Thank you to Basic Grey and a gift card tutorial

My most popular workshops are mail art and gift card holders, anytime I combine the two it is always a winner.   Gift certificates sometimes really are the best present for someone but the cards can be so plain.  This is one of my retired workshops that used the Basic Grey line called Clippings designed to be a photo frame and multilayered gift to tuck a gift certificate in the pockets.  It has a fun postal art theme that you can dress up for different seasons by varying the accent colours.

Products

Basic Grey new collection “Clippings”
Typewriter paper
Handmade Quilt paper
Their Snippets paper stack and sticker set
Typewriter keys for chipboard letters
Brads
Epoxy stickers to top the typewriter letters or dimensional magic
And bakers twine I like Maya Road’s collection of pretty colours

Start with the base card

From brown cardstock cut to 6 inches by 12 inches
Score at 5 and 7/8’s from each end
For the front cut a piece of red cardstock 5 ¾  square
From the red patterned side of the handmade quilt paper cut another 5 ¾ square
The red checked pattern can be glued inside the card
 
Add a photo behind the frame and put aside
Cut the typewriter paper to 5 ½ square
To capture the air mail bands in the front of the card, you can cut the red and blue bands out separately and simply glued them in place
Attach brads in the corners and tie with twine
Cut out the tag from the snippets pack
Cover back of tag with dictionary definition page

Assembling the cover -

Layer the frame with the tag behind
Mount on the brown paper and then center on the red cardstock to glue to the front cover
Place the ticket to the bottom right of the frame
Typewriter keys could spell out their name or another word like thanks
Top the typewriter keys with Epoxy stickers to give the better definition or dimensional magic for a touch of shine

Inside Pockets

The inside pockets become an extra support to help your picture frame stand up
Cut kraft cardstock for pockets
3 ¼ high by 11 ½  long 
Score at 5 ¾ or about half the length
Glue around just the outside edges
to create open pockets and glue to the inside of the card
One pocket goes on the front of the card, one goes on the back and that will leave you with a pocket in the middle

Starting with the left inside cover

Cut Snippets pads the date page, tags, especially for you
 I am thankful every day and the nail heads are in the chipboard set
The nail heads were topped with dimensional magic

Right side of the inside pocket
Behind the envelope chipboard are random left over papers to fill the space, not much of it shows.  
The top is the big chipboard envelope with the torn return address from the Snippets set.
The thanks tag is from the sticky labels
Finish off with two more nail heads on the side

 On the back of the inside pocket

This is one strip of the papers in the Snippets paperstack
Trim the page to size and glue to the pocket

Last pocket on the back cover
Trim the to do list from the Snippets set
And glue inside the pocket
Date due is another page from the Snippets set glued to the front of the pocket
Handmade tag is from the sticker set

Inside the pockets is space to tuck gift cards or you can add little messages in the form of ATCs. An ATC is a nice way of adding more creative messages. Being a small size, they can tuck these in their wallet or desk at the office.

An ATC  is simply a little card of art, they are generally sized as 2 ½ by 3 ½ with art on one side and your creative details on the back.

Thank you to the lovely folks at Basic Grey for sponsoring me with the Clippings collection, it has been great fun to see how many different ways we could use this theme.  This is a sample of the classic paper craft classes I teach at the My Creative Classroom site, would love to meet up with you again soon in one of the classrooms

This week I am at the CHA event in Anaheim waiting to see the new Basic Grey collections up close.  While we are waiting they are hosting a competition to win the new one of the new 2014 collections including Mon Ami, Capture, Herbs and Honey. Highline or Spice Market, all pretty cool for creative projects.