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:

Suspended Book Fold Card

Today I have made a Suspended Book Fold Card following a tutorial by Iced Images. She also has the original design of this card. It is not a particular difficult card to make, however, it does come off as quite a striking card.

I decided to use papers from the Ocean Tale collection from Craft Consortium, a company that has tons of gorgeous collections! Some of which I have made cards with before, as well.(Triple Stepper Card using the Little Fawn and Friends Collection, a Slimline Concertina Card also using the Little Fawn and Friends Collection, a Shadow Box Card using the At Home in the Wildflowers Collection, and a Letter M Gift Box using the Circus Collection). The papers I chose today was from the 6" x 6" paper pad, and I did this mainly because I felt that I would be able to show of more of the patterns in the stunning papers that are designed by Clare Therese Gray.

The collection comes with a variety of things besides the papers, and amongst the embellishments are some beautiful woodshapes. I chose one of them, a blue whale, to be the star of my card. In addition, I stamped a sentiment that I popped up on some acetate, above the whale.

The only thing I changed from Iced Images´ original design, was that I made an actual 5" x 7" folded card base, instead of just a card front. That way I have an inside where I can write my message. Instead of leaving the inside of my card blank, I stamped and heat embossed a couple of whales and a sentiment, just for some decoration.

The card is supposed to fold flat for mailing. I did, however, kind of ruin that by putting my front sentiment popped up on acetate. Because the acetate is somewhat flexible, though, I think it will be ok to push the sentiment down onto the card front, if I decide to mail it to someone. Because of the acetate, it will probably "pop up" (with a little persuation) close to it´s intended shape once it is taken out of the envelope again.

I will definetely be making more cards using Craft Consortium´ gorgeous Ocean Tale collection!

Here is the tutorial by Iced Images:

New addition to the Love Box Series

The other day I decided that I needed to expand my Love Box Series. I have several Bolsius products that I need to design gift boxes for, but I decided that it was time for the Bosius Wax Melts to get a gift box.

Normally when I make a box for my Love Box Series, I start from scratch and take all the measurements of the item that is going into the box, and design the box from those. This time, because the Wax Melts packaging has quite the odd shape, I decided that I would use a gift box/bag that I have already made, and just tweak the measurements to fit the Wax Melts. A while back, Mixed Up Craft had a Facebook Craft-a-long, where she showed how she had taken apart a box and tweaked it to her own needs. I decided to do the same. I took apart the bag in question and tweaked it to my own needs.😉

I started out making a box that had the right dimensions, but I wasn't happy with the papers that I had used, so therefore I started over. The result was the pink box below, that holds the Magnolia Wax Melts. The decorations on that box, set the standards of how I was going to decorate the other boxes, and I am quite happy with the way the boxes show the "trademark" style that I have set for the Love Box Series.

One thing I have changed up from the other boxes is that on these boxes you can actually see which fragrance you can expect on the inside of the box. On all three Wax Melts boxes I have diet out what fragrance is on the inside. Quite fiddly work, if I might say so, as the letters are quite small, and you need to stack and glue three of each together to create some dimension. I guess it is needless to say that I had glue all over my fingers by the time I was done. However, that doesn't matter, as I love the effect it has on the boxes. 

The more products I make boxes for, the more I see the look of the Love Box Series evolve. Hopefully soon I will have landed on a look that is approximately the same for all the products.

I even shot a video of how I made one of the boxes, https://youtu.be/v1PIzl0A-Kw, it is made as a tutorial, I am, however, more aiming to show how I made these boxes. 

I am not happy that it shows the image of a box for another Love Box Series box as a thumb nail, though, the Magnolia Fragrance Sticks Box. However, because I finished the video by showing some of the other Love Boxes, the last picture of the video is what is set as the video image. I am sure that there is a way to change it, but I am not YouTube sassy enough, to figure out how. 

                                             

This is the discarded box, that I made first, and then partly because of the papers decided that I wouldn't use. I am sure I will find another use for it.

Split Gatefold Card

Todays card is a real quick and easy card called a split Gatefold Card. It is inspired by a YouTube tutorial by Jennifer McGuire. When I first started making card, she was my card making guru!

The card is really easy to make, however, it is still quite a striking type of card. The one I have made here is in portrait mode, and measures 5 1/2"x7". You can basically make these cards any size your card stock will allow you. 

To make this card;

-  I started out with a piece of card stock that was 5 1/2"x 8 1/2", and scored it on the 8 1/2" side at 2 1/8". I then turned it, and scored once more at 2 1/8". 

