Sometimes I feel like crafting, even crafting a mini album, but am no where near in the mood to do everything required. So as an alternative, I thought I’d try a pre-bound mini album. I chose Prima Marketing’s Tiny Journal, which is from their Memory Hardware collection by Frank Garcia.
I figured such a small album (it sports 4×4″ pages) would be perfect for my (rather enormous) stash of 6×6″ paper pads. I went for the Together paperpad by Mintay Papers, which I felt would suit the kraft-colored Tiny Journal pretty well.
Having tried my hand at it, I feel there are some pros and cons to these pre-bound albums. So in the video, after I show you the finished project, I’ll share some thoughts: what’s it like to work on a pre-bound album, which pluses & minuses did I encounter, and – most importantly – would I do it again?
Share your thoughts in the comment section! Have you ever tried one of these pre-bound minis?
Hey guys! It’s been a while, but I’m still here š. In fact, I’m working on a brand new steampunk-themed mini album – sneak peek in the video below!
Meanwhile, I’m sharing this book stack project of mine, which I filled up with some pictures but mostly pieces of journalling, that I edited and then printed myself.
Hopefully this gives you some new ideas, or at least inspires you to keep trying new things! š If you’d like to create this particular project yourself, check out Tutorial #43 in my shop. It consists of a 3-part tutorial set, namely a separate tutorial for each part of the project: the boxes, the folio album and the booklets.
Enjoy your summer (it’s raining here š) – and the video!
This year I sent three Easter cards to friends and family. The first two I already shared in one of my previous posts. This week I’m sharing the third, which is a wallet card, or a tea bag holder card, or whatever other creative descriptive you can come up with š
Also, I shopped my stash again, one of this year’s themes for me personally, in order to actually use up the forgotten-but-beautiful-nonetheless papers in my collection.
It turned out pretty lovely, and of course I filled it up with some fresh tea, as is my way – because I just love to send my friends a Hug-in-a-Mug!
Anyway, here’s the video – ask any questions or leave a remark in the comment section below!
Here’s a layout I did for a colleague who was leaving the organization I work at, to start her new job. By way of goodbye, each team member was asked to contribute something A4-sized, after which everything would be bundled into a binder and gifted to the colleague.
Since this colleague was always dressed in beautifully bright and colorful outfits, I wanted to create something bright and colorful for her. I decided to shop my stash for some Prima Marketing, for this brand usually brings out A4-sized paper within all or most of their collections.
I decided on the Zephyr collection, chose a tangerine-colored base paper and two lovely Zephyr journalling cards, and layered them with some die-cuts, a chipboard piece, some blings and some wallet-sized pictures. Done! š
If you have some smaller pieces of design paper, use them to die-cut!
Continuing with my experiment of spraying Color Bloom mica sprays on black, I took a different stencil, cut a large tag in half and sprayed with three colors on the first half.
This left a lot of ink on the stencil of course, so I turned the stencil upside down and laid it onto the other (clean) half of my tag. Then pressed firmly with a piece of paper towel to immediately catch all of the ink leaking through, and lifted the stencil.
Top: monoprinting; Bottom: regular stencilling
The effects were different when I tried a different stencil! With the first, the stencilled half was clear, and the monoprinted half more murky. With the second, it was the other way around! I think the type of pattern had something to do with it; the second was more intricate than the first.
Top: monoprinting; Bottom: regular stencilling
These are still only backgrounds of course, weāll find out what use Iāll find for them in some future moment. š
The difference between a mask and a stencil is, in my own words, that one is the ‘negative’ of the other. What is blocked by one, is open in the other. Both have their merits and advantages of course, and since I had never tried a mask before, I was curious about its effects.
I only have one large masking stencil in my possession at the moment, and it is one by Studiolight. It is large enough for an A4 (or US Letter) size, which also makes it perfect for the giant #12 craft tags by Ranger.
My craft tags were black, and I already knew from an earlier experiment that the Distress Oxide colors by Tim Holtz were not my preferred sprays when used on black. They show up quite clearly, but they seem to loose much of their actual colors and everything turns a very pale pastel.
So, I dove into my stash to see what else I might use, and rediscovered my Color Bloom sprays by Prima Marketing. These are inks with mica-based dye, so they not only show up on black, but add some nice shimmer as well. And although there was some loss of color here as well, it didn’t bother me as much, thanks to the nice metal sparkle the mica brings.
For my masked tag I chose the most industrial colors I could find in my stash; which weren’t many for I only have about 7 or 8 sprays. So I chose three shades of purple and one bronze. The effect was stunning, better than I had thought! And on a black substrate an industrial-themed mask is of course perfect, since its pattern will show up in black.
