Perfume Card Series: Easy ways to send someone some fragrant love

Over the years I have often shared design ideas for cards to send someone an original ‘hug-in-a-mug’, or in other words, how to incorporate a teabag in a creative way.

I’d like to add to that a new series of design ideas, this time centered around perfume and how to send someone an actual vile of perfume. This can be a decant from that awesome niche bottle you own yourself, a small test sprayer you bought online or the official samples that brands hand out and are often added for free to your purchase at your local perfume shop.

Keep those little brand samplers around, they make for great card gifts!

These are small enough to send over the mail, but you will have to find original ways to add them to a card design. Fret not! For that is where this new series comes in.

And here’s my first idea: take a brand’s sample booklet and add it to the front of your card. Choose or create a coordinating background. Keep the booklet closed with a swing tab closure. Stamp a nice sentiment, decorate, and done!

I sprayed my own background in the below example, but you could make this card with design paper too.

I diecut the butterfly with a 2-die set from some papers I inked myself, and added some extra Stickles to highlight.

It’s fast. It’s easy. It adds a lovely little extra ‘something something’ to your card.

Have fun creating!

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! šŸ™‚

Testing a Pop-Up Die – from AliExpress!

Recently I tried a pop-up die, which effectively cuts a piece of paper that you can then turn into an actual pop-up mechanism.

The video turned into a complete tutorial on how to do all the folds and where to glue, perfect for anyone who has purchased (or owns a similar-looking one to) this die and doesn’t know how it works.

In fact, I’m showing you how to turn this strange-looking diecut into a pop-up mechanism no less than three times. Practice makes perfect! šŸ™‚

I’m sure several brands may offer such a die, though I don’t know of any yet, but AliExpress is of course very very affordable: even when including worldwide shipping it’s still many times more affordable than the same item in Europe. So if you like it, it’s worth a try – you’ll find the link to the shop in the description box of my Youtube video. (And I’m saying this without being sponsored in any way).

So check out the tutorial and let me know if you have ever encountered such a strange-looking die before! šŸ™‚

WonderFall – a 42-Layout Cinch Mini!

Remember the little autumn-themed ultra mini album I showed youĀ a couple of blog posts ago? I had created itĀ with the leftover scraps of a larger, regular-sized mini album that I was working on. Well, I’veĀ finished that oneĀ and I’m very happy to shareĀ the results! šŸ™‚

This 6×6 mini album is Cinch-bound, itĀ has TEN page assemblies with 42 (!) photo layouts, a lot of diecuts by me, plus a lot of extra embellishments. The page construction was very very simple, so I’ve incorporated a short page tutorial as well.

The paper collection I used is Autumn Song by Bo Bunny – of which I totally forgot to film a walkthrough beforeĀ I started the project, but there’s a link to Amazon below should you be interested in this collection, which is absolutely gorgeous and perfectĀ for this time of year!

This mini album is all about Shalem, my French lop who passed away two years ago. So I decoratedĀ the front cover of the album with a pictureĀ of him, but before I had the photo printed, I did some digital editing first! I cut Shalem from his original background (the grass in my garden) and then pasted him into a fantasy fall landscape that I found on the internet somewhere. In the lower right corner I digitally wrote his name and dates of birth/death. So before we go to the video, here’s a close-up of the album’s front cover:

So enjoy the video and please leave a comment to let me know what you think! Also, click theĀ LikeĀ buttonā€¦. šŸ˜‰

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