Happy Monday to all you happy crafters out there! Hope you had a great weekend and got to make something awesome out of pretty paper, or something beautifully messy with your inks, or that maybe you got to have a nice cup of coffee and a cupcake with your loved one while out on a shopping trip where more pretty paper was purchased. And that maybe you got to feel some lovely, early spring sunshine warming up your cheeks.
At least, that sort of sums up the weekend I had. Not too shabby!
I was busy this weekend putting the finishing touches on the wedding invitations I’m making for our friends N & P, for their woodland wedding celebration this summer. Jed helped me out by putting no less than 210 foam squares on the punched out hearts (see picture above). Yeah, the man deserves a medal! It all went splendidly! Until I ran out of some mauve card stock. And then the striped washi tape. And then the white ribbon. Cursed ribbon! I even bought extra to start with, but I must have calculated it completely wrong. We’ve taken a few quick trips to the crafting store this weekend, hehe, but we also had time for a couple of lattes and baked goods. Anyways, they’re all done now, and lovingly wrapped and cared for and ready to get shipped to the U.K. Hoorah!
I completely forgot to post my Valentine’s project for my boo! A bit late, but here it is!
He always makes me awesome handmade cards for Valentine’s every year, so I felt I wanted to make something to show him I love that and how much I love him. So, why not 52 reasons? I’ve seen similar projects here and there on the Mighty Internet, and loved the idea, so I decided to do my own little Deck of Cards Mini Book. A perfect base to list 52 reasons why you love your sweetheart. Enjoy!
You know when you’re a scrapbooker and a crafter and you always make loads of pretty things to give to other people? It’s the best thing, ever. It makes your heart beat. But sometimes it’s even a liiittle bit better when someone makes something handmade for YOU. Like when your sweetheart spends the better part of an afternoon making something like this for you on Valentine’s day:
Being a Valentine’s card from a boy gamer to a girl gamer, that is rather a strong message. I know my heart is a’fluttering today.
(He cut this by hand. Seriously! Who needs a Cricut?)
Hope you had a great feb 14th! Love and respect. And chocolate.
Happy Valentine’s Day! Or, as my dear friend Vanja chooses to call it: Friendship Day! I like her take on it much, much more. It’s more including, and of course you can celebrate your friendships! I don’t usually do handmade valentine cards for this particular day, but this year I decided to make a few for my closest family and one for Vanja and her daughter Nikki, to celebrate our friendship and the fact that whenever we hang out we have a great time, and always leave me happy and energized.We haven’t had a chance to hang out much for a few years, but are now a bit more back on track, which makes me incredibly happy.
Go check the series out and definitely watch the video where she makes the cards. She has such a great teaching style! (And makes a lot of her projects upside down for her videos. Serious skills, ya’all!)
Hope you all are having a great day, be it with your valentine or your family and friends. Stay safe!
I remember watching a scrapbooking video about 6-7 years ago here this woman was raving over using tape on her projects. At that point it wasn’t washi tape, but shiny, colourful plastic tape, some with metallic patterns. I remember my reaction, how I couldn’t understand it at all, why use tape? So, fast-forward to present day and the washi tape craze. I’m stuck in the middle of it. The trend has completely exploded and so many brands have their own take on this product; so many different pretty colours, patterns and textures. I’ve read in some forums how some people wonder how they will ever use it all, and I wonder: Did I Overbuy?
But then I think: How could I? You can use it on EVERYTHING. Layouts, mini albums, cards, tags, altered items like books, frames and boxes, on embellishments, or make it INTO an embellishment itself. Use it to decorate your phone or diary or calender, use it to tape something on the fridge and make the world a brighter place. So, lot’s of uses out of those yards of tape, huh?
Why not use it to embellish a shape for a card or a layout? I made this card to day with a hot air balloon as a theme, really easy peasy and great fun to make. Just draw a shape, turn the paper over, tape the back side, flip it back and cut out your motif. Done! On this card used both store bought paper tape, and some handmade tape I made myself with masking tape, tissue paper and stamps.
I have not had time for a proper update for a few days, but that does not mean I have given up on my projects! Since last time, I have taken photos daily, gone for a photo walk in a frosty forest, written a little bit on a story almost every day, made some samples for wedding invitations for some lovely friends that are getting married this summer, celebrated my 2-year anniversary with my boo, and generally making some plans for some exciting things in my life. Feels pretty awesome! I completely approve of this projects, it’s so much fun!
Can you believe it’s almost been a month?
Tonight I wanted to try some more masking techniques, and so I decided to turn my last experiment inside out. So I cut out a bunch of clouds and adhered them to thick cardstock with some 2 way glue (easy to remove after adding all the colour). I had to help hold them down a bit when I worked with the distress inks, but other than that it worked just fine! Here’s how the cards turned out:
Some happy cards to give away to happy people! Love how they turned out! But I’m feeling like I need to invest in more colours regarding distress inks. Like, all of the colours…
Really quick post as it’s getting late, I just really wanted to share these cards I made. Today’s prompt was to make something camouflagey or something that could melt into the background, so I scanned these pages from one of my favourite books, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, and made these cards. Also I made the flowers from the same print,so that they match the background. The adorable robots from Maya Road got to stand in for Marwin, the Paranoid Android. Off to bed now, but here are some pics!
Handmade decos are always a nice touch to a card or a scrapbook layout, I think. It just feels great to be able to make something from scratch from the supplies you have, and it gets a little more personal, which is what I always want with my Christmas cards. Sometimes a Christmas card is only thing you send someone that year, maybe to a friend or a loved one that lives far away and you’ve haven’t had a chance to see or talk to in a while. That’s why it feels important to me; I want the recipient to know I’m thinking about them.
So here are some of the Christmas cards I made this year. I decided to hand paint some baubles with watercolour. I really can’t paint at all, but this technique is fairly easy: Draw a circle on some watercolour paper, dampen the circle with water, then add colour, a little bit at a time.Make it a bit darker around the edges and leave a little spot where you don’t put any colour at all, which makes it look a bit shiny.
When deciding on size, I punched out a circle with one of my punches and used that as a template. That made it easy to punch out the baubles perfectly circular after I’d painted them. Also, I used some of my small snowflake- and heart stamps to make a decorative pattern. I stamped the pattern in water resistant ink before I added the watercolour. Lastly I sprayed the baubles with some shimmer mist. To make the card a little dimensional I adhered the baubles with some foam dots.
I was really pleased with these cards, I wanted to make more like them, but I went on to other ideas, more posts to come!
I mentioned earlier about my friend who loves stars *S* So of course I made her a Xmas card with stars on it as well! I chose to just put the word “merry” on the front, because that’s exactly how she makes me feel :)
I love making my own Xmas cards and being able to make them a bit more personal. I’m so happy that it seems like the cards made it out in time!
This years pile of Christmas cards, I’m sending them out today! Close shave, but I managed to get all the cards done and put in addressed envelopes in time. Today is the last date to send off your Xmas cards in Sweden, if you want to be sure they make it out in time.
I really had fun this year with the Xmas cards; some were more personal than others, but all in all I managed to do a great variety of cards! Beats making 25-30 cards exactly the same, as I used to do a few years back. Back then I was obsessed with them all matching and looking the same, until one day, when I came to the conclusion that that was BORING, and it wasn’t like the recipients had started a secret club who’d have yearly meetings where they’d compare the results of all my postcards they’d gotten. Don’t limit your own creative freedom! That’d just be silly :)
