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!
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 collectionby Stamperia.
Opening the front flap and finding a nice removable bookmark on the insideChecking out the center pocket, which holds a lovely tag, which I decorated with some stamps and a die cut image of a cup of teaOn the back of that same tag, I attached an actual bag of tea for my friendBack pocketThe back pocket contains a bookletThe inside of the booklet offers room to write a message on the left, and a nice stamped sentiment on the right
When your double-sided paper is beautiful on both sides and you cannot decide which one to mat on a card, it’s time to create a card without cardstock! This way, you can showcase both sides of your gorgeous design paper sheet.
For me it was a sheet from the Time is an Illusion collection by Stamperia. That design paper collection is truly a work of art!
Cut a 12″ inch strip of your sheet, at the height you want your card to be. Fold in two places to create a trifold – make sure one panel overlaps the other.
Use a strip of paper or a tag to create a closure. Watch the video on my latest steampunk mini album, which actually features this card and in which I go over the closure technique in more detail.
Decorate the front of your card.
Add a journalling spot on the inside. You don’t have to add anything else since your paper is already lovely in and of itself!
Add a decorative element on the back. I chose a cutapart with a sentiment. Done!
Have you made any cards without cardstock? Tell me about it in the comments, I’d love to hear about it!
Double-sided design paper sheets are the perfect material to create a quick step card. The one I used is from the Summer Breeze collection by Studiolight.
You can either find a template online and print/draw, fold and cut it yourself, or you can use a step card die. With the card’s basic shape taken care of, the only thing left is to decorate!
For instance: cut an ATC card and stamp a sentiment. I also added some heat embossing to the sentiment, for some extra interest. Then apply some kind of glitter glue all along the edges and adhere as a center piece.
Use some hot glue or other heavy adhesive medium to adhere larger decorations, like these bulky roses.
Don’t forget the backside of the card! I know it’s just the back, but you can still add some nice little detail to surprise the careful examiner 😊
For instance, add some transparent texture paste through a stencil on part of the back!💡
Add some final diecuts and smaller decorative elements, and you’re done – quick & easy!
This past year I discovered AliExpress as a great craft supply source, including craft utensils like stamps or cutting dies. This time I’m testing one of several cutting dies I purchased: a DIY gift bag die. It came all the way from China – but would it work?
Spoiler: it worked absolutely fine – I just found the design for the bottom flaps lacking, as it doesn’t enable perfect glue placement and forced me to come up with an extra step – or workaround. Watch the video to see what I mean.
Perhaps this cutting die is actually a dupe, i.e. a design they nicked or imitated (or were “inspired by”) from another company. I mean, we’re talking AliExpress here. However, since one cannot possibly be aware of all cutting die designs worldwide ever, I cannot be sure if this is actually the case with this die. It could also very well be an original design. Should you recognize it however, feel free to leave a note to this effect in the comment section below.
Anyway, I hope you enjoy this 10-minute video tutorial. May it inspire you with yet another way to use up that ginormous stash of design papers you have! 🙂
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.
One of my new favorite brands is Mintay Papers, and even though I only bought one sheet of their beautiful red-white-blue Berrylicious collection, I think I managed to squeeze the absolute most out of it! 🙂
I created a multi-pocketed interactive 1-sheet card – Tutorial #9 in my shop – and this time I used cardstock as a base and matted with the double-sided Berrylicious sheet (instead of design paper only/no cardstock).
The color theme of this paper collection makes it ideal to celebrate national holidays – (if those are your national colors) – without having to work with actual flag-themed papers. Like this week, if you’re an American and celebrate the 4th of July. Or when you’re in the Netherlands like me, and celebrate Liberation Day (5th of May).
Mintay Papers, Berrylicious, MT-BER-01
Or you can totally ignore any national theme and simply enjoy the bright, fun colors and homely images and patterns, and send it to your mom for Mother’s Day – which is what I did 😊
Enjoy the video – and if applicable: Happy 4th of July! 🎉
This year’s Mother’s Day is kinda strange – with the corona lockdown situation and all – so even if you never send out any Mother’s Day cards, this year you will have to make an exception! Never have our mothers deserved some encouragement with a beautiful card more than now – so come on, get your craft on and make her this fun card.
What I’m sharing with you this week is a variant of the box card. It’s slightly different from the regular box cards, the same basic technique but still some new crafty tricks are required – which will offer a nice new challenge. And because it’s Mother’s Day during these lockdown times, I’m offering this special variant guide for free, as a bonus with my Box Card tutorial #26!
You can find my box card tutorial – including the free bonus cutting guide & instructions for this variant! – in my shop, it’s already waiting for you. Think about all those lovely papers in your stack; you know, the ones your mother told you she loved. And you only need 1 sheet of cardstock to make this anyway. So what’s the big deal, just go ahead and check it out. You know you want to 😉 .
This week I’m sharing a free video tutorial again, on how to create a quick & easy card using only 1 cut-apart sheet and some cardstock. The paper I used was from the When We First Met collection by Piatek Trzynastego, a Polish brand.
Near the end of the video I’m sharing a bonus idea on what to do with the one leftover piece of your cut-apart sheet: easy, make another card! 🙂
Enjoy the video, hope you’ll find it inspiring!
One cutapart leftover? No problem, create a whole new card with it!
I guess I’m into some mailable minis… So here’s a different design altogether! You only need 1 sheet of cardstock and some design paper. The flatter you keep your decorations, the easier it will fit into an envelope and off through the mail.
In this video I’m showing you an example of such a 1-sheet album, and I’m also taking you with me through my decorating process.
Btw, you can turn this project into a mini album page for my Double-Stacked Too mini album design. There’s a video class series for that entire album available here.
Hope to have inspired you to create a fun & quick project!
Now that Christmas is only three weeks away (can you even believe how time flies?!) I thought I’d share a nice Christmas card tutorial with you all. This time it’s a card of which one of its border follows the shape of your paper pattern.
I’ll teach you how to set it up, how to back it up with cardstock, and also how to mat it on the inside. And I’ll show it all to you in under 9 minutes! – though it will probably take you a couple of hours to actually create it 🙂
And the great thing is, you don’t even have to use Christmas papers, look at how gorgeous this wintery Unicorn paper by Stamperia is! 🙂
Enjoy this free video tutorial, and feel free to send me the links to yours!
So, it’s that time of the year again 🙂 You can never be too early creating your Christmas Cards. The coming weeks, like every year, I’ll sharing lots of Christmas card tips with you, helping you along to get yourself unstuck and go create your own! It really doesn’t have to be difficult, nor expensive! To prove this, I’m kicking of this C-card season with several easy-to-create lowbudget Christmas cards that I decorated with only 1 sheet of design paper! And of course a few extra embellishments, but you can even do without those if you want to – or perhaps have to because of budget reasons.
So go ahead and check out the video, and then go ahead and Create!
