Tag Archives: gift idea

30th Wedding Anniversary Explosion Box

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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:

 

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Mini Layout with Ma Cherie

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Today I’m sharing a little layout with my lovely mom as its center of attention 🙂 .

I used Kaisercraft’s wonderfully feminine and slightly oriental Ma Cherie paper collection for this fun little project, which has a chipboard base and measures only 6×6 inches (15×15 cm) instead of the usual 12×12″ (30.5 x 30.5 cm).

This smaller size makes it a very practical gift, for not everyone has room in their homes and hearts for a relatively large addition to their interior decorations – especially when the gift is a complete surprise. A smaller size is a lot less threatening and – more importantly – a lot easier to assign a nice little spot to somewhere in their house.

On the creator’s side, the small size makes for the perfect opportunity to use the 6×6″ (15×15 cm) cutaparts that sometimes come with collections, like the Fine sheet in this Ma Cherie paper line.

I used the top-left cutapart of the sheet called “Fine” for my layout

I embellished my mini layout with some Ma Cherie Collectables die-cuts, some flowers from my stash and some Stickles. I also fussy-cut two butterflies from the Exquisite sheet of the collection.

Exquisite

All in all I was very pleased with the end result – and more importantly, so was my mom! 🙂 So enjoy the video and pictures, and feel free to let me know what you think!

 

Curled up the lower left corner, added the word “treasured” that I cut from one of the sheets, then decorated the rest of the corner with some flowers and die-cut leaves. I also added two Collectables die-cuts right above the curled up paper.

Added a simple hanging mechanism, which I got in a home improvement store (very affordable!)

 

 

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Micro Album ‘Fresh & Bright’

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As you may have noticed by now I love to collect older paper collections that are difficult to come by. Lush by Kaisercraft  is one such design paper collection, stemming from 2010!

I used this lovely paper to create a micro album, following the design of my very first micro pretty much literally in order to write a tutorial for you all.

So have fun watching the show & tell video and Go Create! 🙂

 

December Deluge 5: Decoupaged Candle & Box

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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 Wallet, a 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”

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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!

 

 

 

Christmas gift idea: A Paper Craft Skin for Your Gadget

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I don’t know about you but I love my gadgets. I’m always online and have various devices that I work with. I always love to personalize these devices, and no doubt you’ve seen or owned your share of cases, sleeves, bumpers and what not yourselves.

Today I’m sharing yet another way of personalizing a smart device: skin it, and use pictures of your own craft projects to make it really You!

Or, and here’s a Christmas gift idea, design a skin for someone else! You’ve probably made cards or mini albums with beautiful sentiments or very pretty design elements. Why not turn a picture of such a lovely detail into a skin for your best friend’s favorite smart phone to say Thank You, or Happy Birthday – or even I Love You 🙂

There are many companies out there that can create skins for any gadget you may have in mind, except perhaps the very ancient ones. You can think smart phone, tablet, ereader, but also laptop and game controller.

They are fairly easy to adhere to your gadget – and very removable too if you’re totally done looking at it – and that’s why I’m demonstrating how to apply a skin in this video. I’m working with my own iPad Mini, which I skinned with a detail of my Treasured Memories Keepsake Album Deluxe.

There’s a new paper craft skin for my phone in the making as well, and although it hasn’t arrived yet I’ll post the screenshots below, so you get a second version to hopefully inspire you. I’ll also post pictures of the original projects on which I based the skins.

And last but not least, if you want to see still more skinned devices, and even an extra video tutorial, check out an earlier blog post of mine, over at my – somewhat sleeping – other blog Comics and Gadgets.

Hope you enjoy it, and hope you’ll find it inspiring! See you next week!

 

Original project: Treasured Memories Keepsake Album:


iPad Mini – skinned with the Forever Memories project:

 

Original project: Step Card ‘Deeply Loved’:


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Enjoying the Little Things – A Miniature Display

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Hi guys,

Today I’m sharing a blog only project with you all, so no video this time. Several pictures though, so check it out!