The most important disadvantage to the Color Bloom sprays is their price – as far as I have seen these are the most expensive on the (craft) market. A second, minor issue I have with them is their enormous nozzle, which makes them ridiculously difficult to store in any kind of efficient way. They just take up too much room. However, this is only a small point, I would definitely buy some more – except they’re not being produced anymore! I don’t know why but Prima Marketing seems to have quit this product line; perhaps they didn’t sell as well as they hoped.
However, I’ll definitely keep using the Color Blooms I already have, every time I want to spray something onto a black base!
In fact, I’ll show you another Color Bloom experiment next time, when I try my hand at some monoprinting! š
Sometimes one has to go and broaden one’s horizons. So, I decided to not only watch all of the Tim Holtz demos on his blog, sitting on my couch consuming content (and pork rind chips š ) but to treat them as an actual course. He has shared many hours of demo videos since the corona lockdown and I treated myself to them all, taking notes in a notebook – I even dug out my fountain pen for that š . Being locked down at least supplied me with those hours so I decided to take advantage of that…
And so I started to practice and play around with all of the mixed media art supplies I had collected the last couple of years, but simply hadn’t come round to using. And of course I added to said stash with a lot of new stuff too, but hey, we’re not just crafters, we’re also collectors right šš
Anyway, I thought it might be nice to share my first batch of mixed media backgrounds. I mean, I have done some inking & stencilling when creating photo tags for my envelope folios, but not in all of these different ways. This blog post will share the whole batch, and also the card I created from one of those backgrounds. The coming days and weeks I’ll post each individual (set of) background(s) in a separate blog post, with pictures and descriptions on how I created them. And after those, there will be more!
Hope you’ll enjoy this new series of experiments, that will be added to (but not replacing) my other work. Who knows where this will end – there may even be an art journaller hidden somewhere inside me yet…šš¤Ø
Recently my mother asked me to fill the Treasured Memories Mini Album DeLuxe I designed for her when my father passed away, with their wedding pictures from 1968. The black & white pictures truly look amazing in this album!
This album design is very luxurious and offers room for many pictures, large and small. You can play with any possible album theme of course, especially if you have many pictures you want to keep in it. Just choose papers suitable to your taste and the occasion you have in mind.
To give you an example of how this album would look with different papers, check out my Joyful Reminiscing version. There’s also a tutorial available so you can create your own beautiful tome! š
Why send a birthday card when you can send a Mailable Birthday Mini? š
This week I’m sharing my latest design in this Mailable Mini category, created with Prima Marketing’s beautiful Amelia Rose collection. It sports two pocket pages held together by a photo booklet-in-a-booklet and offers room for 10 pictures – or 9 plus a journalling spot like mine.
This week I’m sharing a new design, consisting of three parts. It’s a little book stack, consisting not of books but of two handmade chipboard boxes, filled with a mini folio and three mini booklets respectively. The technique I used to create the boxes is different from my usual way of making them, so there’s something new there as well for everyone who already purchased my other box tutorial.
And since I just had my birthday, I’m offering all three of these projects as one tutorial set, so a buy-3-pay-only-1 kind of thing! š
The papers and flowers I worked with are from Prima Marketing’s Bella Rouge collection. I wanted to design a project specifically suited for 4×6″ journalling cards / project life cards, to offer you all a somewhat more affordable option since these cards tend to be not as expensive as actual paper pads. And I succeeded wonderfully well!
So enjoy the video and pictures below, and go for the tutorial set if you’d like to make it yourself.
If you’d like an idea of how this would look when filled with pictures and journalling, check out this post!
This week I’m sharing my enthusiasm about Tim Holtz’s 2016 Dapper paper pad. As per usual when I really like a paper collection, I leave it in my stash for quite some time before I can bring myself to cut into it; hence the 2.5 year (!) delay between it being offered on the market and me actually creating something with it…
Anyway, I chose to use one of Dapper’sĀ 6×6″ sheets, plus a 3×4″ sheet. They all come in one big double-sided 12×12″ pad – which I find a brilliantly creative invention – a characteristic shared by all Tim Holtz’s paper pads alike.
The double card I created is about 6×6″, and I grunged everything up by actually distressing all of the papers’ edges, using no inks whatsoever, to enhance the effect. Also, I added in some layering and of course embellishments – and there you go, a card with a distinct masculine feel!
Do you like the Dapper collection as much as I do? And which are your favorite masculine papers for creating projects for the men in your circle of family and friends? Let me know in the comment section below.
As you know I sometimes alter these nice, small boxes of all shapes and different sizes. This time, as a Christmas present for my mom, I decided to alter a jewelry box and to shoot a short tutorial while I was doing it.
By now I have several “How to alter a box” tutorial videos, all highlighting different aspects. So if you combine them all you get the entire process š :
