Tag Archives: kerstkaarten

My first Christmas card this year

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There have been years that I’d finished all of my Christmas cards by September – having started as early as July – and heaps of them at that. (You can check them out here.)
But not this year. This year I’ve only just finished my very first Christmas card last week. What can I say, I’m not crafting as much as I used to – though one of my new year’s resolutions is More Crafting, so I remain hopeful. 😇

I have to say it was fun to create again, after many moons with hardly any papercrafting at all (except for the occasional card here & there, which I posted here, on my blog).

Here are my design steps:

1. I started by shopping my stash and I found this fresh & modern looking design paper by S.E.I., called Kris Kringle. It is no longer available, however I’m hoping it will inspire you – either to shop your own stash for some great finds, or to shop for similar design papers that evoke the same atmosphere if you like these specific papers.

2. Some baby blue cardstock became a nice base for the card, echoing the occasional light blue the design papers offered and off-setting the rest of the colors nicely.

3. I wanted a special card design so I decided on this slanted tri-fold shape and folded it ‘zigzaggingly’ (I don’t know the official term but I think you’ll catch my drift 😉 ).

4. One of my label dies came in handy to add a stamped sentiment to the front of the card.

5. Tri-fold shapes are always fun because they give you six panels to mat and play with your design papers! You’ll have to keep your embellishments flat however, otherwise your card won’t fit into its envelope. Stamping is a good option of course, as would be (heat) embossing or adding some ink sprays.

In conclusion

All in all I had fun, maybe even more than I expected. It was nice to think about a specific friend and design a card with them in mind. What shape hadn’t they seen from me yet, what colors would they like and what kind of sentiment would they appreciate. Happy thoughts to be pondering.

I’ve found again and again that tailor-making a craft project for a specific person adds an extra dimension of inspiration and fun to my craft projects. Maybe this can be the way forward for me – and who knows, perhaps for you too! – for the foreseeable future, to find some much needed inspiration again!

I might even do some video tutorials again on my Youtube channel (which I always embed on the blog too), so let me know if you’d like one for this type of card – or mini album insert of course, whichever might fit your needs best!

Four Tips for Last-Minute Christmas Cards

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For all of you who are anything like me and are in dire need of some quick, last-minute Christmas cards, I’m sharing four tips to create them!

In my previous post I already shared a step-by-step on how to make the cards in the above picture.

So to summarize: tip 1 is the regular papercraft way of card-making: create designs from cardstock, then mat each seperate part with design paper.

The next two pictures show tip 2: die-cut a sentiment or an image from specialty paper and stick it onto a mixed media background. Then mat on top of cardstock.

With holographic paper
With glitter paper

Here are the materials I used for both of the above backgrounds:

Tip 3: create a mixed media background, but don’t use it as a background. Instead, die-cut something from it and stick it onto some white cardstock. Clean. Simple. Elegant.

Tip 3: Mixed media die-cut on white cardstock

These are the sprays I used for these:

Tip 4 is of course a mixed media die-cut on a mixed media background. Add some glitter accents if you like.

Bonus tip: if you’re not a mixed media kind of crafter, you can use design paper instead! This will give you the same elegant and sophisticated effect, both on white cardstock and on design paper.

Now off you go, hurry up with those last-minute Christmas cards! 🙂

Two Special Christmas Cards

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Only two more days and then it’s Christmas! So, time to share two more Christmas cards, each with a special design that makes it just a little bit more Christmassy 🙂

The first is a tri-shutter card, for which I have a free video tutorial available. The second is a gatefold pocket card, which you can fill with nice tags and pictures.

Enjoy the video, and of course a Very Merry Christmas to you all!

Some Quick Christmas Card Tips

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This week I’m sharing my annual Christmas card tips with you again, this time for those of you who would like to make their own Christmas cards but don’t have time or energy to design and create a lot of elaborate, unique cards.

Tip #1: Only decorate the fronts of your cards, and leave the insides and backs plain;
Tip #2: Use a die-cut card block, filled with all of the materials you need to create a set of nice cards, like design paper and a lot of die-cut punch-outs. You can add your own glitter glue and dimensional tape to add some more interest of course.

So check out the examples I created using such a card block, this one by Studiolight, and I hope you feel encouraged to make some of your own!

Christmas Card Tip: Using Only One Sheet of Design Paper!

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So, it’s that time of the year again 🙂 You can never be too early creating your Christmas Cards. The coming weeks, like every year, I’ll sharing lots of Christmas card tips with you, helping you along to get yourself unstuck and go create your own! It really doesn’t have to be difficult, nor expensive! To prove this, I’m kicking of this C-card season with several easy-to-create lowbudget Christmas cards that I decorated with only 1 sheet of design paper! And of course a few extra embellishments, but you can even do without those if you want to – or perhaps have to because of budget reasons.

So go ahead and check out the video, and then go ahead and Create!

 

 

Christmas cards: What to do with your stickers

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So, I’ve got a lot of stickers – through no fault of my own mind you 🙂 They’re usually added complimentary to a paper collection or some such. Or they come so incredibly cheap that I simply cannot help myself 😳

I find that although I like the idea of them, I don’t use very many of them. I mean, what do you do with those flat sticky things that in most cases turn out not to be even that adhesive in the long run.

