Shopping my stash & making last-minute Christmas cards

Happy Holiday season everyone!

Let’s create some easy-to-make Christmas cards together: shop your stash (I did! 😃) and make good use of the tips, tricks & tutorials I’m sharing with you in the below videos! Let me know what you think in the comments.

Have a very merry Christmas and a blessed New Year!

Let beautiful images in your paper speak for themselves, you don’t have to add anything (or maybe just a little glitter glue, if you cannot help yourself 😇)
Decorating only the fronts of your cards is a great time saver!
Transparent texture paste is a great way to elegantly embellish patterned papers
Keep beautiful packaging and use it to create lovely cards, quick & easy!
Vertical tri-folds, or deconstructed envelope cards like this one, are perfect to keep large patterns intact

You can watch my free video tutorial for my deconstructed envelope card here:

Hope you found these tips & tutorials helpful, either for your Christmas cards or for any other occasion!

K.I.S.S. papercrafting: Don’t overthink the front of your card

In one of my previous posts, my first one on the K.I.S.S. way of papercrafting (Keep It Simple, Stupid), I gave some examples on keeping your cards simple yet lovely and your crafting easy-going and timesaving. One of the examples I gave is to make use of post cards – the kind you buy somewhere – and incorporate those into your card projects.

This week I’d like to elaborate on that a little bit, with another example. The trick, for me, is to buy a postcard with some kind of special depiction or sentiment: not your general ‘Happy Birthday’ card with a bunch flowers, funny drawings or a joke, but one depicting something meaningful – to you and/or the person to whom you’ll be sending the card.

For this week’s birthday card project, I chose a postcard that I bought in an art museum, it was depicting a special piece of fashion by Viktor & Rolf. I picked it because the person I was going to send it to, appreciates fashion, art & lifestyle.

I matted it on top of two layers of design paper, in a matching color scheme. I stamped congratulations (in Dutch), but added no extra decorative elements, adhering to the K.I.S.S. principle.

I matted the inside with several papers from the same design paper collection – Reflections by Echo Park (no longer available) – and added a journalling spot on top.

I wrote the specifics of the fashion piece on the inside of the card, and the museum in which it was photographed

I also matted the back, and decorated with a sentiment sticker.

So, even though I invested a little more time and energy into this card than I did the previous example (in the aforementioned earlier blog post) I still kept it K.I.S.S.: the card design was simple yet elegant, and I had a lovely time creating it.

Have a great week, don’t overthink things! 🙂

Card making: Work with what brings you joy

This week’s card was created with Together, a 6×6 design paper pad by Mintay. It’s an older design paper collection, but you’ll have to forgive me not buying anything new any time soon, due to my rather large stash 😅

I love the color palette of these papers, the soft corals and aquas, laced with some sage green and beiges, it all comes together perfectly with the dreamy air balloon theme. I used this collection before, when I worked on a little pre-made album, you can check out the video on that here.

As a specific theme for this card I chose tea time, which I incorporated by way of some cute little stamps on the front.

I don’t know why the card looks so crooked in this picture, I guess I held my phone a bit crooked (sorry)

I also stamped a floral element in coral on the front, which you can see peaking out behind the little layout I did on top of it.

I kept the inside extremely simple, matting with a floral design first and then choosing a second piece of design paper that offered some natural room to write. I did decorate, but subtly: I only added some liquid pearl around the edges of the journalling spot.

I also matted the back of course.

Although technically this wasn’t one of my so-called tea cards, which I always design around an actual bag of tea (check out all of my tea card designs here), I did add a tea bag to the envelope when I sent the card to my friend. And created a little custom tea tag to go with it 🙂

I always write what kind of tea it is on a little custom tea tag – in this case: Pina Collada tea! 🙂

All in all I loved to work on this card. The lovely colors and graphic designs of the papers, together with the simplicity of the design, made for a great afternoon of crafting.

So I guess the main tips this week are: choose to work with what brings you joy, and don’t be afraid to keep it simple! (On that note, also check out my previous post, on the K.I.S.S. method and applying it to paper crafting).

Technique Tutorial: Getting Started on Some Early Spring Cards

I guess I’m over Winter. For when I started thinking about making these two cards, my mind immediately jumped to some yellows, florals, birds, bees and easter bunnies.

So, I’m inviting you to get started with me on some (very) early Easter or Spring cards, get some inspiration from my video or follow along with me to create these exact card designs.

The papers I used were by Craft and You Designs, from their Spring Garden collection.

Have fun crafting and I’d love to know: did you make these along with me, or at least feel inspired to get creating some spring projects of your own? Let me know in the comments down below!

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 🙂

How to make your own storage trays

i don’t know about you but my online shopping has multiplied ever since the (several) lockdowns were instated the past 18 months. Which means the number of shipping boxes and other packaging that entered my house also multiplied by a significant factor.

Of course I threw away most of it – but not all. For nice storage boxes can be quite expensive. Plus, while creating your own boxes from scratch is certainly doable (I even have a tutorial available for you in my shop), it takes several hours – and sometimes I just want something quick and easy.

That’s where these packaging boxes come in: they can easily be re-used, especially if you’re in the market for a particular size or shape of storage.

