What do you make with oddly themed design papers??

I have great admiration for design paper companies and their graphic designers: having to come up with unique, lovely and most of all sellable designs several times a year seems like a sheer insurmountable challenge to me. So I can understand that every once in a while some design paper collection comes out on the market that in itself looks great – stunning even – but has a slightly odd theme.

This week I’m sharing what you could do with such fairly non-practical themes; like the pastry-themed Sweety collection by Stamperia.

Lovely colors and beautiful graphic designs – they look so good I want to eat them all!

Other than making me seriously crave some chocolate & cherry pie topped off with some pistachio mint ice cream (yummie!) I’m not sure what to do with this collection, except admire its visual gorgeousness. Yes, I know, the theme is great for birthdays and other parties, but then I would prefer a 6×6″ size for cards and Stamperia doesn’t do those. Now take the 12×12 inch sheets: these elaborate graphic designs look more like a picture you would frame and hang from your wall, than cut it up (how?!) to make it into, say, a mini album or, even more difficult, a card.

A seriously uncuttable 12×12″ sheet

So, here’s what I do whenever I encounter a collection I love but cannot for the life of me think of a project intended for some actual, practical use: I buy only the cutapart sheet, and design one card around it, preferably while using up the entire sheet.

The Stamperia cutapart sheets are always great, plus, they come with beautiful journalling spots on the back. Perfect.

So, here’s a short video tutorial on how to design a card around your specific cutaparts. If your cutapart sheet has differently sized cutaparts, then here’s a tutorial around a second design.

Enjoy the video, feel free to craft along! 🙂

Step by step: Mixed Media Christmas Card

A relatively quick and easy way to create Christmas cards is using mixed media techniques. For this week’s card I first created an inked background, then I die-cut from other pieces of inked paper. This week I’m sharing step by step how to do it.

Keep in mind that although there are quite a few steps, it all takes very little time. For instance, to create the background, you simply spray some ink and let it dry. If you use a drying tool like Ranger’s heat tool, this will take you about 10 minutes. And so on, and so forth. So enjoy!

Step by step

  1. Create some backgrounds. I used two A5-sized papers and two A6-sized papers, both mixed media cardstock. I used three different sprays in what I felt was a “Christmas color range”, two by Tim Holtz and one by Dylusions.

The technique I use for this is: I spray one piece of cardstock, then press it onto a second piece of cardstock of the same size. You now get a nice blend, get the most out of your inks (it’s used for double the surface area) and a fun bonus is that they are eachother’s mirror images.

A5 size: 15 x 21 cm
A6 size: 10.5 x 15 cm

Intermezzo: You can now either go on with the step by step below, or you can layer the smaller cards on top of the larger ones and decorate:

2. Die-cut an image or a large sentiment from one of your inked backgrounds. I used the Layered Pine Trees by Tim Holtz. Play around with the placement of the dies, to get a nice colorplay.

3. Fussy-cut around the edges of one of the holes your die left, to get a bonus decoration.

4. Glue the first die-cut to one of your larger backgrounds to get the placement you like. Then die-cut a sentiment from the same piece of inked background, place it below the decoration (or wherever you like basically 😉 ).

The way I placed the elements, on the right, offers the possibility to now fold my card in half and have a beautifully inked double card.

5. In the end however I decided to simply cut it in half, doubling the number of inked backgrounds I had (I did the same with the other large background).

6. If applicable: layer your elements. Then add glitter to your liking.

7. Glue all elements to your background. You have now created a nice piece to mat onto any cardstock you like.

Done!

If you want to see how I used the other Christmas-colored backgrounds I showed above, check out my next post! 🙂

Tutorial: Deconstructed Envelope Card – Version 2

A little while ago I shared a video tutorial on how to create Version 1 of my deconstructed envelope cards. Today it’s time for Version 2, the original of which I shared in one of my previous posts, it looked like this:

So this week you can learn how to create one yourself, by following along with my new video tutorial! Just pause the video at any time you want to read one of the measurements or instructions, or if you want to study a detail.

Have fun creating, and leave a comment if you like!

Tutorial: How to fix broken eyeshadow

Ever received an eyeshadow palette over the mail that arrived broken, like the one in the picture above? Or perhaps, also like me, you’ve dropped it on the floor yourself and can’t think of anything else but throwing it away frustrated? Well, no more, for here’s the solution! 🙂

In between all of the craft videos I thought I’d insert this makeup-related tutorial, it’s really a great fix so I wanted to share it with you. And it’s at least somewhat in the same realm of crafting, right 😉

Next video I’ll be back to papercrafting, I promise – but I hope this helps at least some of you out anyway, please let me know in the comments if it does – or if you have other ‘fixing tips’!

Free: Mailable Mini Album Tutorial

Back in February I shared one of my Mailable Mini Album designs, and invited you to let me know if you’d like me to do a tutorial. Well, you guys let me know 🙂

So, here it is, enjoy!

Tutorial: How to Wrap Chipboard

For the First Tutorial of this new year, I’m sharing a little instructive video on how to wrap chipboard with design paper. Think mini album (or junk journal) covers, or as I did, a layout that you’d like to mount on chipboard.

I mostly used Kaisercraft’s Christmas Edition papers to get an elegant black & white theme.

Have fun creating!

Technique Tutorial: Matting Triangular Pockets

It’s that time of the year where we do lots of crafting – Christmas cards, Christmas albums, and in some of your countries you’ve just finished celebrating Halloween and Thanksgiving. All occasions where you may have taken lots of pictures. So, this week I’m sharing a technique tutorial on how to mat triangular pockets: how do you get them in exactly the right size, shape and angle?

Check out the video below to crack that secret code! 🙂

How to Create with a Cut-apart Sheet

This week I’m sharing a free video tutorial again, on how to create a quick & easy card using only 1 cut-apart sheet and some cardstock. The paper I used was from the When We First Met collection by Piatek Trzynastego, a Polish brand.

Near the end of the video I’m sharing a bonus idea on what to do with the one leftover piece of your cut-apart sheet: easy, make another card! 🙂

Enjoy the video, hope you’ll find it inspiring!

One cutapart leftover? No problem, create a whole new card with it!

Craft Life Update & Video Tutorial

Hello everyone!

So I’m back after a 3-month hiatus… Check out my update, and also my latest project, two tri-fold cards with Studiolight’s Celebrate Spring papers – which I’m not just sharing with you but also showing you how to make at the end of this video!

Tutorial: How to Change the Color of Your Earrings

This week I’m sharing a different kind of creative project: how to use your alcohol inks to change the colors of your acryllic or plastic earrings. This little hack is very handy to know and use, especially if you’re having an accessorizing crisis and are in a bind 🙂

So here we go, check out the video! The only thing you’ll need is 1 or more alcohol inks – and your earrings of course.