A Little Christmas Gift Box – With Your Own Dividers

Here’s a quick Christmas gift craft idea: mat and decorate a little box, create some dividers, and fill it up with small goodies, neatly divided! 😃 (short video embedded below)

No Nail Tech? Here’s how to do your DIY New Year Nails

Most of us can’t go to our nail techs these days, so here’s a way to do some great nails yourself! You can do it straight onto your own (polished) nails, or if you have any falsies, use them instead.

Happy New Year!

Merry Christmas to You All + Introducing a Tag Wallet Christmas Card

Have the Merriest of Christmases you all! 🎉 For that occasion I am giving you, if not a Christmas present, then at least a First: you get to see me in the video, not just my hands! 😃

Another extra is that you’re getting not one but two videos this week! For I’m also sharing a project with you. It’s a new design, and I’m calling it a Tag Wallet Card – for it’s a wallet, holding tags, that you can put into an envelope and send out as a card. And of course I’ve also written an easy to follow – and very affordable – tutorial for you, loaded with very clear step-by-step pictures. It’s already waiting for you in my webshop.

The thing is that I already uploaded the project share video a couple of months ago, in the beginning of October, so my Youtube subscribers have probably already seen it. But I couldn’t share it on my blog back then, since my mom is following this blog – Hi mom! 🙋🏻 – and this particular tag wallet was meant for her as the most elaborate Christmas card I have ever made 🙂

This project was also featured as a Guest Designer project for Crealies.

The beautiful papers I used are by Graphic 45, from the Winter Wonderland collection plus one sheet from the Time to Flourish collection. If you purchase my tutorial you’ll also get a supply list with the names of each individual design paper sheet.

So, enjoy at least one and perhaps even both videos, and especially your holidays! 🤶

 


Christmas Card Tip: Using Only One Sheet of Design Paper!

So, it’s that time of the year again 🙂 You can never be too early creating your Christmas Cards. The coming weeks, like every year, I’ll sharing lots of Christmas card tips with you, helping you along to get yourself unstuck and go create your own! It really doesn’t have to be difficult, nor expensive! To prove this, I’m kicking of this C-card season with several easy-to-create lowbudget Christmas cards that I decorated with only 1 sheet of design paper! And of course a few extra embellishments, but you can even do without those if you want to – or perhaps have to because of budget reasons.

So go ahead and check out the video, and then go ahead and Create!

 

 

What to do with a Christmas mini album

Frequently I get asked what to do with this thing called mini album. I tell everyone it’s for pictures and other memorabilia, but I find that showing an actual picture-filled mini album is the best explanation I can possibly give 🙂

So here’s my 2013 Tis the Season mini album, filled to the brim with my own family Christmas pictures. If you feel inspired to create such an album yourself, check out my mini album tutorial, it has hundreds of clear pictures and elaborate explanations. And for the many scrap mats you’ll see in the video, there’s a free video tutorial here.

Enjoy your Christmas holidays, have a very merry Christmas and the happiest of New Years!

 

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Christmas cards: What to do with your stickers

So, I’ve got a lot of stickers – through no fault of my own mind you 🙂 They’re usually added complimentary to a paper collection or some such. Or they come so incredibly cheap that I simply cannot help myself 😳

I find that although I like the idea of them, I don’t use very many of them. I mean, what do you do with those flat sticky things that in most cases turn out not to be even that adhesive in the long run.

Since I had an especially large number of stickers to go with my All is Bright paper collection (by My Mind’s Eye), I decided they should be used up – or at least 75% of them anyway.

So, here are some ideas for those of you who, like me, don’t know what to do with their darned stickers. 🙂

 

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All is Bright: A Box Pocket (Christmas) Mini Album

As my first Christmas mini has been completely loaded with family Christmas pictures since last year’s holiday season, it was time to create a new one – yea! 🙂

I rummaged through my (by now fairly impressive) stash and came back out with the beautiful vintage-yet-fresh All is Bright papers, a 2012 collection by My Mind’s Eye. With its 18 x 25 cm (7 1/8 x 9 7/8″) it’s larger than its Tis the Season predecessor. It sports nine interactive page layouts, plus what I’m calling a box pocket on the inside front cover.

I created one of these box pockets before, in my large Girly Girl’s Precious mini (see picture below), but this time I incorporated it in a tutorial! It’s already waiting for you in my Etsy shop 🙂

Since the box pocket can hold all kinds of nice things, like a stack of photo mats, cards, a mini folio or even an entire hardcover notebook, I have not included my mini folio in the album tutorial. Instead it’s part of its own – very affordable – tutorial set, including a bonus cutting guide for a larger version!

