Two Shutter Card Wallets

You’ve probably seen a tri-shutter card before – and if not, check out mine here, here and here 😉 – but this week I’m showing you a different kind. This one is Bigger & Better, and it has actual chipboard covers! 😃 It offers room for 10 wallet-sized pictures and/or journalling spots, and is an ideal birthday card to give in person.

Tutorial available!

Check out the video and pictures below to see what it looks like, and don’t forget to like & subscribe to my blog if you don’t want to miss any of my weekly posts.

Get my vintage shabby chic printable label here!

Photo Gift Booklet

From a very sunny Portugal ☀️ I’m sharing this new Photo Gift Booklet, which I created with some cardstock and a couple of sheets from DCWV’s Colorful Life paper collection. It is custom-fit to hold four 9×13 cm (3½ x 5⅛”) pictures. You only need four pieces of design paper of that same size for the covers, and your’re done!

Being a hybrid between a card and a small photo album this little booklet is the perfect gift to send over the mail to your far away friends & relatives! ?

If you’d like to create one yourself, go to my Autumn Time Ultra Mini Album for a quick explanation on the page technique.

Have fun, see you next week!

 

 

How to Gift an E-book as a Paper Craft Project

Have you ever tried gifting an e-book to someone? If so then you know there’s not much fun to be had. You either give the person money or a gift card to buy it himself, or perhaps you email them a gift code. Or if you’re really making an effort, you find an online e-book vendor which allows you to buy a specific e-book for someone else. Which requires you to register at said vendor, which you may find very annoying.

Your purchase will then result in an email of the vendor to the recipient, or maybe a voucher will be mailed to you so you can email or print it. Pfff. Like I said, not much fun to be had. No gift wrapping, no happy anticipation before unwrapping the surprise gift, no happy squeals when the present is finally revealed. Welcome to the Digital Age.

Though we cannot change the digital nature of the e-book, we can make it more fun to gift an e-book to someone! The only thing you have to buy is a (physical) gift card that will allow the recipient to buy e-books. You’ll probably be able to buy those in several brick & mortar shops – so no registration required, no annoying emails received.

And then you’ll craft a very festive Mini File Folio like the one I’m sharing with you today, in which you’ll put your gift card and a nicely printed title & summary of the e-book(s) you have in mind for your recipient. And voila, there’s your Very Presentable present.

As an added bonus you’ll probable be able to gift them two e-books for the price of one physical book!

To whom are you going to gift an e-book this way? 🙂

 

BewarenBewaren

Handmade Memory Box (w. New Cutting Guide!)

When I created my own handmade keepsake box for the memorabilia of my father’s funeral, my mother asked me to create one for her too. Hers needed to be larger though, so I adjusted the measurements while referencing my box-making tutorial.

This time the theme was butterflies & little birds, two of my father’s favorite animals, so I used DCWV’s beautiful Mariposa collection. I added some Limelight cutaparts by Kaisercraft and a beautiful decorative brad by Bo Bunny – just watch the video, in which I tell you exactly what I used.

Since these are entirely new measurements, I added a new bonus cutting guide to the existing tutorial, so now there’s two bonus cutting guides! Which means that all who already owned my box tutorial (which is #17 in my shop) can now download both cutting guides, including this, my latest for free! Simply go to Etsy, click on You, then choose Purchases & reviews. Easy peasy and no extra costs! 🙂
New customers will of course also get both cutting guides in one purchase.

What can I say, I aim to please 🙂 🙂

 

BewarenBewaren

Two Modern Patchwork Cards

I tried out a new die set, called Modern Patchwork, which lets you create your own, well, patchwork of papers. 🙂

I really like the results, these cards were fun to create, give you a totally different look and as a bonus they are perfect to use up those beautiful scraps of paper you’ve got lying around everywhere because you can’t bring yourself to throw them away 🙂

So here’s the video! (and please don’t forget to click the like button 😉 )
The die-set’s product number is CLMP02 by the Dutch company Crealies. I used Coral Couture papers by DCWV.

