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 :)
The Christmas cards needs to go in the mail next week if they are to arrive in time, especially the ones I’m sending overseas. So I have to get a move on! I thought I’d done rather well so far, but when I sat down and reviewed my list I realised I still have a few to make. Gah! Glue glue glue! My problem might be that I never like to make the same type of cards more than a couple of times, 2-4 for the most of any card. It’s much more fun that way, getting to try new techniques and motifs and colours. But I guess it’s not so great when it comes to speed and productivity, hehe…
I like to add handmade embellishments to whatever I make, if I can manage. So I tried to paint these X-mas baubles in watercolour. I don’t really know how to paint but painting different layers of the different shades worked out quite well. I made them the same size as one of my circle punches, do cutting them out was a breeze. I have soem pics of the finished X-mas cards to post, I just need to get them off my camera. But here’s a sneak peek at least! Have to get back to stamping and gluing and making more cards! *Hurries back to my crafting nook*
P.S. What’s the chance of me setting up a Craft Signal light, like in Batman? It could be a monkey. I could flash it towards the ceiling and make an alarm noise and run to my work space shouting: “To The Craft Cave!”… Seriously have to look into this… It feel very important… Maybe I should write a theme tune…
I had a completely scrappy weekend! On Saturday I met my friend Andrea at an art supplies shop to buy some pretty papery goodies, and then we spent almost 9 hours in complete frenzy scrapping a wedding album for her sister. And we finished it! And made it look awesome! It’s just something about adding all the photos into a context and a complete story that makes them just a little bit more amazing to look at.
Sunday I spent with my dear mom, making Christmas cards. It was ages since we did something together just her and me, so I felt really grateful we had the chance to schedule that day in. She made so many pretty cards, I just had to sneak some photos of them and share. We have completely different styles, so it’s always surprising and fun to see how she’s gonna end up using her supplies!
We ended the weekend with a nice dinner, my mum, dad, Jed and I, shared a bottle of wine, talked about crafty things. I’m lucky to have a family that indulge me, they let me go on and on about my ideas and plans. I feel like I talked their ears off. Maybe I should get out of my crafty corner more….
