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

Posted on October 8, 2023 by CraftKatie

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

Posted on October 1, 2023 by CraftKatie

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).

Six Easy Card Ideas

Posted on May 29, 2022 by CraftKatie

In very busy times like these I don’t find much time to craft, let alone many hours continuously. Nevertheless, a girl still needs her cards to send to her friends & extended family! So, here’s six card ideas, all of which are very easy to make and which take up relatively little of your precious time.

Enjoy the video, and don’t forget to like this post and/or leave a comment! 😃