Life’s a Picnic Mini Album – with Pictures!

My Life’s a Picnic mini album was the first of several 6×6(ish) mini albums I created, back in  2015. And I finally got around to filling it up with pictures! 🙂

For those of you who are curious: my mother and I went to Madurodam last year, a park with miniature scaled copies of well-known Dutch buildings & streets. So if you look closely at the pictures I’m showing you in the video, you can see people taller than the buildings they’re standing next to 🙂

As for the album, I think I managed to fit around 65 pictures in there. Each of the 14 page designs (including the two inside covers) is unique and you can mix them up, use different papers, or create variations with less page assemblies – like I have done with my To my Sweetheart mini album.

All in all I’m convinced the extensive tutorial will offer you many hours of crafting fun! 🙂

 

Three tips on creating layered card layouts

Lately I’ve been practising my layering, on two calendars which are still a work in progress, but mainly on some birthday cards. I already did a video tutorial on one way you could layer a card, back in August 2014.

This week I’m sharing some extra tips with you, illustrated by three of my latest birthday cards. The paper line I’ve used for all three of them is Lucille, a paper line by Basic Grey which some of you may recognize from my Life’s a Picnic mini album (tutorial available!), of which I had some paper left over, enough to create these cards – though I had to make use of all three of the techniques I’m sharing with your below, otherwise I wouldn’t have had enough paper after all.

Tip 1 – Use scrap mats – even when die-cutting


Above: Birthday stamp by Kaisercraft

I’m guessing I’ve mentioned my scrap mats (check out my free video tutorial by clicking this link) in almost every one of my projects by now – what can I say, I’m a sucker for squeezing out the absolute maximum of paper real estate out of my paper collections 🙂

So in the pictures you can see that the second layer on this card (counting from the bottum up) is in fact a scrap mat, decorated with punched corners. An extra tip however, is that you can die cut shapes from your scrap mats as well! Check out the second to last layer (counting from the bottom up), i.e. the layer directly below the stamped sentiment label: that is a scrap mat label!

Another use for this, next to creating labels and tags, is die cutting flowers and other decorative shapes. I used this technique in the Life’s a picnic mini album, here’s an example: in the picture below you can see that every layer of the flower consists of two different pieces of design paper.

 

Tip 2 – Use the paper pad’s cover

Many design paper pads have covers that have at least some imagery, patterns or shapes that are very useable for fussy cutting. So even if you have hardly any design paper left, you can still embellish your project with help from the paper pad’s cover.

The Lucille 6×6″ paper pad cover has a floral image that I fussy cut and used as a decorative element on my card.

 

 

Tip 3 – Use dimension

If you have die cut two labels in incrementing sizes (my largest label in this third card had been die cut from a scrap mat by the way – see Tip 1), you could of course simply layer them flatly on top of eachother. You can add some interest however by using some double-sided foam tape to adhere the smaller label to the larger.

Adding some glitter glue along the top layer’s edges is always a good idea as well!

 

I’m finding this dimension thing very exciting by the way, and I’m always trying to add some of it to my layered cards & layouts. Like in the Time to Flourish calendar below:

Leave some tips for me!

These were my tips, for now! If my layering adventures lead to any other need-to-know tidbits of knowledge on layering, I’ll let you know! 🙂

Also, if you have any layering tips for me, please let me know and leave a comment – or tweet me!

BewarenBewaren

BewarenBewaren

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

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!