1-sheet Summer Breeze Step Card – No Cardstock!

Double-sided design paper sheets are the perfect material to create a quick step card. The one I used is from the Summer Breeze collection by Studiolight.

You can either find a template online and print/draw, fold and cut it yourself, or you can use a step card die. With the card’s basic shape taken care of, the only thing left is to decorate!

For instance: cut an ATC card and stamp a sentiment. I also added some heat embossing to the sentiment, for some extra interest. Then apply some kind of glitter glue all along the edges and adhere as a center piece.

Use some hot glue or other heavy adhesive medium to adhere larger decorations, like these bulky roses.

Don’t forget the backside of the card! I know it’s just the back, but you can still add some nice little detail to surprise the careful examiner 😊

For instance, add some transparent texture paste through a stencil on part of the back!πŸ’‘

Add some final diecuts and smaller decorative elements, and you’re done – quick & easy!

Stamperia Vintage Birthday Card

Today I’m sharing a birthday card with Stamperia’s lovely vintage Time is an Illusion collection. There’ll be some more cards the coming days, for I – finally! – finished the new mini album (mini tome, rather πŸ˜…) using four of Stamperia’s vintage collections. And as per usual I’m using the leftovers to create all kinds of nice cards and booklets.

This one is in fact a pretty simple card to make: you only have to decorate the front, and you only need three pieces of design paper to layer. Decorate any way you like. Done.

For instance, I used some dimensional tape between the layers of design paper to achieve a 3D effect. I also put some Tim Holtz Distress Grit Paste through a flourished stencil, and colored it with Distress Embossing Glaze – which also adds some nice shine & gloss.

Do you like Stamperia papers? What is your favorite collection?

Quick Birthday Tag – Vintage Style!

Tip: You don’t always need to create a full-blown birthday card, a nice tag will go a long way too – especially when added to a gift to carry your birthday wishes.

Here’s an easy little gift tag and the steps to create it. I designed it to go with some birthday flowers for a friend.

  1. I chose a cutapart from Stamperia’s Time is an Illusion collection;
  2. Layered a second cutapart on top;
  3. stamped some butterflies;
  4. added a ribbon on top;
  5. added a Tim Holtz quote chip, after using some Distress Mica Sprays to grunge it up a bit.

Easy peasy! πŸ˜ƒ

Materials used

Mailable Vintage Tea Booklet

Stamperia have come out with some gorgeous vintage and steampunk paper collections. I’ve been working with four of those collections for my latest mini album, which I’ll be showcasing here soon.πŸ˜ƒ

In the meantime I’ll be showing you some smaller projects I’ve been working on with said papers.

Take this cutie. Since I love to send a friend some tea – kind of a hug-in-a-mug – I created this lovely little Tea Booklet. For its front, back & spine I made use of a pre-imaged paper sheet Stamperia provided in their Lady Vagabond collection.

I matted the inside of the booklet with some beautiful patterns and decorated with some fussy-cut elements.

Added some Glossy Accents by Ranger for a shiny highlight

My spine was 5/8″ (1.5 cm) wide to accomodate a bag of fresh tea. You can make the spine as wide or as narrow as you need. The narrower the spine, the easier it fits into a normal envelope. However, if like me you’d like to send out some tea, you’ll need a little width.

Have you ever created a tea card? I’d love to know you ideas!

Time saver! Using your own mixed media backgrounds

I tend to compartimentalize my mixed media crafting: one day I do my spraying, inking and/or painting, one day I use my stamps, stencils & texture pastes, and lastly I turn it into a card or tag to send out or give away. This not only keeps it fun and practical, it also saves time when you actually need a quick card or tag.

Stash of art backgrounds

In this post I’m sharing several of these follow-up projects, starting with the finished background, followed by the final project. You can find the making of some of these backgrounds in previous blog posts btw, should you be interested.

1. Birthday tag

Just the art background
All dolled-up

2. Textured birthday tag

3. Alcohol ink on gesso birthday card

4. Black background cards

5. Printed close-up photo of above art project, matted on cardstock

6. Marbled Distress Paint on black card

Testing a DIY Gift Bag Die (craft along with me)

This past year I discovered AliExpress as a great craft supply source, including craft utensils like stamps or cutting dies. This time I’m testing one of several cutting dies I purchased: a DIY gift bag die. It came all the way from China – but would it work?

Spoiler: it worked absolutely fine – I just found the design for the bottom flaps lacking, as it doesn’t enable perfect glue placement and forced me to come up with an extra step – or workaround. Watch the video to see what I mean.

Perhaps this cutting die is actually a dupe, i.e. a design they nicked or imitated (or were “inspired by”) from another company. I mean, we’re talking AliExpress here. However, since one cannot possibly be aware of all cutting die designs worldwide ever, I cannot be sure if this is actually the case with this die. It could also very well be an original design. Should you recognize it however, feel free to leave a note to this effect in the comment section below.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy this 10-minute video tutorial. May it inspire you with yet another way to use up that ginormous stash of design papers you have! πŸ™‚

Learn how to design your own card

Crafting a paper project is one thing, but feeling confident about actually designing it, that’s quite another. You cannot teach creativity, but what I can do is taking you along in my thought process while I design a special kind of card.

