Shopping my stash & making last-minute Christmas cards

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!

Let beautiful images in your paper speak for themselves, you don’t have to add anything (or maybe just a little glitter glue, if you cannot help yourself 😇)
Decorating only the fronts of your cards is a great time saver!
Transparent texture paste is a great way to elegantly embellish patterned papers
Keep beautiful packaging and use it to create lovely cards, quick & easy!
Vertical tri-folds, or deconstructed envelope cards like this one, are perfect to keep large patterns intact

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!

Technique Tutorial: Getting Started on Some Early Spring Cards

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!

Papercrafting with rice paper: Can it be done?

Brands often put their best and most beautiful pattern designs on rice paper, instead of their regular design paper, it seems. Rice papers are usually used to alter hard surfaces, like boxes, furniture and the like.

So, can we papercrafters work with the ultra thin rice papers instead of regular-weighted design papers? In the Craft With Me video below I create two mini album inserts – but you can also use them as cards.

I use the most gorgeous sheet of rice papers, from the Clockwise collection by Stamperia.

So enjoy the video and craft along with me 🙂

How to make your own storage trays

i don’t know about you but my online shopping has multiplied ever since the (several) lockdowns were instated the past 18 months. Which means the number of shipping boxes and other packaging that entered my house also multiplied by a significant factor.

Of course I threw away most of it – but not all. For nice storage boxes can be quite expensive. Plus, while creating your own boxes from scratch is certainly doable (I even have a tutorial available for you in my shop), it takes several hours – and sometimes I just want something quick and easy.

That’s where these packaging boxes come in: they can easily be re-used, especially if you’re in the market for a particular size or shape of storage.

For instance, this small and low-edged box below already looked very smooth and sleek, so it was ideal to alter:

The box below was not perfect (it had some jagged edges) but the size was great for my lipsticks so I decided to use it anyway. Since I planned to fill it to the brim I didn’t bother painting the inside. It turned out quite lovely and I’m still using it to this day:

And as a bonus, here’s a pen holder I created from scratch, using only empty toilet paper rolls. I had this specific project in mind for storing my eyeliners and lipliners, because I didn’t want to spend any money on it.

So, enjoy the video, in which I’m sharing some tutorials for these. Have fun crafting and let me know in the comments what you do with your empty packagings!

Turning Great Packaging into a Great Card

Recently I bought two of the Sydney Grace x Temptalia eyeshadow palettes, and found the packaging so lovely that I couldn’t bring myself to simply get rid of those wondrous sleeves, never to be seen again.

So, I turned them into a tea gift booklet, that I sent out to my friend. And let me tell you, that re-purposing was far more satisfying than simply throwing them out. 🙂

I didn’t use any design paper this time, just the two sleeves. For the inside and the two tiny booklets, I made my own mixed media background, using Tim Holtz’s spray and oxide inks.

In the below video I’m sharing this tea gift project, and the steps to create it. Enjoy!

The eyeshadow palettes of which I used the packaging: Sydney Grace x Temptalia

What do you make with oddly themed design papers??

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.

Enjoy the video, feel free to craft along! 🙂

Mixed Media Tag with Embossed Gloss Accent

Did you know that you can use Tim Holtz’s Distress Paint as a resist? To create a mixed media tag, I used this specific technique. I also used clear embossing powder to add a glossy accent – and here are all of the steps to do it!

Step by step

1. STAMP with Distress Paint and/or use a stencil, to add an image or some random patterns. I did both. Use a light color of paint, like white, cream or a very soft pink. Let the paint dry.

Btw, be careful and immediately clean your stamp, for this paint dries quickly and once it dries you won’t be able to get it off your stamp anymore…

2. Color your tag (or any other piece of mixed media cardstock) by blending with different colors of ink. I used both Distress Inks (translucent) and Distress Oxides (opaque). Simply blend right over your patterns – for the paint will act as a resist!

3. Optional: add some extra, subtle background effects by blending through a different stencil.

4. Spray some kind of metal spray to add some sparkle. I used Distress Mica Spray in the color Tarnished Brass.

5. Once everything has properly dried, add a different layer: time for some stamping. Choose one or more images and/or patterns and stamp on top of all the previous layers. First I used a background color of Distress Oxide to add still more interest to the background, this was a script stamp. You can see it on the right side of the tag, on the upper half.

I then stamped the main image in black Archival Ink. This is an oil-based ink, which therefore does not react with or bleed into all of the water-based inks underneath.

6. Pick one or more pieces of your main image that you want to highlight. Cover those fragments with embossing ink – ideally, if you can, use an embossing pen, which gives you maximum control of where you place the embossing ink.