Recently I created a little display with a picture of one of my aunts. It’s made of chipboard and cardstock, but is very sturdy nonetheless and can stand all on its own. It sports design paper on all sides and some cute little embellishments on the inside.
For this particular one I used some Mariposa paper by DCWV.

These little frames are very cute and are a great way to use up all of your leftover pieces of chipboard and paper. On top of that, they make awesome little personal gifts! Because they won’t take as much time as, say, a mini album, and I find them perfect for rainy Sunday afternoons 🙂

Check out the pictures below, and if you’d like to create some yourself, check out the (affordable)  tutorial!

See you in a couple of days with a video post again – until then, stay crafty! 🙂

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Explosion Box for a Man – Still in Love

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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:

Raining Cats & Dogs Tea Box from Chipboard

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For World Animal Day I thought it would be fitting to show a project I created with Raining Cats & Dogs, a lovely, richly colored design paper by Graphic 45.

From chipboard I created a little box that I filled with Original First Tea, which comes in its own little boxes. They fit perfectly into my little gift box. And of course I added a matching birthday card as well!

No video this week, just some lovely pictures. Enjoy, and please like, subscribe and feel free to share them on Pinterest or other social media.

Stay tuned this month, for I’ll be sharing at least two other Raining Cats & Dogs projects the following weeks! If you like what you see below, then click here for a double card I created with this gorgeous paper.

Matching birthday card, created to fit into this little box:

Removable tiny birthday cardlet:

Back of the card:

Filled up with tea:

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Gift idea: Christmas Paper Bag Album

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Before you read any further: this album is for sale for a special opening price, so please check it out on my Showroom page! (International customers: please pay attention to the fact that international shipping fees will have to be added).

Tis the Season, yea! 🙂 I haven’t got my Christmas tree yet, but nevertheless it’s that time of the year again, which means holiday-themed projects for crafters all over the world! Soooo many gorgeous new Christmas collections and I haven’t even bought a single one this year. Not because I don’t want to create anything for Christmas, on the contrary. But since I bought like a gazillion Christmas collections last year, I’m afraid I’ll be not-buying any new Christmas collections the coming years until I’ve used up the ones I already own…. (Right. Like that’s going to happen! But: at least this year it is! 🙂 )

Anyway, here’s a so-called paper bag mini album, the pages of which are basically created from paper bags – and some cardstock. I really love this type of album, for it requires less basic construction than the usual cardstock albums, so you can relatively quickly move on to decorating and embellishing – which, you know, is grrrrreat! 🙂

The paper collection I used is North Country, by Prima Marketing, plus some separate sheets from other collections. I also used this paper line for my Christmas cards this year.

Great gift for a guy: Craftsman Chest

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It’s always more difficult to come up with an original gift idea for a man than it is for a woman. I find altering some wooden object a great solution! It’s functional, it has added interest because it usually has some moving parts, like a lid or drawers, and with the right paper you can create quite the masculine project!

Like this little Craftsman Chest here, which by the way has its own little refrigerator magnet as a bonus 🙂 – perfect for hiding one or more giftcards. And, therefore, also perfect to give a present together with other people: they can all put their giftcards into this little chest!

 

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How to decoupage a candle

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You may have heard of decoupage or napkin technique. It’s a fun way to alter objects, usually made of wood or paper mache. But did you know you can decoupage a candle as well? It’s the same technique, except you’re using special, flame-resistant candle podge instead of regular podge.

You can check out some examples of decoupaged candles in my blogpost on Easter decorations, for some inspiration. Meanwhile, here’s a tutorial on how to decoupage your own candle – and let’s make it a Valentine’s Day version this time, why don’t we 🙂
So enjoy the video and have fun experimenting!

 

Please feel free to like & subscribe and leave your remarks and questions in the comment section below!

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