Tuesday, June 28, 2022

Thank you!

Today I needed a quick and easy "Thank You" card to thank all of my Facebook friends who congratulated me with my birthday yesterday. I already had plans to make a card using Marta Debicka´s third digital collection, so I had some of the papers and ephemera laying on my desk, as I had used my Scan ´n Cut to cut out a lot of the leaves and flowers earlier. Therefore, the decision was an easy one.
I decided to make a 5"x7" card, and it really was pretty easy, until I came to the floral decoration. I didn´t want to spend a lot of time making flowers, so I first tried using some of the flowers from the ephemera pack that I had already cut out. However, I wasn´t able to build the dimension that I wanted, so I chose to use some fomarian flowers I had in my stash, as well as some already made paper roses that I bought a while back instead.
All in all, compared to the recent cards I have made, this did turn out to be a nice and easy card.

Sunday, June 26, 2022

Buzzing By to Say Hi!

Today´s card is a "Floating Tiered Gatefold Card." inspired by Sam Calcott from Mixed Up Craft. I decided to make it because I thought it would be a great card style to show off Craft Consortium´s beautiful collection "Tell the Bees." However, when I was finished gluing down all the paper designs that I had chosen for the card, I realized that you don´t actually see as much of the beautiful designs that I had hoped. Oh well, it is a beautiful card style, so I still wanted to decorate and finish the card. As I don´t have the stamp set from this collection, I ended up using the bees from a different Craft Consortium collection, "At Home in the Wildflowers." I also cut out a few elements from the actual paper designs, as well as some of the extra toppers on the covers of the paperpads. I had decided to go with copper toned mats for my cards, therefore I heat embossed my sentiments with copper embossing powder, as well. The sentiments are just some that I had in various stamp sets that has bees as theme.
The card closed up, held together by the matching belly band.
Close up of the belly band.
The main panel of the card.
The back side of the card where there is room for a message for the recipient.
The card is a bit bulky, so I chose to make a box, rather than an envelope, for it.
The tutorial that inspired me:
Thanks for looking!

Friday, June 24, 2022

Kite Fold Card making marathon🪁

I just took part in a craft-along in one of the Facebook groups that I am a member of. The craft-along was going to show how to make a "Kite Fold Card". You could even buy kits to make the same card as was shown in the crafting session.
I first made this style of card a couple of years ago, and I just made another one a few weeks ago, so I wasn´t following the craft-along to learn how to make the card. It was the decorating part of the card that intrigued me. I have always divided the front of the kite into four parts, and I struggle to get the angles right every time I make one. The kite card in the craft-along only has one panel on the front though, and it is much more heavily decorated than I usually do.
There were two different colorschemed kits, and I had bought both, so I set out aiming to make cards in both colors. Just for show I added yet another card to the mix. I was able to follow along making my three cards for quite a while, however, as we were supposed to start decorating our card(s), I started lagging behind. I am not used to this type of decorating, and it doesn´t come very easily to me. I take forever to decide what goes where, and how many elements to include. As usual when it comes to this type of decorating, I ended up leaving out several elements, as I either didn´t like them, or I couldn´t find a natural placement for them.
I ended up walking away from decorating the cards last night, and finished them this afternoon instead. I am really quite pleased with the results, and I might even make some more in this style.😂

Thursday, June 23, 2022

Faceted Vertical Easel Cards

I originally saw this card style several months ago, and I thought that all the angles on the front would be somewhat complicated. I then saw it again the other day, and after watching the tutorial I decided to give it a go, as I have this collection of papers, "Eastern Influences" by Craft Consortium, that I thought would be perfect for this type of card.
I chose a paper design and then a card base to go with it. I then realized that the collection is full of designs just screaming to be made into cards. SO I picked out another design, then another one, and before I knew it I had cut 5 different card bases, and picked out almost twice the amount of designs that could go with them.
Once I started cutting, there was no turning back. However, it did end up taking a LOT longer than I initially had planned when I set out to make my card. I enjoyed the extra time it took though, and I am really happy with the result.
A couple of my card bases are really bold, but the colors of the designs suits them perfectly.
After finishing all five cards, I was a bit annoyed with myself cause I absolutely do not need five of the same style card. Therefore I decided to make a gift box for them, so that I can give them away as a gift for someone.
I decided to go with a black box, as three of my cards are black. I then chose one of the design I had used, and decorated the front and the inside of my box.
I also added a ribbon inside the box, a great tip that I got from Marta Debicka in a live Craftstash session last Sunday. It is a great help when you want to remove the cards from the box.
All the cards fit perfectly into the gift box. I will make matching envelopes for all the cards as well, and I might even include postage to make it easier for the recipient to use the cards.
The last photo is an attempt to display all the cards along with the box.
The original tutorial I saw for this card:
The tutorial I ended up following when making the cards:

Tuesday, June 21, 2022

Layered cards, both masculine and feminine.

A little while ago, I decided to stray away from following tutorials to make various fun fold cards, and just go with my own creativity and make a couple of simple "from my own head" cards. I had visited a craft store the previous day, and had gotten some inspiration from seeing all the beautiful papers they had there. I might have mentioned before that one of my absolute favorite patterned paper companies is Maja Design from Sweden. They make gorgeous paper collections with good quality papers. I don´t use the papers that I have nearly enough, there are simply so many other good companies out there as well, but for these cards I automatically gravitated towards my Maja Design papers. The papers I have used on these two cards, are from the "Denim and Friends" and the "Denim and Girls" collections. I think I have the complete Denim and Girls collection, and I like to turn to it for a pretty background. The masculine card above also has hemp, a swivel clasp, and a hinge clip from Tim Holtz Idea-ology series, as well as a few embellishments that I have filed down the shiny surface on. I also made a small matching box to put it in.
For my second card I also used papers from Maja Design, as well as a variety of flowers. For this card I made a 5"x7" envelope in a matching color.

Friday, June 10, 2022

Tri-Fold Stepper Card

Today´s cardstyle is a fold I have had on my "to make" list for quite some time now. I liked it from the very first time I saw it, but as I wasn´t able to sit and craft do to prolapses in my back at the time, I kind of forgot about it. The other day a fellow crafter posted her version of it, and I decided to make one as well.
The tutorial I originally saw on how to make this card, was by Sam Calcott from Mixed Up Craft, and it involved making several templates to get the layers right. I decided I wanted both a mat and a layer, and I ended up making yet another template. It took me a while to figure out how to best do it, but once I got the hang of it, it went fairly quickly. I used digital papers for my patterened papers, and I spent quite a bit of time deciding which ones to use. In the end I settled on some sunflower papers that I purchased from LoveJunkJournals at Etsy.com. I layered that on top of a sunflower yellow mat. I chose black licorice from Lawn Fawn for my card base.
For the back of the card I decided to cut out a piece of white paper and ink up the edges with sunflower yellow ink from Lawn Fawn. The sunflower colored cardstock I used for my layer is also from Lawn Fawn.
I added a sentiment, some bees and sunflowers which were fussycut from my digital papers, and some adhesive enamel dots to finish off the front of the card.
The tutorial I followed:

Easy Fold-Over Cards

Lately I have been hooked on making a simple fold-over card, that you can easily make into a gift card/tag-pocket card. Once again...