Check out the video if you’d like to see all the fun & interactive page designs, and sing along with the Christmas tune: “Aaaaall is calm, all is bright….”

I wish you all a very merry Christmas!

 


Limited Budget Christmas Card Tip

Low-budget scrapbook papers are usually also fairly low quality; they’re thin, crack easily and they sometimes even lose their top layer – hence, their colors! Nevertheless, if you’re on a limited budget you can still create some lovely cards with the more affordable, brandless paper pads.
Just don’t fold them and glue them down really well…

Check out the video for two examples, in which I’m sharing some more low-budget tips – and have fun Christmas Card crafting! 🙂

 

 

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33 Tips for your Christmas Cards

Christmas time is nearing and for all of you who’d like to create their own Christmas cards but are wondering how not to make them all mostly the same, I’ve compiled a stack of cards – and 33 variation tips to go with them!

Have fun watching the video, then please find all of the 33 tips listed below for your convenience!

The list with 33 (Christmas) card tips:

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December Deluge 7: 6×4″ Nutcracker Sweet Christmas Cards

This December month I’ll post many projects on my blog, to give you some inspiration and ideas for your Christmas projects – and also to help you spend your holiday time creatively. In my previous posts I showed you several December projects, the first of which was a quick Christmas Mini Album, so you can start there if you’d like to see them allToday: Part 7 of this December Deluge of creative ideas 🙂

This year’s Christmas collection for me has been Nutcracker Sweet by Graphic 45. A couple of blog posts ago I already showed you a number of 4×4″ Christmas cards I created with this collection. ANd there’s more purple projects to follow, so stay tuned! 🙂

I always like to do double layout cards, by which I mean cards that have layouts both on the front and on the inside, which gives them a particularly finished look and adds a luxurious feel.

Today I continue my Purple Plethora of Christmas cards, with seven 4×6″ versions of Nutcracker Sweet!

Enjoy the video & pics!

 

Next up: December Deluge 8 – Nutcracker Sweet Treasure Chest!

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December Deluge 5: Decoupaged Candle & Box

This December month I’ll post many projects on my blog, to give you some inspiration and ideas for your Christmas projects – and also to help you spend your holiday time creatively. In my previous posts I showed you a quick Christmas Mini Album, a 1-sheet Micro Walleta set of Nutcracker Sweet Christmas Cards and some Trishutter Christmas Cards. Today: Part 5 of this December Deluge of creative ideas 🙂

Decoupaging is a great technique for altering projects, especially when you’re out of paper crafting ideas and want to switch materials a bit to stir things up again 🙂

This decoupaged set of a Christmas candle and a matching box is quite easy to make and will make for a great Christmas holiday afternoon. Plus, they’re a great little emergency gift set for that one neighbour you forgot 😉

The only materials you need are:

  • one or two Christmas napkins (the regular, layered paper ones),
  • some mod podge (and a brush to apply it)
  • the objects you wish to alter

And: some patience while it’s drying 😉

Note: if you wish to alter a candle like I have, please use special candle podge.

You can watch my free video tutorial on how to decoupage a candle to see how it’s done, and how easy it is!

Here’s the little Christmas set I created!

 

Next: December Deluge 6 – Candy Cane Lane – Twice! 🙂

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December Deluge 1: Quick Mini Album “Caramel Christmas”

Hi guys!

This December month I’ll post many projects on my blog, to give you some inspiration and ideas for your Christmas projects – and also to help you spend your holiday time creatively. This week, Part 1 of this December Deluge of creative ideas 🙂

I’ve got a cute little Christmas mini album to share with you all: it’s kind of a mini mini album. For with its 4⅛ x 5⅛” (10,5 x 13 cm) it’s not quite micro yet, but smaller than average nonetheless. It’s fairly easy to make, for each page has the same design, and there’s only four pages.

I’m calling this one Caramel Christmas, mainly because of the color scheme of the paper pad I was using (some nameless Dutch brand) – it just reminded me of Christmas sweets like toffee, or coffee candy. Or caramel! 🙂

Both the album’s size and its small number of pages guarantee that you’ll only need one 6×6″ design paper pad btw – probably only about half at that.

All in all this is what you might call back to basics, or perhaps Mini Album 101 🙂 If you’ve never created a mini album before, I hope this one inspires you to try your hand at it after all! No time like the present right? 🙂 And if you’d like to know how to create this, you can check out the tutorial in my shop – which has 60 pages and 126 pictures.

Enjoy the video & pics below!

Btw, as stated above,  I’ll be posting a lot more Christmas projects this month, so stay tuned!
Next up: December Deluge pt. 2 – A 1-sheet Micro Wallet!