Since I had an especially large number of stickers to go with my All is Bright paper collection (by My Mind’s Eye), I decided they should be used up – or at least 75% of them anyway.

So, here are some ideas for those of you who, like me, don’t know what to do with their darned stickers. 🙂

 

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All is Bright: A Box Pocket (Christmas) Mini Album

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As my first Christmas mini has been completely loaded with family Christmas pictures since last year’s holiday season, it was time to create a new one – yea! 🙂

I rummaged through my (by now fairly impressive) stash and came back out with the beautiful vintage-yet-fresh All is Bright papers, a 2012 collection by My Mind’s Eye. With its 18 x 25 cm (7 1/8 x 9 7/8″) it’s larger than its Tis the Season predecessor. It sports nine interactive page layouts, plus what I’m calling a box pocket on the inside front cover.

I created one of these box pockets before, in my large Girly Girl’s Precious mini (see picture below), but this time I incorporated it in a tutorial! It’s already waiting for you in my Etsy shop 🙂

Since the box pocket can hold all kinds of nice things, like a stack of photo mats, cards, a mini folio or even an entire hardcover notebook, I have not included my mini folio in the album tutorial. Instead it’s part of its own – very affordable – tutorial set, including a bonus cutting guide for a larger version!

Check out the video if you’d like to see all the fun & interactive page designs, and sing along with the Christmas tune: “Aaaaall is calm, all is bright….”

I wish you all a very merry Christmas!

 


Two Christmas Card Tips

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In my last blog post I showed you my first ten Christmas cards, created with two so-called card art stencils.

This week I have two extra tips for all of you who are preparing to get your craft on and make your own Christmas cards for this year:

  1. Combine leftover die-cuts & cutaparts from one collection, with papers from a fairly neutral collection. Like in my case, the 6×12″ Wood Texture paper block by Joy Crafts;
  2. Create a large card, e.g. A5-sized, and create elaborate layouts without it getting to ‘busy’ to look at.

There’s actually a third tip hidden inside the video, namely to use what I have dubbed scrap mats, in other words: meticulously paper-pieced background mats. Check out my free video tutorial on how to make them – you’ll get a lot more paper real estate from your leftover papers!

 

Stitches: stamp by Crealies

Ten Scandinavian-styled Christmas Cards (with French Christmas wishes)

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Recently I decided to experiment with Dutch Doobadoo’s card art stencils, which you use by simply tracing around their various edges to two nested shapes. So I bought two of the stencils and created ten (early) Christmas cards, using a cherry red cardstock as a base.

I decorated with the Warm Winter Wishes paper collection by Marianne Design and die-cuts from the wonderfully cosy-looking Scandinavian Winter collection by Studiolight. In the video below I show you all ten cards, all of them sporting “Joyeux Noël” (by Crealies, among others) as a die-cut sentiment – a.k.a. Merry Christmas in French.

I really enjoyed working with these stencils, their ‘fun factor’ definitely exceeded my expectations. Plus I found them a very useful alternative for a die-cutting machine, so they are perfect to take with you to places where you know you won’t have access to any die-cutting tools (like when I go to my mom’s 😉 ).

So enjoy the end result and let me know if you have any experience with these or other card art stencils! 🙋🏻

 


Tip: Combining different paper collections

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So, for the final post of this year 🙂 I’ll leave you all with one last Christmas card tip – which you can of course use the whole year round: combining several paper collections for a paper craft project. This offers fun new challenges, for you’ll have to really think about colors and patterns: which ones coordinate well together, which combinations provide some elegant tensions and what color of cardstock will benefit the whole.

For these four Christmas cards, I mixed three paper collections and added embellishments from another four companies! I’ll list them all below. I also did some die-cutting of my own, which is always a great way to add to your projects.

Materials used:

  • Season’s Greetings 6×6 paper pad by Panduro
  • Cutapart sheet from Glistening collection by Authentique
  • Wood Texture 6×12 paper pad by Joy Crafts
  • Die-cuts from Winter Memories collection by Studio Light
  • Large clock brads by Scrapberry’s
  • Several flowers from collections by Prima Marketing
  • Wooden Christmas pieces by Craft Sensations

I also used a Crealies Create-A-Card die for the step card.

Have a creative 2017, create what you wish existed 🙂

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Limited Budget Christmas Card Tip

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Low-budget scrapbook papers are usually also fairly low quality; they’re thin, crack easily and they sometimes even lose their top layer – hence, their colors! Nevertheless, if you’re on a limited budget you can still create some lovely cards with the more affordable, brandless paper pads.
Just don’t fold them and glue them down really well…

Check out the video for two examples, in which I’m sharing some more low-budget tips – and have fun Christmas Card crafting! 🙂

 

 

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33 Tips for your Christmas Cards

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Christmas time is nearing and for all of you who’d like to create their own Christmas cards but are wondering how not to make them all mostly the same, I’ve compiled a stack of cards – and 33 variation tips to go with them!

Have fun watching the video, then please find all of the 33 tips listed below for your convenience!

The list with 33 (Christmas) card tips:

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