Get a Jump Start On Your Christmas Cards!

Here's a fun idea for your Christmas cards this year -- use dimensional paint!  You can apply the paint free-hand, or with stencils.  Here are a couple of examples I made using these paints:

Snow is free-hand, trees were a stencil

Snow freehand

Used stencil for trees & title

 You can get a Christmas selection of dimensional paints from Paper Wishes here.  (NOTE: This is NOT the product for the Blog Hop. That you will find in the post titled "World Cardmaking Day is October 2".) Other products used on these cards include:

• "White Christmas" Card - base card from Paper Wishes (may have been discontinued, I can't find it listed anymore); white dimensional paint from Christmas set; white ribbon and blue ribbon for bow; "White Christmas" greeting from either "Pop-ups for Christmas Cards" or "Punch-outs for Christmas Cards" - not sure which (got both from PW).
• "Let It Snow" Card - base card Holly Christmas Card; white dimensional paint from Christmas set; letter and mailbox from "Punchouts for Christmas Cards" (PW - discontinued?); snowflakes are a mini-punch, and the words are a stamped image.
• "Peace On Earth" Card - base card from green cardstock; focal done using a stencil with green & red dimensional paint from the Christmas set

Only One Sheet!!!!

 

Do you ever find the "perfect" paper for a project, only to realize you only have one sheet of the paper and your project is a 2-4 page project? Not to worry! Plan it out and you can make your paper stretch!

In the first example, there were FOUR pages of tropical fish that I wanted to use my coral reef paper for. I cut it in half, and then carefully tore each half in approxmiately half lengthwise. This gave me 4 borders -- one for each page. I paired them with coordingating paper. On two pages I put the borders horizontal and on two I put them vertical.

In my 2nd example, I had one sheet of striped paper that was 11 3/4" x 12 and I wanted to use it for three 12 x 12 pages! The first two pages were pretty easy -- I cut 2 strips 11 3/4 x 2 1/2", and used the dark paper to "frame" it so the fact it isn't the full 12" long doesn't look weird. The 3rd page (this was my mock-up, I don't have a picture of the finished page) was a bit trickier. I first cut a couple of strips for the top and bottom. Once again, they were 11 3/4" long, so I matted them onto white to make the full 12" length I was looking for. From the remaining piece I carefully cut out a frame for the large picture. From the inside of that frame, I cut out the two frames for the smaller pictures beside it. From the inside of the two smaller frames and a bit of scrap left over from the cut of the original frame, I cut out the letters for the title.

Make A BUTTERFLY from a Flower!

Step One

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Step Three

Step Four

Step Five

Step Six

Step Seven

Step Eight

Step Nine

Make a butterfly from a four-petaled paper flower!

This takes just seconds to do, once you understand it, and before you know it you can have a whole flock of butterflies to decorate your projects. I've listed 9 steps, each with a picture so you can see clearly what I've done - but I could probably have shown it in just one or two steps. It really is simple.

1) Choose your flower.
2) Cutting in to center point, cut off one petal completely.
3) Then trim away part of opposite petal to form body of butterfly (see photo).
4) Take the full petal that you cut off.
5) Cut it in half lengthwise.
6) Round tips on the wider end for lower wings (see photo)
7) Turn them so points are facing away from you.
8) Attach to butterfly (I used double-sided tape, but glue would work, too).
9) Repeat these steps to make a whole flock of pretty butterflies!

Tea Bag Folding

Tea Bag folding can be a fun technique to use and I love the little papers you can get specifically for it.  But you CAN use papers you have on hand if they are a small repeating design!  Just cut your own 1 1/2" to 2" squares (you usually need 8 of each design). I did that for the two examples here.

To get a true tea bag look, you need to make sure the design is the same on all your squares.  This takes a bit of work, but really isn't too bad if the design is a small one.  For example, with the argyle/diamond pattern, I decided to start by cutting length-wise through the center of the red diamonds. This gave me several strips of paper that were all the same.  Then I measured the width of the strip. This gave me the length I would need to cut from the strip to get a square.  Then I figured out exactly where on the pattern I wanted to cut this length, so I could repeat it to get the rest of my squares all the same. In this case it turned out that I needed to cut the tips off a row of diamonds, count three rows of diamonds, including that one, and cut the tips off the third row of diamonds.  Try it! It's not as complicated as it sounds.  For each of the example cards, I started with paper that was only 4 1/2 by 6 1/2 inches. I cut my squares, and even had some left over for a border treatment!

Adhesive-backed supplies

Today's tip is about places to purchase adhesive-backed supplies.  While they can be purchased from the manufacturers or suppliers of your die cutting machines, that is often not the least expensive way to go.  Here are some places I've found that offer these supplies at a better price: Oh My Crafts sells adhesive backed vinyl in a variety of colors and periodically put it on sale for a VERY good price.  You can get larger quantities of vinyl (i.e. by the YARD) at Sign Warehouse.  "MatStack" Adhesive-Backed Cardstock can often be found on sale at places like Joannes at the end of the season. Another place with a variety of adhesive-backed supplies - including paper - is Texas Craft.

PLEASE NOTE: This is NOT an endorsement of these products - simply information you may find useful.  I have not yet purchased anything from Sign Warehouse or Texas Craft, so can't personally vouch for them. Nor can I guarantee good results for you from those places that I HAVE purchased product from, though my experiences have been positive.

Greetings for Cards

This tip is for those of you with electronic cutting machines -- like Cricuit, Silhouette, Wishblade, etc.  Using adhesive-backed cardstock or vinyl in a variety of colors, cut out greetings you frequently use on your cards -- like "Thinking of you", "Thank You", "Happy Birthday", etc.  Now when you make your cards, you have a variety of these available in different colors all ready to go -- quick and easy -- and less waste of your adhesive-backed supplies by cutting a bunch of sayings at once rather than one at a time.

In the example above, the "Thank You" was pre-cut out of adhesive-backed cardstock and ready to go when I put this card together.