Perpetual Calendar pt. 4 – Time to Flourish

As you may have discovered by now, I’m doing a four-part blog series on two perpetual calendars with Graphic 45 paper collections:

I’ve created two calendars at once because one, the Place in Time calendar, is for my mother, the other for myself.

Now that I’ve finished both, I must say that although the calendars have been based on a layered layout principle, they weren’t so alike as they may seem at first glance. Not only are both calendars different in size – Place in Time is 12×12, Time to Flourish is 8×8 – but the design and atmosphere of each collection are so uniquely their own that they felt like two completely different projects to work on.

And I can’t make up my mind which I like best! Except maybe for size: in hindsight, I liked to work with the 12×12 cutaparts more – mainly because all of their gorgeous pictures were larger, and therefore more fully enjoyed. 🙂

Well, without further ado here’s the video of the fourth and final part. And don’t forget to enjoy all of the beautiful pictures in the photo gallery below!

 

Perpetual Calendar pt. 3 – Place in Time

Back in January of this year I shared the first six months of my new 12×12″ perpetual calendar. Well, I’m glad to be able to share the entire calendar with you today, all 12 months!

I’m actually creating TWO of this type of layout calendar, one for my mom and one for myself. I’ll share them both, in four parts:

So here’s part 3, created with Graphic 45’s beautiful Place in Time collection, which I truly enjoyed working with, so enjoy the video and the photos below!

 

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Time to Celebrate Cards & Paper Walkthrough

I love the gorgeous spring greens and salmon pinks of Graphic 45’s Time to Celebrate!
That is why today I’m sharing two cards I created with it, after walking you through the papers and embellishments of this collection.

It is the perfect card making stack!
Because several sheets display more than one festive occasion at once, coming up with projects that are not cards turns out to be a bit of a challenge for me though, for I usually have one specific occasion or purpose in mind. But, that’s a puzzle I’ll (very happily) solve at a later time!

For now I’m very happy to say: enjoy the video and the pictures below! 🙂

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Layered Card with Once Upon a Springtime

Using some leftover pieces from my few Graphic 45’s Once Upon a Springtime sheets, I created this layered card for my aunt’s birthday.

This gorgeous paper is great to work with! Its base layer is what I call a scrap mat, i.e. a mat created from scraps of paper. If you wish to try this technique for yourself, feel free to check out my (free) video tutorial!

Other techniques I used were fussy-cutting, layering, matting, and stamping. I also used some liquid pearl around the edges of the journaling part on the inside of the card. And last but not least, I’m showing off my new 1½” butterfly punch and my new Yep, I made this stamp. 🙂

Hope you feel inspired to create a gorgeous card with relatively few materials too! 🙂

Enjoy the video, and your weekend; stay crafty!

 

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Awesomeness: 1-sheet Interactive Card!

Sometimes you want to send someone an awesome card, but you don’t have the time to spend hours and hours of creating. That is why I love my quick scrap projects!

I designed this card from only 1 sheet of doublesided 12×12″ (30,5×30,5 cm) design paper, with just a couple of folds and cuts. I also added some cardstock for the tags, and a few little embellishments. This design helps you to create a luxurious, interactive card within less than 60 minutes of creating!

It also enables you to use up those single sheets of double-sided design paper you might still have left over from other projects.

Or, in my case, the design lets me indulge myself in just buying single sheets that really stand out from their collections, without having to buy the entire collections and all that goes with them 🙂

To help you all along I wrote a tutorial for you, which you can acquire for a very sharp price in my Etsy shop 🙂

Enjoy the video and pictures below, and stay crafty!

 

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Mother’s Day and Happy Birthday with G45’s Time to Flourish

I’ve been working with Graphic 45’s Time to Flourish collection since the end of last year, when I was creating the first six months of an 8×8″ calendar. (I’ll show you the second half of that calendar this summer, since I haven’t finished it yet.)

Meanwhile, I added some 12×12″ inch Time to Flourish sheets to my otherwise 8×8″ collection, to mix & match a bit and create four nice cards. Today I’m happy to share the first two, centered around the month of May. They were great fun to make, especially with all the cutaparts, tags and chipboard pieces that come with this collection! I also enjoyed playing around with two different sizes of the same May sheet, the results of which you can see in the video.

So here’s two layered cards, one for Mother’s Day, the other for a birthday, both centered around the month of May.
For some more month-based greeting cards, check out my August versions!

Please like & subscribe, and let me know what you think!
(If you click on the title of this blog post you’ll find the comment section underneath the post).

Twice Upon A Springtime: Two Cute Little Minis

Continuing from last week’s one-sheet-challengeI came up with another challenge for myself – again, in the spirit of Spring and everything New 🙂

This time it was: How to Create Two Ring-bound Mini Albums out of Four Sheets of Design Paper (and some cardstock)

I don’t know about you but there are some paper collections I only ever bought a couple of sheets of. Like in my case, the Once Upon a Springtime collection by Graphic 45. (At the time I was so happy when I had managed to scavenge a few sheets of this wondrously lovely collection from the hidden corners of our local scrap shop. If only I had known they would reboot this entire collection all over again in 2015! 🙂 )

Another example of owning only a few sheets of a particular paper collection: sometimes I’ve got some sheets leftover from some large project.

Well, what to do with these if you’re not in the mood for cards? Here’s what: create two adorable little minis, and create them in two versions: a photo version and a notebook version.