- Next, I folded and burnished the two smaller panels in towards each other, so that they formed a "gate".

- To decorate the card, I stamped a piece of paper that was 5 1/4"x 6 3/4" with a background stamp, first with a light purple, and then with a vibrant green. 

- Then I cut this piece of paper in the middle, to create two identical mats for the gates of my card. These were then glued onto the front of my card.

- I cut a strip of cilantro colored paper measuring 5 1/4"x 1 1/2" - cut it in two and glued it onto the front of my card. I also cut a thinner strip in light purple, Sugarplum, measuring 5 1/4"x 5/8", cut it in two, and glued it onto the first strip. Both strips were cut from Lawn Fawn paper scraps.

- On top of the paper strips I glued dark purple ribbon, leaving long enough ends unglued, so that they could be tied in a bow to close the card.

- I then die cut a large butterfly twice in white card stock, scored them in the middle and folded them in halves, before gluing each half onto the "gates" of the card, threading the loose ribbon through the butterfly.

- The last thing I did, as I thought the card needed something more, was to color the wings of the butterfly with a ZIG Wink of Stella brush pen in Glitter Violet, before tying the ribbon in a bow.

 

 I wanted to make the inside of the card a bit different, so I decided to cut small slots to insert a loose piece of paper in to. I decided to keep the butterfly theme of the card, on the inside as well, hence I stamped it with a butterfly stamp, and colored them with my Black Widow Coloring Pencils.

This is Jennifer McGuire YouTube tutorial on how to make split Gatefold Cards.

Building Block Card

On Friday, the 31st of July, Sam Calcott of Mixed Up Craft was going to do another Facebook Live. Unfortunately I didn't have the chance to watch, as I had a service appointment with my car that I had to go to. During that Live she made this beautiful card, a Building Block Card or a Block Card, if you like. Luckily for me though, she put up a YouTube tutorial on how to make the card really soon thereafter, as I didn't really feel like watching the live after the fact.

So yesterday I made this card, that I am really happy with! I absolutely adore the papers I have used. They are from the series "Little Fawn and Friends" from Craft Consortium. I decided to use Norwegian sentiments on the card, as I more often end up sending cards to Norwegian friends, as supposed to English speaking ones. The sentiments are all about having courage, and therefore I have simply called the card "Mot!", or "Courage!" in English. The sentiment says. "Courage to do what you dare not do."

This is a card that was a lot easier to make than I initially thought, much because of the great tutorial 

Sam Calcott has made.

I kept the theme of being courageous on the back of the card with another sentiment that says "What would life be if we didn't have the courage to try?"

I thought the card deserved a matching envelope.

Building Block Card tutorial by Mixed Up Craft

Mens Polo Shirt Card

My mom asked me the other day if I could make a birthday card for her. It was going to be for a toddler who turns two, and since I have wanted to try out making a shirt card for a while, I thought if I could find some fun papers, it could work as a card for a two-year old. I went into my downloadable papers and found this really adorable dinosaur patterned one. Since the card called for a double sided print, I choose the other pattern, the stars, as the backside of the dinosaurs. 

I followed Mixed Up Crafts tutorial on how to make this card, and it turned out to be a very easy AND fun card to make!😃

I thought the inside of the card looked rather plain, so I fussy cut one of the dinosaurs, and stuck it on the inside.

In hindsight I thought I needed to show the age on the front of the shirt, so I die cut the number two, and stuck it on the shirt pocket.

I decided to make an envelope to match the card, so I stuck on a scrap piece of paper that was left over after making the card.

Mixed Up Crafts very easy to follow tutorial for this card.

Making envelopes out of scraps, can lead to ideas for cards.

I very often use A3 sized sketch paper to make my envelopes. That means that I often have quite a few scraps left over. The scrap pieces of sketch paper aren't something I tend to grab when crafting cards, therefore it tends to accumulate over time. Yesterday I got the idea that I should make smaller envelopes out of the scraps, but since I didn't want to have a bunch of small envelopes lying around, I decided to make smaller cards to go with them. Since I like the idea of having thank you cards available should I need them, I went with that idea and cut down some pre-scored cards to 5"x3 1/4". I then started die cutting elements that I wanted to be on the cards, and since I wanted to make a set of cards, I chose to use a different color on each of the cards. I did six cards in total. Since I am here in Norway, I decided to keep the sentiment in Norwegian. Therefore I simply called the card set "TAKK".