Thankful Friend Side Step Card

Here's a friendship card I made with my Accucut Craft Side Step Card. I know how to do a Side Step card by hand with a scoreboard, but I'm not that great with an Xacto knife, so having the die is a big boon to me.

I bought this stamp of the two girls on an impulse. I thought of my sister and myself as soon as I saw it and I just had to have it. [Have a made a card for my sister with it? Nope (not yet).] This is the first card I've made with it! The image looks watercoloured on the front of the packaging so I tried to mimic that with my Tombow watercolour markers. This stamp line comes from a shop in Markham, near Toronto. It's a line the owners illustrate and produce. The designs are quite darling - it reminds me of old fashioned children's story books!

The side step card folds flat for mailing.

The sender's sentiment goes on the back.

I made another side step card for my nephew's birthday a few weeks ago. As soon as I find time to edit the pictures, I'll show you that one too. Personally, I'm having a lot more fun with the box cards right now than the step card! What's your favourite kind of dimensional card?

Friends Scrapbook Mini Album - video

I'm still experimenting with binding systems! I like the ribbon binding on my "triple envelope" albums. So, I want to do that on individual pages. I did it once for a birthday album and I really liked how that turned out.

I was going to do a video on it, but I found one that was fairly close to my method. (You can see her mini album binding method at about 14 minutes in to her video.) I am not very good with an Xacto Knife though, so I bought a strip making die that makes 1/2 inch strips. I can use 1/2 inch spaces or I can scoot the paper over and create 1/4 inch spaces.

This album is my first try of that binding system. I had to try 3x before I got the measurements all right. The pages turn very easily. I like to line my hinges with Tyvek for an anti-tear enhancement but that sometimes makes them stiff. Using ribbon prevents that.

I used an 8.5 x 11 paper stack by DCWV. (It's taking me a LONG time to get through this stack, I tell you!) The pages are actually no. 10 business envelopes that I cut down. I put the ribbon in the open end. I didn't open the other end to make pockets. The envelopes feel a little thin when you  open them. Leaving it sealed on the outer edge feels like a sturdier page.

I used a whole lot of Accucut Craft Dies in this album. I've entered it in their August 2015 Challenge for Friendship themed creations! I love using die cuts. One of my custom made ones appears in this album as well.

I used to hate stamping, but now I like that too. Just as I started taking a shine to stamping, stamps and co-ordinating dies sets have become popular! Woo hoo! Wish I were the genius who thought of that!

You can see the full video walk-through of my Friends 4 life scrapbook mini album on my Fairycardmaker Vimeo channel.