I realize Easter is already over, but I forgot to post this – as well as my other Easter card, which I will post next. After all, it’s the thought that counts – and you can use these techniques of layering and adding a small booklet to the front, as inspiration for your own cards. For any occasion you can think of! 🙂
Papers used: Easter Greetings collection by Craft and You.
Springtime! And at the moment (for as long as it lasts) I’m loving all of those bright pastels! This year I’m sending out three Easter cards, two of which I’m showing you this week.
I used Mintay’s perfect springtime collection, Better Times. Gosh, those images are like frameable paintings all by themseleves, but I got over those qualms and cut into them anyway 😱
I focussed on designing one large, luxurious card with three sheets of double-sided design paper plus a cutapart sheet. I think I succeeded quite nicely 😊
In the end I still had enough paper left over to create a bonus card, which I’m sharing towards the end of the video.
Wishing you all a very lovely Easter and a happy spring! I’m curious, are you sending any Easter cards this year? Let me know in the comments!
Usually I don’t send out Easter cards, but this week I decided I would, because of these strange times we live in. After all, we can all use some spring-themed cards with some encouraging words.
So here are my five cards (one more than I’m sharing in the video!), created with the Easter Greetings collection by Craft and You, and some encouraging words 🙂
Continuing from last week’s one-sheet-challenge, I 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.
It’s springtime! 🙂 Although it’s still pretty cold where I live here in the Netherlands, you can already feel a certain ‘softness’ in the air as days are lengthening and nature is preparing to wake up. I don’t know about you, but I’m totally game for spring!
And this year we’ll have a fairly early Easter. Normally I don’t send out any Easter cards (it’s simply not a Dutch tradition) but this year I felt like letting at least a couple of people know that I’m thinking about them and wish them some great times with the upcoming holiday.
I found this lovely sheet of paper by We R Memory Keepers, from their Cotton Tail collection, and it immediately took my thoughts to all the wonderful things that make up springtime and Easter.
So in the spirit of spring, I decided to design something new. I challenged myself to use only one piece of 12×12 inch cardstock for the construction of this card! Of course you will need some extra materials, but not a lot and the main items on that list are 1 extra sheet of cardstock for tags (A4 will suffice), and 1 sheet of 12×12 inch design paper. That’s about it! This design will enable you to create an elaborate and interactive card that is still quite affordable in terms of the supplies you need – awesome right?! 🙂
Also, this card is perfect for more than one sentiment and personalized message, it can function as a gift card holder and it will come in very handy as a vehicle for a group gift, when a group of people are giving one gift together.
And last but not least, you could also use it as a mini album page insert!
Good news: I’m making this design available to you all in my Etsy shop – and like the card itself this tutorial is also very affordable, so check it out!
And here’s the show & tell video, enjoy and let me know what you think!
It is as they say: time flies when you’re having fun! I could have sworn Christmas was only yesterday, and yet this morning Easter arrived!
Luckily I had already finished some fun little Easter & springtime decoupage projects, check them out, they’re really easy to do and look genuinely lovely on your Easter breakfast (or brunch) table!
Decoupaged Easter candles:
So I decoupaged some Easter eggs a couple of days ago. Saturday, the day before Easter, I decided I definitely needed some candles to go with them. So, here they are!
I used the same napkin technique, only this time with different glue of course, in order to be able to light them safely. It’s a special candle podge, which will prevent your napkins from catching fire – instead, they’ll neatly melt along with your candle. Perfect.
So, here’s the three decoupaged candles, and my springtime living room to match! 🙂
Dutch translation:
Drie geservette kaarsen in Paas-/lentethema zorgen voor extra kleur en gezelligheid! Let op: om kaarsen te servetten moet je wel speciale lijm gebruiken om ongelukken te voorkomen (zie foto hierboven).
Usually I don’t decorate my Easter eggs – assuming there are any Easter eggs in my house at all, which isn’t necessarily the case each year, I simply buy them in the color I want. This year however, when I bought myself some eggy Easter branch ornaments after all, I decided to decorate the few white ones.
I used yellow and two shades of pink, since at the moment gold, yellow and pink (of the vintage kind, like Tim Holtz’s Tattered Rose distress ink that you can see in my explosion card post) are the colors I’d already decorated my living room with.
There were four white Easter eggs in the stash that I bought, in three different sizes. I decorated them by applying the napkin technique and adding some gold stickles, and here’s the results!
By the way, I found some mirror-imaged stickers with a cute spring theme – and I decided couldn’t not use them: how often do we find mirror-imaged stickers right? So, I stuck them onto a piece of card board with a small piece of thread to create a loop. Then I added a little gold stickle on a few spots. And lo and behold: Yet Another Easter Ornament to hang from my “tree” (which is actually a lamp, as I’m sure you’ve already noticed from the picture above).
Dutch translation:
Tot nu toe versierde ik nooit paaseieren – als ik überhaupt al paaseieren in huis had. Dit jaar vond ik echter een paar mooie, makkelijk op te hangen paaseieren, van het een kwam het ander en ineens hing mijn multifunctionele staande lamp vol. Deze lamp staat er normaalgesproken bij als een soort populier, met de takken helemaal omhoog, en doet verder alleen dienst als kerstboom (takken helemaal uitgevouwen). Vanaf dit voorjaar heeft ie een nieuwe functie: de Paasboom, met de takken ergens halverwege populier en kerstboom!
Er zaten een paar witte eitjes tussen de gekleurde en ik besloot om die dan toch maar te gaan versieren. Ze waren van kunststof en verven werd me te ingewikkeld (moet je eerst weer gaan primen en zo). Daarom koos ik voor de servettechniek. Omdat de rest van mijn woonkameraccessoires ook geel, goud en oud-roze zijn heb ik servetten in geel en twee tinten roze gebruikt. En vervolgens afgewerkt met gouden glitterlijm.
Hierboven het resultaat!
Season’s greetings!
Wishing you all a glorious Easter, reflected each spring in the lovely colors the Lord paints our beautiful Earth with, celebrating the New Life conquered for us by Jesus’s death and resurrection! (in case you forgot Easter’s true meaning due to all the distractions of Easter eggs & bunnies 😉 )
I tried to capture a fraction of this colorful Glory in this picture, which I edited with Paintshop Pro XI. Of course featuring one of my very own top model guinea piggies – her name is Queen Ester, and isn’t she gorgeous! 🙂 (Meanwhile, she’s grown into a curly-haired beauty)
Enjoy a blessed Easter!
Je zou het niet zeggen, maar het is Lente! Tijd om te genieten van de mooie voorjaarskleuren waarmee God onze aarde elk jaar schildert, kleuren die het Nieuwe Leven uitdrukken dat Jezus voor ons heeft veroverd door Zijn dood en opstanding! (voor het geval je door alle paaseieren en paashazen de echte betekenis van Pasen vergeten was 😉 )
Ik heb een fractie van die kleurenpracht proberen te vangen in deze bewerkte foto, bewerkt met Paintshop Pro XI – met in de hoofdrol trouwens een echt caafje, mijn eigen Queen Ester! (Inmiddels uitgegroeid tot een prachtige langharige dame)
Ik wens iedereen een vrolijk en gezegend Pasen!