Tag Archives: love

To My Sweetheart – A Romantic Mini Album

Posted on by
Reply

Hello my sweet readers!

Although most people in the Netherlands don’t celebrate Valentine’s Day, I thought I’d post a romantically themed mini album today anyway. 😉 ♥
This album was commissioned by a young man in Singapore who wanted to surprise his girlfriend. He wanted it to be romantic – with pinks, flowers and some love-themed ephemera, etc.

So I chose Kaisercraft’s Oh So Lovely paper collection, which is perfect for precisely such a mini album! It has florals, pinks, wood patterns and some great sentiments!

The album is a pocketstyle mini with 5×5″ (12,5 x 12,5 cm) pages.  It sports ten interactive page layouts, including the inside covers, and four large photo mats. I decorated it with the O So Lovely Collectables die-cuts, the ATC cards of the collection (called Captured Moments – Pretty Little Things) and some decorative elements from other brands on the front cover and throughout the album.

For the page designs I mainly followed my Life’s a Picnic mini album tutorial – which by the way has 14 interactive pages so you’ll get 4 extra page designs if you purchase the tutorial!

So enjoy the video, and don’t forget to check out the close-ups below of the two Oh So Lovely cards I created with the same paper collection! 🙂

For those of you who celebrate it, have fun preparing for Valentine’s Day 🙂

 

 

Two Oh So Lovely cards:

 

Valentine’s Day gift idea: Cute little tea basket

Posted on by
Reply

For some Valentine’s Day inspiration, here’s a little photo shoot of a cute wooden tea basket that I altered. Photos only (no Youtube) so I guess it’s kind of a Blog Exclusive 😉

I altered the tea basket with some pieces of napkin – and a little paint. Very simple, fairly easy to make and, therefore, ideal if you want to create a great gift but don’t have enough time to start a Multiple Days Craft Project (capitals intended – we’re all doing some seriously hefty projects from time to time right).

The color scheme that I chose for this tea basket is perfect for Valentine’s Day, or any other romantic occasion. Of course you don’t have to use it for tea: you can fill it up with all kinds of neatness and romantic knick-knacks you can come up with. For instance, simply put some sweets for your Sweet into it 🙂

By the way, you want to take the time to work meticulously and with attention to detail, even with a fairly quick & simple design such as this one. For instance, I used more than one piece of napkin here, but can you honestly point out the seams between the pieces…?

… I thought not 😉
So, no matter how simple a design may be: always pay attention to these kinds of details, for it will make a difference.

When it comes to finishing touches, especially with rounded edges, nooks, crannies and other ‘precision stuff’, I don’t go near decoupageing: too difficult to get it done near-perfectly, it’s messy and it’s hard to correct if you make mistakes. In these cases, paint is my best friend!

Like this handle…
…and the top edges of the basket. I mixed that warmer, darker red color on the edges myself, by the way, adding more hints of dark colors to the handle’s bright red until it was just so.
Because the decoupage technique gives you the opportunity to create great projects relatively quickly, it’s also fairly easy to expand your project. Just use more of those awesome napkins that you picked, and make one or more companion pieces.
Like I did with this candle! Just in case you didn’t know that you can in fact decoupage a candle just as simply as any wooden object, I will show you how to do this in my next post.

So stay tuned for my upcoming video tutorial on How to decoupage a candle!

Stay crafty, and may God bless you all!

BewarenBewaren

Tutorial: How to make a double circle paper closure

Posted on by
Reply

Lately I’ve gotten some requests to do more tutorials, which was very encouraging and which inspired me to share this design with you all.

For an interactive element in my Little Miss mini album I designed a special paper closure, that I’m calling Double Circle Closure. In this video I’m using design paper from DCWV’s Immortal Love stack, which would also make it a great Valentine’s Day card or interactive element in your Valentine’s Day mini album – just a tip…;-).

It may take a bit of practice, especially since I’m eyeballing the whole thing so I can’t give you any measurements, but I hope you’ll get the idea. I apologize in advance for the lighting, since I filmed at night and didn’t have a so-called “daylight lamp” or any other kind of photo lamp. Anyway, if you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to ask, simply use the comment section below. I usually answer within 24 hours.

By the way, feel free to use my design on any of your projects. Whenever you decide to share these on your blog, Youtube, Facebook or any other website or medium, please do mention my name (Katja), the name of my blog (Creator’s Image Studio) and please share the link to this blog. Thank you!

Note on video quality: Most of my videos are 720p; the rest is 540p. If you’re not able to get 720p or 540p  while viewing the video on this blog but instead have to make due with some rather unsharp videos, you should be able to adjust video quality by clicking the gear icon in the bottom right corner of the video player, and selecting your preferred quality. If you don’t have the gear icon, then click the Youtube sign, also in the bottom right corner of the video player. This will take you directly to Youtube, where you’ll be able to change the video quality with the gear icon after all. Hope this helps.

BewarenBewaren

BewarenBewaren

Flip card in Red

Posted on by
Reply

This is a cute little flip card I made in a lovely red color scheme, ideal for Valentine’s Day or any other love & romance theme! It has two flaps that close with magnets and its last “page” has a little pocket.

Well, ’nuff said, let’s go to the two-minute video!

By the way, you can find the tag card I’m referring to in the video here.

Feel free to leave a comment and let me know what you think! 🙂

Prima Romance Novel altered treasure chest, pt. 1 – Preview / Work in progress

Posted on by
2

I’m working on a commissioned altered box at the moment, and I thought it would be fun to share some of the progress.