For instance, this small and low-edged box below already looked very smooth and sleek, so it was ideal to alter:

The box below was not perfect (it had some jagged edges) but the size was great for my lipsticks so I decided to use it anyway. Since I planned to fill it to the brim I didn’t bother painting the inside. It turned out quite lovely and I’m still using it to this day:

And as a bonus, here’s a pen holder I created from scratch, using only empty toilet paper rolls. I had this specific project in mind for storing my eyeliners and lipliners, because I didn’t want to spend any money on it.

So, enjoy the video, in which I’m sharing some tutorials for these. Have fun crafting and let me know in the comments what you do with your empty packagings!

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! 🙂

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! 🙂

What do you make with oddly themed design papers??

I have great admiration for design paper companies and their graphic designers: having to come up with unique, lovely and most of all sellable designs several times a year seems like a sheer insurmountable challenge to me. So I can understand that every once in a while some design paper collection comes out on the market that in itself looks great – stunning even – but has a slightly odd theme.

This week I’m sharing what you could do with such fairly non-practical themes; like the pastry-themed Sweety collection by Stamperia.

Lovely colors and beautiful graphic designs – they look so good I want to eat them all!

Other than making me seriously crave some chocolate & cherry pie topped off with some pistachio mint ice cream (yummie!) I’m not sure what to do with this collection, except admire its visual gorgeousness. Yes, I know, the theme is great for birthdays and other parties, but then I would prefer a 6×6″ size for cards and Stamperia doesn’t do those. Now take the 12×12 inch sheets: these elaborate graphic designs look more like a picture you would frame and hang from your wall, than cut it up (how?!) to make it into, say, a mini album or, even more difficult, a card.

A seriously uncuttable 12×12″ sheet

So, here’s what I do whenever I encounter a collection I love but cannot for the life of me think of a project intended for some actual, practical use: I buy only the cutapart sheet, and design one card around it, preferably while using up the entire sheet.

The Stamperia cutapart sheets are always great, plus, they come with beautiful journalling spots on the back. Perfect.

So, here’s a short video tutorial on how to design a card around your specific cutaparts. If your cutapart sheet has differently sized cutaparts, then here’s a tutorial around a second design.

Enjoy the video, feel free to craft along! 🙂

Step by step: Mixed Media Christmas Card

A relatively quick and easy way to create Christmas cards is using mixed media techniques. For this week’s card I first created an inked background, then I die-cut from other pieces of inked paper. This week I’m sharing step by step how to do it.

Keep in mind that although there are quite a few steps, it all takes very little time. For instance, to create the background, you simply spray some ink and let it dry. If you use a drying tool like Ranger’s heat tool, this will take you about 10 minutes. And so on, and so forth. So enjoy!

Step by step

  1. Create some backgrounds. I used two A5-sized papers and two A6-sized papers, both mixed media cardstock. I used three different sprays in what I felt was a “Christmas color range”, two by Tim Holtz and one by Dylusions.

The technique I use for this is: I spray one piece of cardstock, then press it onto a second piece of cardstock of the same size. You now get a nice blend, get the most out of your inks (it’s used for double the surface area) and a fun bonus is that they are eachother’s mirror images.

A5 size: 15 x 21 cm
A6 size: 10.5 x 15 cm

Intermezzo: You can now either go on with the step by step below, or you can layer the smaller cards on top of the larger ones and decorate:

2. Die-cut an image or a large sentiment from one of your inked backgrounds. I used the Layered Pine Trees by Tim Holtz. Play around with the placement of the dies, to get a nice colorplay.

3. Fussy-cut around the edges of one of the holes your die left, to get a bonus decoration.

4. Glue the first die-cut to one of your larger backgrounds to get the placement you like. Then die-cut a sentiment from the same piece of inked background, place it below the decoration (or wherever you like basically 😉 ).

The way I placed the elements, on the right, offers the possibility to now fold my card in half and have a beautifully inked double card.

5. In the end however I decided to simply cut it in half, doubling the number of inked backgrounds I had (I did the same with the other large background).

6. If applicable: layer your elements. Then add glitter to your liking.

7. Glue all elements to your background. You have now created a nice piece to mat onto any cardstock you like.

Done!

If you want to see how I used the other Christmas-colored backgrounds I showed above, check out my next post! 🙂

Tutorial: Deconstructed Envelope Card – Version 2

A little while ago I shared a video tutorial on how to create Version 1 of my deconstructed envelope cards. Today it’s time for Version 2, the original of which I shared in one of my previous posts, it looked like this:

So this week you can learn how to create one yourself, by following along with my new video tutorial! Just pause the video at any time you want to read one of the measurements or instructions, or if you want to study a detail.

Have fun creating, and leave a comment if you like!

Tutorial: How to fix broken eyeshadow

Ever received an eyeshadow palette over the mail that arrived broken, like the one in the picture above? Or perhaps, also like me, you’ve dropped it on the floor yourself and can’t think of anything else but throwing it away frustrated? Well, no more, for here’s the solution! 🙂

In between all of the craft videos I thought I’d insert this makeup-related tutorial, it’s really a great fix so I wanted to share it with you. And it’s at least somewhat in the same realm of crafting, right 😉

Next video I’ll be back to papercrafting, I promise – but I hope this helps at least some of you out anyway, please let me know in the comments if it does – or if you have other ‘fixing tips’!

Free: Mailable Mini Album Tutorial

Back in February I shared one of my Mailable Mini Album designs, and invited you to let me know if you’d like me to do a tutorial. Well, you guys let me know 🙂

So, here it is, enjoy!