You’ll need only four 12×12″ sheets of double-sided design paper and eight sheets of A4 cardstock. Plus some embellishments, and of course some tools and crafting supplies.

These little albums are relatively easy and fairly quickly to make, and they make great gifts! For instance, I filled one with photos and gifted it to my mother for Easter. The other I turned into a birthday gift for a colleague, who would now have a great little notebook to keep in her purse, with still room for a few treasured pictures if she wishes.

Like this idea? Great, check out my video below! And if you’d like to create some yourself – admit it, you have several four-sheet-sets left in your stash!! – hop on over to my Etsy shop to get the tutorial! It will be available from April 8th, it has 37 pages and 99 pictures and guides you through the process of creating the mini albums step-by-step.

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Perpetual Calendar pt. 2 – Time to Flourish

Last week I shared a so-called Eternal Calendar with you, usable for as many years as you please. Otherwise known as a birthday calendar 😉 – although as long as the actual calendar part is replaceble, like mine, you could do an actual calendar (where the dates actually match the weekdays).

As I shared with you in my previous blogpost. I’m actually creating two versions of this type of layout calendar, one for my mom and one for myself. I’ll share them both, in three or four parts:

So here’s part 2, created with Graphic 45’s gorgeous Time to Flourish collection, enjoy!

 

 

Happy New Year! (and an eternal calendar)

My dear creative readers and subscribers, I wish you all the very happiest of new years! May all of your dreams come true, or at least a little nearer 😉

And I want to thank you all for supporting my efforts by following this blog and subscribing to it. All of you together have generated more than 12.000 views of my blog! Or, as WordPress’s annual report tells me, if it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 4 sold-out performances for that many people to see it. 🙂

You guys come from 92 countries all over the world! Most visitors came from The United States. Netherlands & U.K. were not far behind. But I’m also giving shout outs to Canada, India, Spain, Germany, France, Italy, Norway, Sweden, Belgium, Poland, Israel, Russian Federation, Hungary, Argentina, Australia, Brazil, South Africa, Slovenia, Philippines, Puerto Rico, Finland, Portugal, Suriname, Japan, Mexico, Vietnam, Peru and New Zealand! *waving hi!* 🙂 And many more countries apparently, but WordPress stats don’t show those to me. So a shout out to all of you guys in unnamed countries as well, thank you so much for stopping by, and hopefully you’re staying for a while – and please tell your friends, for some of you are the single unique person in your entire countries to visit my blog 🙂 !

I don’t have many New Year’s resolutions, but here’s one: I want to open a webshop this year – and I don’t mean my current Shop page, but a “real” webshop.
Maybe through Etsy’s or a comparable webshop provider. This is a huge challenge for me, for I have to figure out everything for myself, build the webshop and, most importantly and biggest challenge of all, FILL the webshop with products! Which when I start will primarily consist of downloadable tutorials for my projects. So, great plans and I hope you guys will stay tuned! 🙂

To start off the new year, I’d like to share a so-called Eternal Calendar with you. By which I mean that you can use it for as many years as you please. (You could also call it a birthday calendar, but eternal sounds so much better don’t you think? 😉 )

I’m actually creating TWO of this type of layout calendar, one for my mom and one for myself. I’ll share them both, in four parts:

So here’s part 1, created with Graphic 45’s beautiful Place in Time collection, enjoy!

 

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Double Layout Thank You Card (+ one bonus cardlet)

Recently I visited an animal shelter with a colleague, which was a very special experience. My colleague and I wanted to send them a Thank You note, which I created using Graphic 45’s very suitable Raining Cats & Dogs design paper. I created a double card, with a layout on the inside as well.

Although Raining Cats & Dogs isn’t a Thanksgiving paperline specifically, it’s great to use it as such anyway!

The leftover scraps I used to create a cute little birthday card for a (different) friend/colleague. So enjoy, and see for yourself how gorgeous this new G45 paperline is!

 

New Micro Album design: The Briefcase

This is a cute, unique design, which I’m very proud of! It’s a different kind of micro album, which I designed as sort of a briefcase. Also: very fun to create!

Paper is Bohemian Bazaar by Graphic 45, a great paper that I’ve used before – on one of my mini albums and also on a cute gatefold card. I’ve used the last of the scraps that I had left over of these projects to create this micro album. What a great way to use up all of your paper 🙂

 

Click for my other micro albums!

 

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4-fold Tutorial: Gatefold card, magnet closure, ribbon pull and pattern pocket

Hi gals & guys, I have another tutorial for you! This, my latest How to video, shows you how to make a great gatefold card for a guy. As you’re no doubt aware we can hardly send the men in our lives a card with ribbons, roses and other girly knick-knacks now can we? 🙂 Therefore this card does not have any dimensional embellishments – but instead a much more “manly” magnet closure. Another tip for masculine embellishments: screw brads. They’re absolutely cool – there’s an example at the end of the video, in the second gatefold card I’m showing.

Also in this How to video, a ribbon pull, plus what I’ve dubbed a pattern pocket – by which I mean a hidden pocket, created by making use of the pattern in the paper.

You can of course choose your own measurements, it’s the basic principle that counts.

Design paper: A Proper Gentleman by Graphic 45, inked around the edges with Black Soot distress ink by Tim Holtz.

Hope this helps you all! Let me know what you think and if you’ll make your own gatefold card based on this tutorial – please let me know if you have any questions!

 

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