The person I’m making this for wants to send an altered box to his dear friend in New Zealand (yea, I’m being shipped overseas, woohoo! :-)). He has sent me some short notes he wants to be written on the box and furthermore he’s asked me to do something with a dandelion, or a dandelion theme, as this flower has special meaning to him and his friend.

Here’s what I came up with so far:

  1. I’m going to use the Romance Novel design paper stack, I don’t think there’s a paper out there that’s more fitting! It has everything you could want for a commission like this: it’s gorgeous, it’s romantic AND it has a love letter theme, including vintage postage stamps and the like! How cool is that for a gift that will actually be sent overseas by mail!
  2. I decided I wanted to find a way to create an actual paper dandelion, 3D, life size. Didn’t have a clue how to do it, but I was going to find out and make it work!

So, here’s some pics of the work in progress, enjoy!

The wooden box I’m altering. It’s kind of a mini treasure chest and it’s about 3.5×2.5×2.5 inches (9x6x6 cm). Isn’t it adorable?

First I removed its lock and the hinges on the back. Then I painted it dark brown except its little legs which I painted gold, using simple acryllic paint. I mixed it with a pearl paint to create a pearly shine. Then I sprayed glimmer mist on the whole thing, using Tattered Angel’s Iridescent Gold and Vanilla Breeze. Nothing too fancy, but it does create a very nice, subtle effect. Plus, this box has Golden Feet! 🙂

Here’s the layout for the box. I sprayed each piece of paper with a bit of glimmer mist, using the same two colors I used on the box. Of course I’m going to distress everything as well, for which I’ll be using Tim Holtz’s Black Soot distress ink.


On to the creation of the dandelion. Fortunately the internet was there to teach me how to make one (check out Inna’s Creations, a very creative Israeli lady whose website I stumbled onto. She makes gorgeous paper art!). I started by creating the paper strip on this picture.

Roll up tight!

And spread the little petals. Done – A cute little life-sized paper dandelion! Thank you Inna! 🙂


I’m going to put this inside the box, so that when my friend’s friend opens it, a lovely, bright piece of summer will smile at her 🙂

So, this was part 1 – hope you enjoyed it!

I’ll be showing you the finished product in part 2. Until then, stay creative!

Paper walkthrough: Romance Novel by Prima

Posted on by
Reply

Ah, this gorgeous gorgeous design stack is such a delight that I’m hesitant to even use it! Perhaps I’ll simply stare at it for a couple of minutes a day…

Click here if you don’t see the video / Klik hier als je geen filmpje ziet.

 

Edit April 10th, 2013: As it turns out, this design stack is also available in A4 size. I don’t think it’ll come as a very big surprise that I immediately bought that too as soon as I heard of its existence… 😉

BewarenBewaren

BewarenBewaren

Tag card in Red

Posted on by
Reply

Voor Nederlandse versie klik hier

A tag card is a card that features, well…. tags. I’ve discovered that scrapbookers use the term rather loosely: to them it basically stands for any piece of paper or chipboard that you can either write on or glue a photo onto, that is not glued to something else itself. I’ve seen people call huge sheets of paper “tags”, and I’ve noticed them applying the same notion to the tiniest of scraps. As for me, I simply find the whole concept fascinating – who knew that such simple things as tags could be used in so many creative ways!

For this, my very first tag card, I got my inspiration from Elsa Justafew’s Father’s Day tag card on Youtube – you can find a link to her video in the description of my video on Youtube. Mine was a birthday card – also: gift card holder – for one of my dear girlfriends who turned an undisclosed age last February 1st 🙂

I also added something of myself to this design: digital photo editing. To have every picture that I used fit the design and color scheme of this tag card perfectly, I digitally altered them and gave each character a gorgeous new background. Like with my friend’s cute doggie:

It was quite some extra work, but I’m very pleased with the effect.

So, have fun watching the video – and do let me know what you think!

 

Oh, and don’t forget to check out my Mediterranean variation on this card!

BewarenBewaren

Tag-kaart in Rood (Dutch)

Posted on by
1

English language blog post: click here.

In de wereld van het scrapbooken zijn “tags” een bekend fenomeen. Tags zijn in eerste instantie bedoeld als een soort los etiket (tag in het Engels), maar volgens mij staat het bij scrapbooken inmiddels voor een ruim assortiment aan losse kaartjes die allerlei vormen en kleuren kunnen aannemen, van ansichtkaartformaat of groter, tot de kleinste friemelbriefjes. Ze worden gebruikt om op te schrijven, maar ook om foto’s op te plakken.

Een tag-kaart is, tja, hoe zal ik het zeggen… een kaart met tags! Dat kun je natuurlijk ook weer op 1001 manieren doen – waarvan ik er nu eentje heb ontdekt en uitgeprobeerd.
Het idee deed ik op van een Amerikaanse scrapster die haar Vaderdag tag-kaart deelde op Youtube – in de beschrijving van mijn filmpje op Youtube vind je ook een link naar haar video.

Ik heb er natuurlijk mijn eigen draai aan gegeven, en er ook een nieuw element aan toegevoegd: digitale fotobewerking. Ik heb nl. eerst nieuwe digitale achtergrondjes toegevoegd aan de foto’s zodat alles nog mooier bij het ontwerp van de kaart zou passen. Zo is het geheel in de ogen van een kleurenfanaat als ik echt “af” en mooi in evenwicht! Neem bijv. Hond van Jarige Vriendin:

Tis wel wat meer werk natuurlijk… maar dan heb je ook wat.

Veel kijkplezier, en ik hoor graag wat je ervan vindt!

 

Leuk? Kijk dan ook eens naar mijn Mediterraanse variant op deze kaart!

BewarenBewaren