Welcome to Valley Oak Paper
I design handmade greeting cards.
Flamboyant Fall Wreath
The theme of this month’s YouTube hop was Out of My Comfort Zone. So I tried alcohol inks.
Blue Halloween
Today’s card is a watercolored Halloween card with a witchy little quokka. I’m starting by mixing the paint I need. Today I’m going to use my artist-grade watercolors. I’ve written down the paints I’m going to mix on this little palette and I mostly followed my plans.
Spellbinders Fall Warehouse Sale
Here’s my haul from the Spellbinders Fall Warehouse Sale. All these goodies set me back $62. Super happy with that deal!
Bountiful Quokkas
These two little critters are the Kat Scrappiness Dress-Up Quokkas. The markers I’m using for them are Ohuhu BR3, BR2 and BR1. Check out the marker codes I used for each item in the table below.
First Influencer Haul
These are the Kat Scrappiness products I bought to serve as a foundation for my fall and winter crafting as an official influencer of the brand.
Embellishments, Stencils, Fall & Halloween, Holidays, Other Dies
Get Your Skates On
The skates are really easy to put together, with no fiddly bits. There’s a base layer, that shows up as the tongue of the boot and part of the heel. On top of that comes the pretty top layer, and the sole of the boot. The blade has tabs that you glue to the back of the base.
Paradise Birthday
I’m stamping a pattern on vellum with the hexagonal stamps in the set. Stamping with white pigment ink and heat embossing in white gives a wonderfully crisp and fresh result.
Orchid Cupcakes
The starting point for today’s card was a fall-themed cupcake die set from Spellbinders. It was the Large Die of the Month for September last year. I didn’t get around to playing with it then, so it’s just the right thing for a new cardmaking hop that I’m participating in.
It’s called the Procraftinators Club and the idea is to help us finish cardmaking kits, monthly subscriptions and other unfinished projects. This cupcake die set is perfect for it!
Tea-riffic Birthday
This is the card I’m creating in today’s video. It has this fun, wobbling effect, created with an action wobbler. I’ll give you tips for helping your mug wobble better in this video. I’m also using Tim Holtz Distress Watercolor Pencils to achieve a loose watercolor effect when coloring.
Extraordinary Embossing Folders
This blog post is based on the weeklong class called Extraordinary Embossing Folders at OnlineCardClasses.com.
Washi Flower Power
When you’re using washi, you need smooth white cardstock that’s big enough for one repeat of the pattern. Most of Pinkfresh’s washi tape patterns are about the size of a slimline card, so cutting a letter size piece of cardstock lengthwise works great.
Swatching Glimmer Hot Foils
The Satin Gold Glimmer Foil is from the Satin Metallics Variety Pack. Then we have Polished Brass (Essential Metallics) and just plain Gold (Holiday). The plain gold came with my Glimmer machine.
Shabby Chic Tim Holtz Santa
I want this card to be shabby chic, so I’m using a lot of gesso. Over-simplified, gesso is thick, matte white paint. People who are into shabby chic often use gesso to unify the color scheme. It’s similar to how in a vintage card, you’d use brown to unify the color scheme.
Shaped Shaker Card
Today’s card is a shaped shaker card, so I’m starting with the card base.
Frosty florals
The main feature of this card is created with the Honey Bee Lovely Layers Amaryllis Die Set. It creates a lush amaryllis plant with a choice of two planters.
Flutter Into Spring
Once I had laid out the scene on the Glimmer surface, it was easy to foil more, so I created one card with rainbow foil, and one with gold foil.
Sales tax time
I made a little more than $1,000 from selling my cards last year. That’s actually more than I thought. It’s still not enough to pay even one monthly mortgage. 😭
You Make My Heart Smile
For this card I used the Spellbinders Glimmer Hot Foil Kit of the Month for December 2023. Getting a new toy to play with every month is just so much fun!
Thinking ahead to 2024
I need to stop trying to sell my cards. It’s a distraction and the ROI is terrible.
Happy Holiday Bears
This is a relatively simple holiday card that would be easy to mass produce in a couple of evenings.