 

BewarenBewaren

Joyful Reminiscing – a Keepsake Album XL

When I published the video for my Treasured Memory Keepsake Album XL, I got several requests for a tutorial. It took me some time to get around to it, but this summer I took advantage of my time off of work, and created another Keepsake Album XL of the exact same design, in order to write a tutorial.

It’s turned into a large tutorial for a large album :-), sporting 181 pages and a whopping 479 clear pictures to guide you through the step by step process! It will probably not be a “quick project” for you, which of course makes it ideal for the rainy Sunday afternoons that will probably soon dominate our upcoming fall weather.

So, without much further ado, I happily present to you my Joyful Reminiscing Keepsake Album XL, created with the beautiful Coral Couture paper collection by DCWV! 🙂

Click here to purchase the tutorial in my Etsy shop!


30th Wedding Anniversary Explosion Box

A short while ago a lady asked me to create an explosion box to suprise her husband for their 30th wedding anniversary. She had seen my Still in Love explosion box, and hoped I could create a similar one, but of course customized to her specific likes and wishes.

Since I still had enough of DCWV’s Natural stack, I set out to create another one of my explosion boxes. It has two layers with an altered miniature treasure chest hidden inside. The lady sent me some thoughts and feelings about her beloved husband, and some pictures of her family and their dog, all of which I incorporated as creatively as I could.

I was very happy to hear that the lady and her beloved loved it and are continually adding little personal memorabilia to it!

Like to create an explosion box yourself? Check out my tutorial, explaining the process of creating a three-layer explosion box in 80 pages and 190 pictures!

So, here’s the end result, enjoy!

 

The first two tags of these three were made with some tag die sets by Crealies:

 

BewarenBewaren

Keepsake Album Reprised: Mariposa 2nd Edition

A lady from India asked me to create a second version of my Butterflies & Stars Keepsake Album Deluxe – thank you Ayushi, it was a great project to recreate! 🙂

I didn’t have the stars papers anymore, so I had to make some adjustments and turned this second edition into a 100% Butterflies version.

Two years after creating the first edition of this album, I’m still amazed at how gorgeous DCWV’s Mariposa paper collection is, and its high quality papers are a dream to work with (once you get over cutting into them 😉 )!

If you like this kind of album, check out my other keepsake albums as well! And in case you’d like to create one yourself, a tutorial for a similar kind of album (except for a slightly different page design) is available in my Etsy shop.

 


Explosion Box for a Man – Still in Love

Recently a lovely lady ordered a customized explosion box as a gift for her beloved, to celebrate their love. Today I’m sharing the end results with you, for not only is this the first love-themed explosion box I created, it’s also the first that is intended for a man!

It’s a two-layer explosion box, created out of cardstock and decorated with the Natural paper collection by DCWV. It has several quotes and sentiments about love and family; some I came up with myself, based on what she shared with me about her beloved and their relationship. Others were copied from the Heirloom sticker sheet by Kaisercraft, which is a great source of inspiration for projects about family.

In the center of the explosion box is a tiny wooden treasure chest, super cute, that I altered with papers from the same Natural stack, on top of a copper-colored paint base.

If you feel inspired to create one yourself but don’t know where to start, check out my explosion box tutorial in my Etsy shop, based on my Explosion of Joy version. As a bonus, this tutorial covers a three-layer explosion box, so that’s a whole extra layer compared to this one!

Enjoy the video!

 

Curly die by Crealies:

These tags were made with some tag die sets by Crealies:


Tutorial: Napkin Fold Origami Card / Mini Album Page Ornament

Recently I showed you my new double-stacked mini album design Celebrate Every Day. On one of its last two pages there’s a special page ornament, a napkin fold origami piece.

