, hope you feel inspired for your first new cards in 2016. As I said this design is very easy to make. If you’d like to try it but don’t know how, check out my free video tutorial!
Next week’s video: Boxing Days – A chipboard storage or gift box to create yourself!
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. In my previous posts I showed you several December projects, the first of which was a quick Christmas Mini Album, so you can start there if you’d like to see them all. Today: Part 9 of this December Deluge of creative ideas 🙂
Today I’m sharing part 2 of my signature sheet ideas,so the sheets that feature the title of each Graphic 45 collection. In my case, just like in my previous post, from the 8×8″ Nutcracker Sweet Christmas collection.
Signature sheet
This time I hardly cut into it at all, using it in its entirety for an interactive 8×8″ Christmas card. Since this one was for my mother, I also added a present: a handmade voucher for the actual Nutcracker Suite classical ballet piece – for which I was totally inspired by this paper collection! 🙂
So there’s an idea to use your beautiful signature sheets, and you only need:
1 double-sided signature sheet
1 double-sided sheet of design paper from the same collection
some cutaparts
a piece of decorative chipboard
Have fun creating and enjoy your Christmas holiday season!
Using a chipboard piece as a closure: simple but very effective!
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. In my previous posts I showed you several December projects, the first of which was a quick Christmas Mini Album, so you can start there if you’d like to see them all. Today: Part 8 of this December Deluge of creative ideas 🙂
As you may know, Graphic 45 paper collections always have a so-called signature sheet, which features the title design of the collection. It’s always the first sheet in a 12×12″ or 8×8″ paper pad, and its design generally depicts a collage of elements that together make up the title of the collection.
In several of my previous December Deluge projects I used the Nutcracker Sweet collection, and used up all of my 8×8″ papers – that is, excepting one: the signature sheet! There’s two of them in each pad, and I saved them for something special. So in this blog post and my next I’m sharing two ideas to use these special signature or title sheets.
First: a Christmas Treasure Chest – enjoy the video and pictures below!
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. In my previous posts I showed you several December projects, the first of which was a quick Christmas Mini Album, so you can start there if you’d like to see them all. Today: Part 7 of this December Deluge of creative ideas 🙂
This year’s Christmas collection for me has been Nutcracker Sweet by Graphic 45. A couple of blog posts ago I already showed you a number of 4×4″ Christmas cards I created with this collection. ANd there’s more purple projects to follow, so stay tuned! 🙂
I always like to do double layout cards, by which I mean cards that have layouts both on the front and on the inside, which gives them a particularly finished look and adds a luxurious feel.
Today I continue my Purple Plethora of Christmas cards, with seven 4×6″ versions of Nutcracker Sweet!
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. In my previous post I showed you a quick Christmas Mini Album and a 1-sheet Micro Wallet. Today: Part 3 of this December Deluge of creative ideas 🙂
The Nutcracker Sweet papers are an older (2012) collection of Graphic 45,but once I discovered it, I really fell in love with its beautiful purple, pink and clear-winter-sky-blue hues. So I decided to use it – papers & chipboard tags – for my Christmas cards this year.
I’ve created cards of several different sizes and styles, and today I’m sharing the first: the 4×4″ Double Card.
After two projects (a mini album and a tea box) I’m still in love with working with Graphic 45’s beautifully colored Raining Cats & Dogs paper collection. So I created three cards with this same collection – the 4th of October was, after all, World Animal Day, so hey. 😉
All cards are (what I call) double layout cards, which have layered layouts both on the front and on the inside. Of course you can’t put too much bulk on the inside, but the collection offers plenty of non-bulky ephemera as well, like chipboard, die-cut flowers and tags & pockets.
So here we go, with two dog-themed cards and one aimed at cat lovers. Hope you feel inspired! 🙂
The challenge I set myself for this months mini album was to design an 8×8″ album that would perfectly accomodate a Graphic 45 collection. So not just the design paper, but also the many extras that come with such a collection: the journalling cards, flowers, chipboard pieces, stickers, tags and pockets. One of my main goals was to use as little 12×12-sized design paper as possible. And I succeeded (yea!), for I only used 1 sheet of 12×12 design paper, namely for the back cover!
I also wanted to create a wire-bound mini, for I hadn’t done one of those in a while and there are certain advantages to the page design: you don’t have to create pocket pages for there is no hidden hinge binding. And this means: less bulky!
So I got to work with my Raining Cats and Dogs collection – what a glorious color scheme, and what a treat to see a nineteentwenties translation of a pets theme! Also, you can turn your scraps into awesome scrap mats, and in this blog post‘s free video tutorial I show you how to do that.
Since I created this particular album for my mother – with her dog as the main subject of the album – I can show video footage of the album both with and without pictures, so you can get an idea of how pictures could be incorporated in this design.
For World Animal Day I thought it would be fitting to show a project I created with Raining Cats & Dogs, a lovely, richly colored design paper by Graphic 45.
From chipboard I created a little box that I filled with Original First Tea, which comes in its own little boxes. They fit perfectly into my little gift box. And of course I added a matching birthday card as well!
No video this week, just some lovely pictures. Enjoy, and please like, subscribe and feel free to share them on Pinterest or other social media.
Stay tuned this month, for I’ll be sharing at least two other Raining Cats & Dogs projects the following weeks! If you like what you see below, then click here for a double card I created with this gorgeous paper.
Matching birthday card, created to fit into this little box:
For these final months of the year (boy, how time flies!) I created some cards using the Time to Flourish collection by Graphic 45. This collection is the perfect seasonal collection, with a special focus on all things floral.
I already created some cards earlier in the year, there was May, including Mother’s Day, and fairly recently I showed you two versions of August birthday cards.
This time it’s the fall, and even one Christmas card.
So enjoy the video and pictures, and please like & subscribe!
The Time to Flourish collection by Graphic 45 is really versatile. You could do a calendar of course, a mini album, or special greeting cards to send your friends and family actual month-based well-wishes. Back in May I created a birthday card and a Mother’s Day card, and today I’m happy to share with you two summer birthday cards, this time for the month of August.
One is a double layout card, the other an extra large card which measures an actual 8×8″ (20 x 20 cm)! I used a lot of layering with the design paper, cutaparts, chipboard pieces, die-cut flowers and some embellisments, mostly from the Time to Flourish collection.
The challenge I set myself for this months mini album was to design an 8×8″ album that would perfectly accomodate a Graphic 45 collection. So not just the design paper, but also the many extras that come with such a collection: the journalling cards, flowers, chipboard pieces, stickers, tags and pockets. One of my main goals was to use as little 12×12-sized design paper as possible. And I succeeded (yea!), for I only used 1 sheet of 12×12 design paper, namely for the back cover!
