Making fancy fold or interactive cards

Happy hump day crafty friends! I hope you are all doing well. We have gone from warm sunny weather on Monday to snow falling and the heating back on today! It’s still good crafting weather at least! I’m sharing some fancy fold cards today I made for a YouTube card challenge. The challenge is to make three interactive or shaped cards (one on camera) and tag 2 other crafters. I will link my video at the end of this post but I thought a blog would be helpful to share my process for the 2 cards I made off camera.

I’m definitely no expert when it comes to fancy fold cards and these are at the basic end of the scale but if you are new to these cards then hopefully this post will help you to create your own version. The first card I made is a Joy Fold card (no idea where the name came from!). This is the card

These are the measurements I used.

I started with navy card cut and scored as per the above measurements.

I cut my patterned papers (see above measurements) and glued onto my two navy pieces.

Then I glued the back of the sunflower piece onto the larger base card as follows.

The only thing left to do was add the decoration and a space to write a message.

The second card I made was a twisted easel card, this one was definitely much easier. I took a 12.5 x 12.5 cm card base and score a diagonal from corner to corner on one side of the card base. This creates your twised easel. Then I decorated it with some patterned papers and fussy cut elements.

My final card which I made on video was a double easel card.

These are the pieces you need to cut.

Then you need to score the first two pieces as follows.

To see how I decorated the double easel card and find out more about the challenge watch my latest video.

I hope you enjoyed my fun fold cards today, do you have a favourite fancy folded or interactive card to make? Please let me know in the comments and if you have a video or blog post let me know so I can check it out and have a go! Thanks so much for watching and I hope to see you again very soon!

Crafty hugs

Jenny (AKA Ginger Ninja Crafts!) xx

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The Early Bird Catches the Worm – I Dare You!

Happy Friday crafty friends! How are you all doing this week? It’s been a lovely sunny week and my husband was using up the last of his annual leave so we have been enjoying the weather with a little trip to the beach, our first braai of the year and getting a few jobs done in the garden. I can’t believe it’s Friday again already but it is and so it’s time for our new Daring Cardmakers Challenge. Miri is hosting us the week and she has set our theme as “The Early Bird Catches the Worm”, “

Miri says she is not an early bird, but is looking forward to waking up to glorious morning sunshine. So this week you can use a sunrise, birds or worms 😉 on your cards or anything related to the saying.

I have recently been obsessed with watching Lavinia Stamps tutorials and I thought I could try to recreate a sunrise for this week’s challenge. I started with painting the background with watercolours on watercolour paper. I used a circle stencil and some moonlight white ink to create a sun. Then I added the corresponding circle mask and brushed some ink (mustard seed) out from the edges to give a subtle effect of sun rays. I then added some splatters of white paint.

Once the background was dry I stamped some foliage at the bottom using memento dew drop inks in rich cocoa, cottage ivy and tuxedo black. I stamped the fairy wuith versafine Clair ink in nocturne. Once the inks were all completely dry I went in with a white gel pen to add a few highlights and a sparkle gel pen to add some sparkle to her wings and to create some sparkles around her in the sky.

So my version is the early fairy catches the sun sparkles!

I added a black matt behind the scene and then popped it on a square card base with a few nuvo drops. I couldn’t decide what sentiment to add so I left a space that I can add one at a future date.

It’s nothing compared to some of the Lavinia works of art I’ve seen but I quite like it and I’ll definitely play with more backgrounds. I hope you will hop on over and see what the other design team members have been making, they are a very talented group of crafters.

Crafty hugs

Jenny (AKA Ginger Ninja Crafts!) xx

Snarky Artist Trading Coins

Hi crafty friends, I hope you are all doing well. I’ve recently made a batch of Artist Trading Coins for swaps with crafty friends and I thought I would share as they have all been sent out and they really made me chuckle! I started by punching out the card circles and colouring them with various distress spray stains. Once they were completely dry I used a script embossing folder to give them some texture. I stamped and coloured a few characters from two Aall and Create stamp sets (the Gentlemen and Housewives sets). I fussy cut them out and then added some snarky statements from the Tim Holtz sticker book. I went round the edge with a black marker to finish them off! I had way to much fun matching the right phrase to each face….. I think my favourite is “She was tempted to cause a scene”! I hope they make you smile too 🙂

What’s your favourite thing to make for crafty swaps? Thanks for visiting Ginger Ninja Crafts, you’ve made my day!

Crafty hugs

Jenny (AKA Ginger Ninja Crafts!) xx

Hello Spring – I dare you!

Hi crafty friends, I’m later than usual with my Daring Cardmakers weekly post but better late than never! This week we are hosted by Shabneez who has dared us to celebrate the arrival of spring with cards featuring anything related to the season be it lambs, rabbits, daffodils, tulips etc. 

I love seeing the spring flowers popping up and I think tulips are my favourites if I had to pick! I used a little tulip die set from Crafter’s Companion. The paper I used was some scrap which I had brayered off the spare ink while I was playing with my gel plate. I added a little die cut tartan bow and layered them on a scripty stamped panel. The finishing touches were a sentiment and a few nuvo drops in complementary colours.

I can’t wait to see your lovely spring themed cards and I hope you will check out my design team colleagues makes over on the Daring Cardmakers Challenge blog, they are a talented bunch of crafters! Thanks so much for visiting the Ginger Ninja Crafts blog, hope to see you again soon!

