Time for Some Fall Cards

A few weeks ago I discovered the beautiful Vintage Artistry Wedgewood collection by 49 and Market. Even though I loved the entire collection, I purchased only a single sheet to make it easier (for me) to immediately use it, and to save some money at the same time.

Now the challenge I gave myself was to create more than one project that all featured this paper. I came up with three cards and they all turned out lovely. Gosh that paper is so stunning.

Detailed walkthrough in the video!

Two kinds of embossing + stencilling and Distress embossing glaze.
Showcasing the paper, stamping…
…and a box pocket (with some tea!)
Using even the last bit of paper, stencilling, embossing, colorizing leaves and turning them grungy

Making Arthur, a Colorize die-cut project

In 2020 Tim Holtz started his so-called Colorize series of dies with Sizzix. These Colorize dies are meant for you to add layers of color to your diecut image, each layer being its own color.

It was quite the ingenious system, for each set of die parts comes with its own color code. For example, everything with code “1” should be dark brown, each “2” should be blue etc., helping you as a maker to put together the elaborately layered die-cut image designs.

I think the very first one of these was Arthur, the purple owl.

I have thus far crafted one owl-on-a-branch project, and I gave it my own twist of course: instead of using differently colored pieces of cardstock, I sprayed my own backgrounds on mixed media heavy stock and die-cut my pieces from those.

I actually made this project two years ago, in August 2020, but I just now realized I had never actually shared it on my blog! So, here we go, with a step-by-step semi-tutorial on how I made my card with Arthur, the purple marbled pink owl.

1. Made the building blocks: created enough inked/sprayed/painted backgrounds for the project, in the colors I wanted.

2. Embossed a wood pattern on the bark-colored one.

3. Die-cut the branches – which now also had some nice texture, thanks to the embossing.

4. Die-cut the owl pieces from the other papers, and sorted them according to the Sizzix color-coding. Although I made my own colors, the coding still helped me to know which pieces belonged together.

5. Chose some chipboard sentiment pieces and colored them.

6. Made a card background. It started as an abstract piece but then it became a moonlit landscape of sorts.

7. Following Sizzix’ color-coding, I glued each layer of the owl image to the background. Sizzix also has very clear video tutorial shorts on Youtube for each of their Colorize dies btw. I’ll embed the one for Arthur below these pictures.

8. Glued the piece to a black background, added the chipboard sentiment pieces and applied some liquid pearl along the edges.

Done!

I have to say it was a fun project, and the detail these dies provide by way of the ever-smaller layers is very cleverly designed. Look at those tiny claw pieces!

So yeah, I’ll have me some more of these Colorize dies by Tim Holtz for Sizzix and see what fun they’ll bring!

What about you, have you tried any of the Colorize die sets? Leave a comment and let me know!

Papercrafting with rice paper: Can it be done?

Brands often put their best and most beautiful pattern designs on rice paper, instead of their regular design paper, it seems. Rice papers are usually used to alter hard surfaces, like boxes, furniture and the like.

So, can we papercrafters work with the ultra thin rice papers instead of regular-weighted design papers? In the Craft With Me video below I create two mini album inserts – but you can also use them as cards.

I use the most gorgeous sheet of rice papers, from the Clockwise collection by Stamperia.

So enjoy the video and craft along with me 🙂

Six Easy Card Ideas

In very busy times like these I don’t find much time to craft, let alone many hours continuously. Nevertheless, a girl still needs her cards to send to her friends & extended family! So, here’s six card ideas, all of which are very easy to make and which take up relatively little of your precious time.

Enjoy the video, and don’t forget to like this post and/or leave a comment! 😃

Vintage Easter Card

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.

I found this very appropriate stamp for the season on AliExpress

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 😅) 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?

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.😃

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

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! 😔

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) 🙂

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 🙂

3 Tips to Squeeze Out Projects With Dwindling Design Papers

Every time I finish a craft project, I have design papers left over. Doesn’t matter whether it was a large mini album, or just a card; always there are sheets of loveliness I have to decide on what to do with them. Will I have to throw them out, of can I come up with yet another idea?

Fortunately as crafters we can always create something else with these extra papers, sometimes ending up with more than one bonus project.

A few weeks ago I created quite an elaborate desconstructed envelope card from 3 sheets of design paper + a cutapart sheet. But even after such a large card, I managed to squeeze out three extra cards from the paper pieces I had leftover!

So, hopefully I can inspire you with these ideas, to do the same and make use of every inch of paper real estate you can manage 🙂

Enjoy the video, happy crafting!

Shopping My Stash: Easter / Spring Tea Wallet Card

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 🙂

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!