Using a sheet of Mintay’s Next Trip collection, I’m designing a card with a spine, meant to hold a hand-made tea bag filled with delicious tea.

Mintay Papers – Next Trip – MT-NEX-03

You can watch me come up with measurements – while I explain all kinds of different design options – where to cut and fold, and how to get the most out of your one sheet of design paper. You will also see me design an actual belly bridge, vs. the more common belly band :-), one which is able to accomodate quite a bulky tea bag.

In the video I’m also using a tea bag die, but you can of course also cut and fold your own little tea bag. If you don’t know how to do that, there’s a complete instruction on how to replicate this particular one, including measurements, in my Tea Bag Micro Album tutorial.

Hope this is helpful to you, let me know in the comments!

PS: I’m not creating as many projects as I used to, it’s just a phase I’m guessing. This past 1.5 year has beaten my creativity down somewhat. I’ll still be here though, and on Youtube. Just not every single week. Sorry! πŸ˜”

To my Dutch followers: if you want to see what I’ve been up to lately, check out my second YT channel, which is entirely in Dutch, and my second IG account (English) πŸ™‚

Quick, easy and lovely: String-tied Layered Cards

It doesn’t always have to take many long hours of work to create a beautiful card. In this week’s tutorial I’m sharing an idea for a quick & easy card design, for which you only need some pieces of paper, a piece of string and some tools.

You can use colored cardstock, design paper or a mixed media background to be the showstopper piece. I created my backgrounds with Distress inks by Tim Holtz.

A nice detail of this design is the piece of string, which you wrap around your card and tie into a bow on the inside of your card.

All in all I think you may actually create this card in under ten minutes – provided you already made your mixed media backgrounds at some time in the past, and have them at the ready (if you’re not opting for design paper or colored cardstock).

If you don’t have a die-cutting machine, you could also stamp a sentiment, or adhere a chipboard piece like in the picture below. In case you don’t own an embossing machine, you can easily skip the embossed layer entirely, also like the card below (shown in more detail in the video).

Enjoy the video tutorial! – which is, like this card design, short & sweet πŸ™‚

Bored of your clothes? Paint them!

Recently I decided to put some paints onto some shirts, because why not. Plus, let’s face it, plain shirts look boring in their original state.

I can highly recommend the Tim Holtz Distress Paints to customize any fashion items you have, since they were designed with fabrics in mind. If you know of other brands that are suitable for both papercrafting/mixed media and fabric painting, then please let me know in the comments!

I also played around with my green screen, and it all went a little overboard, so apologies for the ridiculousness of it all – but I had great fun trying 😁

How to make your own storage trays

i don’t know about you but my online shopping has multiplied ever since the (several) lockdowns were instated the past 18 months. Which means the number of shipping boxes and other packaging that entered my house also multiplied by a significant factor.

Of course I threw away most of it – but not all. For nice storage boxes can be quite expensive. Plus, while creating your own boxes from scratch is certainly doable (I even have a tutorial available for you in my shop), it takes several hours – and sometimes I just want something quick and easy.

That’s where these packaging boxes come in: they can easily be re-used, especially if you’re in the market for a particular size or shape of storage.

For instance, this small and low-edged box below already looked very smooth and sleek, so it was ideal to alter:

The box below was not perfect (it had some jagged edges) but the size was great for my lipsticks so I decided to use it anyway. Since I planned to fill it to the brim I didn’t bother painting the inside. It turned out quite lovely and I’m still using it to this day:

And as a bonus, here’s a pen holder I created from scratch, using only empty toilet paper rolls. I had this specific project in mind for storing my eyeliners and lipliners, because I didn’t want to spend any money on it.

So, enjoy the video, in which I’m sharing some tutorials for these. Have fun crafting and let me know in the comments what you do with your empty packagings!

Turning Great Packaging into a Great Card

Recently I bought two of the Sydney Grace x Temptalia eyeshadow palettes, and found the packaging so lovely that I couldn’t bring myself to simply get rid of those wondrous sleeves, never to be seen again.

So, I turned them into a tea gift booklet, that I sent out to my friend. And let me tell you, that re-purposing was far more satisfying than simply throwing them out. πŸ™‚

I didn’t use any design paper this time, just the two sleeves. For the inside and the two tiny booklets, I made my own mixed media background, using Tim Holtz’s spray and oxide inks.

In the below video I’m sharing this tea gift project, and the steps to create it. Enjoy!

The eyeshadow palettes of which I used the packaging: Sydney Grace x Temptalia

My Book Stack Project – Filled up!

Hey guys! It’s been a while, but I’m still here 😎. 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! πŸ™‚ 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 πŸ™„) – and the video!