Crafty hugs

Jenny (AKA Ginger Ninja Crafts!) xx

Daring Cardmakers Challenge – For Ukraine

Happy Friday crafty friends, I hope you are all safe and well in these worrying times. This week at the Daring Cardmakers Challenge we wanted to acknowledge the awful situation in Ukraine. To show our support we are making cards using blue and yellow colours, sunflowers and hope.

I used some distress spray sprays to create a background (Mermaid Lagoon and Mustard Seed). The sunflower stamp is from the lovely Julie Hickey designs. I added a little embossed panel for the sunflower to sit and a sentiment.

I got a little carried away with my backgrounds and decided to make some ATC coins to pop into happy mail. The backgrounds were made with brusho powders (cobalt blue and yellow) and various stencils. The edge is heat embossed in a copper embossing powder. I added a Crafters Companion sunflower and a printed hashtag.

I can’t wait to see all your lovely makes. Thanks so much for visiting the Ginger Ninja Crafts blog, I hope to see you again soon.

Crafty hugs

Jenny (AKA Ginger Ninja Crafts!) xx

F.E.B – I dare you!

Happy Friday crafty friends! Can you believe it’s Friday and we are nearly at the end of the month! I know it’s a short month but this one really has flown past. It’s time for our last Daring Card Makers challenge of the month and Joanne has dared us to make a FEB card! Use something beginning with each of those letters in your creation. So it might be a foiled elephant juggling a ball, a blue fairy with an embossed background, a baby card with flags and embroidery thread… what can you come up with that’s FEB? Don’t forget to tell us which items you’ve used in case we don’t spot them!

Here is my finished card….. can you guess what my F.E.B items are?

I’m sure you have, but just in case you didn’t. F is for flowers and I used a couple of stamp sets from the JMC Designs Garden Tots collection (Lady Dot and Dotty Daisy).

For E I used an Embossing folder to add some texture.

The B is for Butterfly and I shared a video yesterday (on my YouTube channel) for how I made this butterfly using alcohol inks, vellum and heat embossing. Here are a few of these pretty butterflies.

To finish off my card I added a sentiment and a flourish from the stamp sets.

Butterfly Mini Art Journal Page

Hi crafty friends, I feel like I’ve been neglecting my blog in recent months so I’ve been thinking of blog post ideas and I’m going to try to get a couple of posts up each week at least! Today I wanted to share a mini art journal page which I made for the Woolly Steph Art Club. Steph is on YouTube and twice a month she pulls a prompt for us to create a mini journal page, there is no pressure to do every prompt it’s just for fun but there are quite a few crafters who are really good at sharing their makes, you can check them out on instagram using #WSArtClub. The prompt I’m working on today is from mid January (I’m always playing catch up!) and it is “Butterfly”.

I had been mulling it over for a while and decided to have a go with alcohol inks to create some butterflies. I made a video on my YouTube channel sharing the process as I played and learnt from my mistakes!

Here is my finished journal page.

In the nick of time – I dare you!

Happy Friday and welcome to another Daring Cardmakers Challenge and this week Rizwana is our host. She has dared us create cards “In the nick of time”. So this week time is of the essence! Use clocks or anything to represent time on your card, including watches, hourglasses, sundials or pocket watches

I had a Phil Martin magazine stamp set which had some clock stamps and sentiments and a Sizzix Tim Holtz clock embossing folder which I pulled out of my stash. I kept this card pretty simple, using some lilac and navy card, a little heat embossing in so;ver and some nuvo drops.

I’m looking forward to seeing all your time themed cards. Please check out the Daring Cardmakers blog to see the design team makes, there are some fab ideas.

Until next time, crafty hugs

Jenny (AKA Ginger Ninja Crafts!) xx

My Sweet Valentine – I dare you!

Happy Friday crafty friends and welcome to our new Daring Cardmakers Challenge. The lovely Dawn is our host and as Valentines day is nearly here so I would like you to show me the love and share your Valentines makes.  Make sure your cards feature lots of shades of red and pink and of course love hearts.

My Valentine is my lovely hubby so hopefully he doesn’t get a peek at this before opening it on Monday! I used the Woodware stamp set “Mushroom” and coloured two of them up to be a pair. I added some red and blue splashes to my card base and some strips of paper to give the mushrooms a place to stand. Then just added the sentiment and it was done! It’s definitely one of those cards where there was more time thinking about the layout than actually took to make it!

It’s been a hectic week here as we collected our 2 new fluffy family members! We have been kept busy entertaining our new kittens, Ozzy and Angus. They are brothers and are so playful and getting braver every day. We still have our Ginger Ninja, aka Mr Darcy and he has had a brief introduction to he new house mates. He’s not sure yet but we hope they are going to be the best of pals! Here is Mr D….

Mr Darcy

And the new additions…..

Angus at the front and Ozzy at the back

Ozzy gas a wee bit of a sticky eye but it is much better this morning and he is very good at letting us bathe it gently. Well I better go and see what those two are up to! See you all next week if not before!

Crafty hugs (and a few purrs!)

Jenny (Ginger Ninja Crafts!) xx

Happy Friday, as we are now in February it’s time for a new Elemental Challenge over at the Daring Cardmakers Blog. Enfys is our host and she has selected a leafy mood-board with cool greens and aquas, warmed up with pink red and yellow.  But its not just about colours, check out all the little details on the image and you’re sure to find the minimum 3 elements you need to use when you make your card. As usual if you use the colour combo it counts as 1 element 

I went with the colours, the tropical leaves and the circle elements for my card….

I can’t wait to see what you all come up with! Happy crafting everyone

Jenny (Ginger Ninja Crafts!) xx