Welcome to Valley Oak Paper
I design handmade greeting cards.
Simple Mother’s Day Card
This Mother’s Day card is super simple yet impressive. It’s only using one die, Hero Arts Mother’s Day Window Die. A lot of the shine comes from the holographic background inside the shaker window.
Wise Vintage Owl
To highlight the vintage floral pattern, I used my Tim Holtz Medium Brayer to add some Lost Shadow Distress Oxide on the raised areas.
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.
Color Catalog & Towering Blooms
Everything had the same intensity, so nothing was emphasized. Adding a white off-set layer to the bottom of most die cuts helped a lot.
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.
Waffle Flower Sneak Peak to April
Become a member of the Sneak Peak Club to get early access to coming releases like this one.
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.
Swatching Distress Oxide Inks
I just got the last two ink pads I was missing from the Distress Oxide palette: Rustic Wilderness and Crackling Campfire. Distress Oxides are easily the ink pads I reach for most of the time. So getting the complete 72-pad collection was really worth it for me.
Foiling textured paper
The best cardstock for hot foiling is the smoothest. But you can make your own smooth cardstock in a few simple steps.
Sizzix Spring Sale
There are some great deals on Tim Holtz dies and embossing folders in the Sizzix Spring Sale. Here are some that stood out to me.
New Cardmaking Watercolor Palette
I wanted to organize a new tin watercolor palette for cardmaking.
Single-layer gnome card
The adorable little gnome with her poinsettia is from Trinity Stamps’ From Our Gnome To Yours stamp and die set. Because it had to be a single-layer card, it took a couple of tries to get right.
Happy Lunar New Year
Here in Silicon Valley the Chinese New Year is celebrated almost as much as Valentine’s Day. Next year is the year of the dragon, so there are lots of dragon toys and dragon-shaped sweets in stores right now. The Lunar New Year is on February 10, 2024. Traditionally red and gold are associated with the Lunar New Year.
Using up leftover foil
When the decorative elements “look” at the sentiment, it signals that the sentiment is important. That’s why the direction critters face is an important consideration when designing a card. Their gaze directs the viewers gaze, so use it to your advantage.
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. 😭