Two Christmas Card Tips

In my last blog post I showed you my first ten Christmas cards, created with two so-called card art stencils.

This week I have two extra tips for all of you who are preparing to get your craft on and make your own Christmas cards for this year:

  1. Combine leftover die-cuts & cutaparts from one collection, with papers from a fairly neutral collection. Like in my case, the 6×12″ Wood Texture paper block by Joy Crafts;
  2. Create a large card, e.g. A5-sized, and create elaborate layouts without it getting to ‘busy’ to look at.

There’s actually a third tip hidden inside the video, namely to use what I have dubbed scrap mats, in other words: meticulously paper-pieced background mats. Check out my free video tutorial on how to make them – you’ll get a lot more paper real estate from your leftover papers!

 

Stitches: stamp by Crealies

Ten Scandinavian-styled Christmas Cards (with French Christmas wishes)

Recently I decided to experiment with Dutch Doobadoo’s card art stencils, which you use by simply tracing around their various edges to two nested shapes. So I bought two of the stencils and created ten (early) Christmas cards, using a cherry red cardstock as a base.

I decorated with the Warm Winter Wishes paper collection by Marianne Design and die-cuts from the wonderfully cosy-looking Scandinavian Winter collection by Studiolight. In the video below I show you all ten cards, all of them sporting “Joyeux Noël” (by Crealies, among others) as a die-cut sentiment – a.k.a. Merry Christmas in French.

I really enjoyed working with these stencils, their ‘fun factor’ definitely exceeded my expectations. Plus I found them a very useful alternative for a die-cutting machine, so they are perfect to take with you to places where you know you won’t have access to any die-cutting tools (like when I go to my mom’s 😉 ).

So enjoy the end result and let me know if you have any experience with these or other card art stencils! 🙋🏻

 

Romantic Nursery Baby Boy Mini Album

When my cousin had her first baby, a cute little baby boy, I wanted to make her something special. I decided to make her a mini album to keep her most precious pictures and notes of baby’s first couple of months. I wanted a somewhat romantic baby theme, with nostalgic colors instead of bright blue pastels, which I found in Marianne Design‘s lovely Romantic Nursery design paper.

The mini album has three page assemblies, which makes it a bit thinner than my other mini albums which usually have six or eight. It still has plenty of room for photos and other memorabilia though, with all its pockets, tags and even hidden photo wallets. Of course I inked around all the edges, this time with Vintage Photo distress ink by Tim Holtz.

And here’s the video, please feel free to let me know what you think!

 

So what kind of baby shower gifts have you been looking for, or even created yourself?

 

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Three Tiny Nursery Treasure Chests

Sometimes pictures say more than words – and a video tells it all 🙂 In today’s post you’ll find many detailed pictures below the show & tell video, but first I’d like to show you one of the basic micro chests as it was before was altered:

These are simply the cutest, and once altered they are near-perfect gifts! For instance, what about these three I’m showing you, aren’t they the most adorable baby shower gifts? 🙂
So enjoy and let me know what you think!

 

 

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Baby shower gift idea: altered mini drawer chest

I was very happy to do one of my altered drawer boxes again, my second one actually, because they’re cute, look lovely and are easily made. I bought it in one of our craft stores (in the Netherlands); it’s made of plain wood and its size is 8x8x3 inches (20x20x7,5 cm).

This time I used Romantic Nursery design paper to alter it into a baby shower gift, so it’s completely different from my first one. It still amazes me how much a simple change in color and style can lead to a difference of day and night for the same object! A difference I find utterly enjoyable by the way, for this way one object can please many different people and can be made to fit a multitude of occasions – and moreover, it inspires creativity!

 

So here’s the video, including a little “how to” information, enjoy!

Have you ever altered a box or some other object? How did you do it?

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Paper walkthrough: Romantic Nursery

Here’s a super lovely baby design paper stack, created by Eline Pellinkhof with Marianne Design, a Dutch designer. It’s A5, which makes it a little bit bigger than the usual 15×15 inch paper pads.

Click here if you don’t see the 2-minute video below.