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!
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!
Happy New Year everyone!
And let’s start 2023 with a lovely vintage 1-sheet card, its browns & grayish blues so suitable for autumn and winter, and yet its pink roses remind us that Spring is coming (well, eventually it will).
There are many ways to fold beautiful cards with only one sheet of paper. You could also use cardstock and mat it (which would technically make it a 2-sheets card) but much easier is using a double-sided sheet of design paper.
I designed this particular card type myself, it takes a bit of folding, one cut with a paper trimmer and a little bit of glue, and it will turn into this very nice multi-faceted card with two pockets and a little doorlet on the front to tuck some extra niceties behind.
If you want to know the nitty-gritty of how to make this, there’s an excellent PDF tutorial in my Etsy shop, it’s Tutorial #9. (It’s very affordable btw).
I’ve made several of these over the years, and here’s my latest, using the beautiful vintage Time is an Illusion paper collection by Stamperia.
Have a blessed New Year every one! And thank you for your continued readership and support in 2022!
So, speaking of last year, apparently I forgot to post my 2022 Christmas cards here on my blog after uploading it to Youtube last December…. However, the tips are still useful, for they are for card making in general, not just Christmas cards.
So imagine any occasion you’re planning to celebrate with a card, sit back & relax and apply every tip to your own cards. I hope you find some inspiration, not only by way of card ideas but also to avoid the Chore Trap of crafting. Enjoy the video 🙂
A few weeks ago I discovered the beautiful Vintage Artistry Wedgewood collection by 49 and Market. Even though I loved the entire collection, I purchased only a single sheet to make it easier (for me) to immediately use it, and to save some money at the same time.
Now the challenge I gave myself was to create more than one project that all featured this paper. I came up with three cards and they all turned out lovely. Gosh that paper is so stunning.
Detailed walkthrough in the video!
Stamperia have come out with some gorgeous vintage and steampunk paper collections. I’ve been working with four of those collections for my latest mini album, which I’ll be showcasing here soon.😃
In the meantime I’ll be showing you some smaller projects I’ve been working on with said papers.
Take this cutie. Since I love to send a friend some tea – kind of a hug-in-a-mug – I created this lovely little Tea Booklet. For its front, back & spine I made use of a pre-imaged paper sheet Stamperia provided in their Lady Vagabond collection.
I matted the inside of the booklet with some beautiful patterns and decorated with some fussy-cut elements.
My spine was 5/8″ (1.5 cm) wide to accomodate a bag of fresh tea. You can make the spine as wide or as narrow as you need. The narrower the spine, the easier it fits into a normal envelope. However, if like me you’d like to send out some tea, you’ll need a little width.
Have you ever created a tea card? I’d love to know you ideas!
Watercoloring is a great way if, like me, you’re not a particularly good colorist, mainly because it’s a relatively forgiving technique. Water will help you blend out colors and sharp lines, at least a bit. Of course there is much to learn here, but even as a beginner I felt confident enough about my first water colored cards to actually send them out to people.
In the second half of the video I’m showing you some technique, when I’m coloring one of the envelopes. I used several colors of Distress Ink (minis) and Distress Markers. It was simply what I had, hence the combination of inks and markers. Since these Distress products are all water-based and really work well together, it’s great to combine them and create the color palette that you’re looking for.
Watercoloring is a great technique if you’re out on the road: contrary to scrapbooking, it takes very little to take with you what you need, and to have some relaxing moments while you’re not at home. Just do the stamping at home, and color them on the road. So while this will probably not become my main hobby, it will definitely stay in my papercraft repertoire!
A wallet card is a great category of cards if you want to send out something more elaborate and interactive than the regular single card or folded card. I’ve designed several versions of wallet cards, among which this type, which has two deep pockets, a flap and a belly band. You can add tags with sentiments, pictures and one time I even sent out a small bag of flower seeds in one of the pockets.
They are of course suitable for any occasion and you can choose your papers accordingly. This week I’m sharing a birthday version in bright and happy summer colors. For decoration I added several die-cuts, stamping, fussy-cutting, Stickles (glitter glue), enamel dots, washi tape and even some heat embossing. The inside flap has a punched border with cute birthday presents – thanks to a great Martha Stewart punch. The back flap sports a tiny orange umbrella brad that in itself has nothing to do with birthdays but that I simply fell in love with. In the pockets I tucked two large tags on which I printed some fun birthday sentiments.