Today I’m happy to teach you how to create this piece, and use it as a card instead of a mini album page ornament – so there’s an extra option for you! It’s a free video tutorial, so you can go ahead and create it along with me. 🙂

Here’s the paper supplies you’ll need:

  • 1 piece of cardstock of 30.5 x 30.5 cm (12×12″), or A4-sized (8⅓ x 11¾”)
  • 1 sheet of design paper of 20.3 x 20.3 cm (8×8″)
  • 2 sheets of design paper of 15.2 x 15.2 cm (6×6″)
  • Distress ink
  • Sentiment stamp (or birthday stamp, or…)

The entire card could probably be made in about 1 hour; 2 if you’re taking your time to be meticulous and precise 😉

If you’re going to use it as a card, you can simply create a belly band for it. If you wish to create it as a mini album page ornament, you’ll find instructions on how to create the magnetized closure for it in the mini album tutorial in my Etsy shop.

Enjoy creating and let me know if you made one yourself!
And don’t forget to like, subscribe and check out the pictures below the video – feel free to share them on Pinterest 🙂

 


A supercute, fully functional micro album

Like most scrappers, I’m totally addicted to my paper. I like the colors, the smell of a new pad, the sense of being able to kind of ‘shop around’ in my own paper stash, total fabulosity!

So I find it very hard to throw away any leftovers, especially anything larger than, say, ½ x 2 inches (1,5 x 5 cm). So I try to come up with ways to use my leftover scraps. In my starting days I did a scrap ornament, later I came up with a scrap mat (which I use like all the time!). And yet another great way to use those smaller pieces of your gorgeous paper, is to create a fully functional, pocket-page style micro album! I’ve already shown you four of them in some of my previous posts and I still find them great to work on – plus, they make terrific gifts! You can find them all here.

In this post, I’m sharing my fifth one with you, created with Immortal Love paper by DCWV + 1 sheet of DCWV’s The Colorful Life matstack. Its measurements are 3⅛” x 3½” (8×9 cm) and it’s a very cute tiny little micro album, with fully functional pocket pages. Great for your wallet sized pictures!

In the video I also explain how to suspend a charm or trinket from the spine of your album, so there’s a little bonus How to for your convenience 🙂 .

Stay crafty, and until next time!

BewarenBewaren

Stylish micro tri-fold card

Although I’ve done my share of larger mini albums, and also created an XL card, I really love my micro projects as well. Recently I made a tri-fold cardlet, teeny-tiny and supercute. I aimed for a modern, stylish feel. The birthday lady for whom it was intended, while very feminine, was not of the girly-girly pink stuff persuasion 😉

I chose DCWV’s Immortal Love paper, and got to work with some cardstock, some glitter glue, a couple of stamps and a single brad. Of course I inked around all of the edges with distress ink: Black Soot by Tim Holtz.

A small word of warning in case you want to create one yourself: this is not a so-called quick-scrap that you can create last-minute when you’re in a hurry. Although it’s very easy to make, the use of glitter glue requires a lot of drying time that you’ll have to take into account when planning your project. Just saying 😉

Anyway, here’s the pictures!

Closed – A blinged-up belly band is keeping the little tri-fold closed. It measures about 4 x 6 cm (appr. 1.5 x 2.5 inches)

Open

Front panel – I used two different colors of Tim Holtz’s distress ink to stamp a rose on the front. I used sticky embossing powder by Ranger to turn the image into a glued surface, which I then sprinkled with Tim Holtz’s Clear Rock Candy distress glitter.

Left inside panel – I stamped ’46’ with black ink (the birthday girl’s age), which I then traced with red glitter glue. Simple, and gives a great effect!
Middle inside panel – I used red glitter glue to trace around the panel. Once the glitter glue had dried, I could write my birthway wish with a silver metal marker.
Back panel – No extra embellishments, this piece of paper was gorgeous enough in and of itself!

Left outside panel (turning the card over) – I stamped Handmade for you and traced the pattern of the paper with red glitter glue.

Middle outside panel – First I stamped Birthday Wishes onto a tiny tag I had created from a piece of design paper. I used red glitter glue to trace the edges of the tag. I used a silver-colored brad to attach the micro tag to another piece of design paper that I had cut to size. Only then did I mat the panel with the completed assembly.

 

So, this was my micro project, hope you liked it and got some inspiration from it! See ya again soon, with a new video post! 🙂