Category: Cardmaking

  • Lovely Layers Deer

    Lovely Layers Deer

    The main feature of these cards is the Lovely Layers Deer Die Set by Honey Bee Stamps.

  • Trinity Stamps Birthday Witch

    Trinity Stamps Birthday Witch

    With the lunar eclipse happening on October 28, I thought a witch flying in front of an eclipsed moon was a fitting motif.

  • Lovely Layers Quail

    This is also the very first video on my brand new YouTube channel, @ValleyOakPaper. I’d love it if you watched and subscribed. To begin with I’ll be releasing weekly cardmaking videos there.

  • Halloween Gift Card Mugs

    Halloween Gift Card Mugs

    This is a quick and easy way to dress up gift cards for Halloween. The paper I used is scrapbook paper pad from Michael’s. I paired it with glitter paper in matching colors, also from Michaels.

  • Birthday Bears

    Birthday Bears

    The mama bear and her cub are from a Sizzix die set by Lisa Jones. It’s called Nature Friends and also includes a bunny, a hedgehog and a badger.

  • Pumpkin & Plaid

    Pumpkin & Plaid

    The theme was supposed to be making your own plaid, but as you’ll see I cheated.

  • Oak Wreath

    Oak Wreath

    The next day I created the texture with the Pinkfresh Studio’s Stitches Cover Plate. This had the added bonus of flattening the cardstock after its bath.

  • Bring on the Heat Embossing

    Bring on the Heat Embossing

    I knew I wanted hot colors for the landscape itself, but I die cut the landscape from white. Then I used Distress Oxide Inks to color them.

  • Whale Thank-You Cards

    Whale Thank-You Cards

    I cut out the parts of the whale from inexpensive watercolor paper and colored them with Distress Watercolor pencils following photos of humpback whales. The upper part and tail are colored with Black Soot. For the shadows under the whale I used Hickory Smoke.

  • Whale in a Bottle

    Whale in a Bottle

    The bottle die is 5.5” tall. That means that you can use it to create a shaped A2 card. Unfortunately that also means that it’s a little too big to fit comfortably on an A2 card. So that’s why I chose to make this a 5 by 7 card instead.

  • Stacked Mini Album

    Stacked Mini Album

    This mini album is very easy to make and has room for lots of embellishments. It will available for purchase at my booth at the De Anza Flea Market on Saturday, July 1st, 2023. If it doesn’t sell there, I’ll list it in my Etsy shop.

  • Merry Everything

    Merry Everything

    Ink smooshing is a very popular technique that creates backgrounds with random blotches of ink. A couple of tips: You can smoosh your ink pads onto your craft mat. That’s where the name of the technique comes from.

  • Coloring Koalas with Alcohol Markers

    Coloring Koalas with Alcohol Markers

    The main feature of these two cards are from the Spellbinders Playful Koalas stamp and die set. I stamped the koalas, birds and greenery in Memento Rich Cocoa. This is a solvent-based dye ink that enables you to color stamped images with alcohol markers.

  • Interactive Father’s Day Card

    Interactive Father’s Day Card

    Once the glue has set, turn the piece right side up. You should be able to tug at the sliding tab and get the center of the sliding mechanism to fold up. If the mechanism works smoothly, you can remove the release paper from the foam tape and place the mechanism on the card base.

  • Vintage Typewriter Father’s Day Card

    Vintage Typewriter Father’s Day Card

    This is a relatively simple card, but it gets the message across and who doesn’t love a vintage typewriter? I got the idea for this card when I was looking at the die set on the Spellbinders web site.

  • Vellum Cards with Envelopes

    Vellum Cards with Envelopes

    Vellum is tricky, because glue will show through it. There are a couple of different strategies for getting around this.

  • Emboss Resist

    Emboss Resist

    To watercolor with the spray stains, I made sure I shook the bottles until there was no mica sludge left at the bottom. Then I unscrewed the spray mechanism and touched the stem where I wanted the color. I used brushes to push the paint where I wanted it. The first layer was very blotchy,…

  • Mini Slimline Cards

    Mini Slimline Cards

    If you’re not sure how to place flowers, there are two principles that can guide you. The first one is to place flowers around the focal point of the card. The second one is to place decorations in a diagonal. If you combine the two principles, you cluster decorations around the sentiment and let them…

  • Pop-Up Tree

    Pop-Up Tree

    The theme for the Instagram hop this Sunday was Butterfly or Bee and Symmetry. I took the chance to use the recent Flowering tree pop-up die set from Spellbinders. It creates a fantastic four-tiered card that folds flat into a regular A2 format. It’s a real stunner and not too hard to pull off.

  • Pink Mother’s Day Card

    Pink Mother’s Day Card

    This is where things went wrong. Out of sheer habit, I doubled up the die cuts. That meant that I couldn’t create an eclipse card. 🤦🏼‍♀️ Find out how I recovered from my mistake.

  • Duckling Cards

    Duckling Cards

    I started by laying out the dies on inexpensive watercolor paper and marking out how much space each of them would need. Then I colored the marked areas with Distress Crayons.

  • Single-Layer Spring Card

    Single-Layer Spring Card

    At this point I really wanted to add dimension to the card. But it was supposed to be a single layer card. So instead of adding dimension, I added texture.

  • Floral Birthday Card

    Floral Birthday Card

    Tips for coloring flowers: Look for commonalities in the images. If you paint what’s typical, people will recognize the flower and your coloring will seem realistic to them.

  • Chrysanthemum Sympathy Cards

    Chrysanthemum Sympathy Cards

    The main focus of these cards are flowers from Pinkfresh Studio’s Chrysanthemum collection. I applied the washi tape to tan cardstock to tone down the vibrant colors.