All in all quite an elaborate card full of nice little nooks and crannies – and still relatively flat, so easy to send out in an envelope.
Hope to have inspired you to create some wallet cards of your own! And if you want to make this particular one, simply go check out my tutorial!
Have a great week, enjoy the weather and celebrate the eased lockdowns everywhere.
Papers used: 2 sheets from the double-sided Birthday Bash collection by Pink Paislee:
This week I’m happy to take you with me on one of my 1-sheet card journeys, it’s not difficult and it shows you the different steps and techniques used. So, simply scrap along with me! 🙂
Hello everyone!
So I’m back after a 3-month hiatus… Check out my update, and also my latest project, two tri-fold cards with Studiolight’s Celebrate Spring papers – which I’m not just sharing with you but also showing you how to make at the end of this video!
Hi everyone,
This week I’m sharing my enthusiasm about Tim Holtz’s 2016 Dapper paper pad. As per usual when I really like a paper collection, I leave it in my stash for quite some time before I can bring myself to cut into it; hence the 2.5 year (!) delay between it being offered on the market and me actually creating something with it…
Anyway, I chose to use one of Dapper’s 6×6″ sheets, plus a 3×4″ sheet. They all come in one big double-sided 12×12″ pad – which I find a brilliantly creative invention – a characteristic shared by all Tim Holtz’s paper pads alike.
The double card I created is about 6×6″, and I grunged everything up by actually distressing all of the papers’ edges, using no inks whatsoever, to enhance the effect. Also, I added in some layering and of course embellishments – and there you go, a card with a distinct masculine feel!
Do you like the Dapper collection as much as I do? And which are your favorite masculine papers for creating projects for the men in your circle of family and friends?
Let me know in the comment section below.
This week I’m sharing a project tip on this blog exclusively, so no Youtube video this time. If you’d like to peruse the other (over 40!) blog exclusives I’ve offered so far, click here!
So, the tip I’m sharing with you today belongs to what I’ve dubbed the quickscrap category, that is to say projects you can finish in 1 hour or less. Perfect if you’re in a bind and absolutely need a card or a gift pronto! And as an extra bonus it is super low budget.
If you’re anything like me, you’ve taken pictures of all of the craft projects you created thus far – and if you haven’t, start doing that right now! For the only thing you really need to create a lovely and most importantly superquick card, is a nice close-up picture of one of your own projects. And by close-up I mean: no background, no borders, just the details of your project. Crop the picture (digitally or physically) if you have to, to make it so.
Step 1
Print the close-up picture on photo paper. Crop it if that’s necessary to get a 100% close-up without backgrounds or borders.
Step 2
Get some nice folded cardstock and accompanying envelope from your stash.
Step 3
Glue the picture onto the front of the card.
Step 4
Cut off the excess of the card if that’s needed to perfectly fit your picture.
And you’re done!
How easy was that! Let me know in the comment section and have fun upcycling your old projects! 🙂
There’s more where that came from! For my other quick photo card tips, check out this post and this post. And for all of my low budget tips, click here!
Don’t forget the Birthday Sale in my shop! Because my birthday is January 11th, I’m celebrating it with you all by offering you a 40% discount on all of the tutorials in my shop, from January 11-13th!
Yeah yeah I know I know, Halloween comes first so why am I even talking about Thanksgiving. Well, simple really: I don’t like Halloween. It’s a creepy holiday celebrating death and the occult. Me, I’m into Life. And that’s the first important reason to be aware of everything that deserves your gratitude – or your thanksgiving, if you will. After that come many more reasons, one of those being the people you are grateful for of being in your life, or whom you’d like to thank for some actual nice thing they have done for you the past year. So why not add a card to that gift you’re buying them? 🙂
That is why this week I’m sharing five of those, to inspire you with some ideas – and well in time for you to make them 🙂 All my cards were made with an older Bo Bunny collection called Ambrosia, but the main thing I hope will inspire you is that paper alone really is enough to make beautiful cards.
Layering was the main technique I used, using the design paper and the diecut pack that came with the collection and playing around with some dimensional tape. Some stamping will always do well of course, to add the main sentiment to your card.
Will you be sending out any Thanksgiving cards this year, or will you add any to your gifts? Let me know in the comment section!