Then take a clear embossing powder and emboss your accent of choice.

Glossy highlight

7. Take some chipboard sentiment pieces and use the same inks to colorize them. Then stick them to your tag.

8. Die-cut a decorative element from metallic paper and add it to the tag. I used Metallic Confections paper by Tim Holtz, but any metallic (or holographic!) paper would do.

Done! Now all that’s left is to tie a piece of string to your tag 🙂

Hope this little step-by-step was helpful! Now go, experiment to your heart’s desire and play with all of the stuff in your stash 🙂 Let me know in the comments if you’re going to try some of the techniques I used here!

If you want still more inspiration, here’s an earlier post where I also used Distress Paint as a resist.

Step by step: Mixed Media Christmas Card

A relatively quick and easy way to create Christmas cards is using mixed media techniques. For this week’s card I first created an inked background, then I die-cut from other pieces of inked paper. This week I’m sharing step by step how to do it.

Keep in mind that although there are quite a few steps, it all takes very little time. For instance, to create the background, you simply spray some ink and let it dry. If you use a drying tool like Ranger’s heat tool, this will take you about 10 minutes. And so on, and so forth. So enjoy!

Step by step

  1. Create some backgrounds. I used two A5-sized papers and two A6-sized papers, both mixed media cardstock. I used three different sprays in what I felt was a “Christmas color range”, two by Tim Holtz and one by Dylusions.

The technique I use for this is: I spray one piece of cardstock, then press it onto a second piece of cardstock of the same size. You now get a nice blend, get the most out of your inks (it’s used for double the surface area) and a fun bonus is that they are eachother’s mirror images.

A5 size: 15 x 21 cm
A6 size: 10.5 x 15 cm

Intermezzo: You can now either go on with the step by step below, or you can layer the smaller cards on top of the larger ones and decorate:

2. Die-cut an image or a large sentiment from one of your inked backgrounds. I used the Layered Pine Trees by Tim Holtz. Play around with the placement of the dies, to get a nice colorplay.

3. Fussy-cut around the edges of one of the holes your die left, to get a bonus decoration.

4. Glue the first die-cut to one of your larger backgrounds to get the placement you like. Then die-cut a sentiment from the same piece of inked background, place it below the decoration (or wherever you like basically 😉 ).

The way I placed the elements, on the right, offers the possibility to now fold my card in half and have a beautifully inked double card.

5. In the end however I decided to simply cut it in half, doubling the number of inked backgrounds I had (I did the same with the other large background).

6. If applicable: layer your elements. Then add glitter to your liking.

7. Glue all elements to your background. You have now created a nice piece to mat onto any cardstock you like.

Done!

If you want to see how I used the other Christmas-colored backgrounds I showed above, check out my next post! 🙂

Creating a Card with Very Little Design Paper

Although I’m a bit of a design paper collector and like to have a lot of choice when deciding which project to create next, I’m also a frugal crafter. I simply don’t like to throw away design paper that could still be used.

But if you only have like one piece of paper left of any substance, the question may rise what to make with it. This week’s post is all about that: I had one piece of design paper of about 4×12″ (10 x 30 cm) left over from my Harmonica Micro Album, plus some small snippets.

Here’s what I created with it – and you can create it with me.

Tutorial: Deconstructed Envelope Card – Version 2

A little while ago I shared a video tutorial on how to create Version 1 of my deconstructed envelope cards. Today it’s time for Version 2, the original of which I shared in one of my previous posts, it looked like this:

So this week you can learn how to create one yourself, by following along with my new video tutorial! Just pause the video at any time you want to read one of the measurements or instructions, or if you want to study a detail.

Have fun creating, and leave a comment if you like!

Tutorial: How to fix broken eyeshadow

Ever received an eyeshadow palette over the mail that arrived broken, like the one in the picture above? Or perhaps, also like me, you’ve dropped it on the floor yourself and can’t think of anything else but throwing it away frustrated? Well, no more, for here’s the solution! 🙂

In between all of the craft videos I thought I’d insert this makeup-related tutorial, it’s really a great fix so I wanted to share it with you. And it’s at least somewhat in the same realm of crafting, right 😉

Next video I’ll be back to papercrafting, I promise – but I hope this helps at least some of you out anyway, please let me know in the comments if it does – or if you have other ‘fixing tips’!

Free: Mailable Mini Album Tutorial

Back in February I shared one of my Mailable Mini Album designs, and invited you to let me know if you’d like me to do a tutorial. Well, you guys let me know 🙂

So, here it is, enjoy!