REUSE - Hand decorated gift bags reusing banana bags!!

I needed some gift bags for Easter gifts this week and thought I would give a go to making my own from the bags that discounted bananas come in at the grocery store.  I always keep these because they are really handy for packaging garden produce for passing onto neighbours and friends.  So I dug a couple from my stash and decided I would create a bit of a collage on the front using scraps from my serendipity box.  I used some thinned white glue to adhere all of my scraps to the front of the bags which nicely covered up all the writing on them.  Wanting to unify the collage a bit I decided to glue a paper napkin (just the top layer) over my collage.  You can see the napkin - green stipes - at the top of the photo.  It was much to bold so I used the second to last layer of the paper napkin instead.  You can see that it worked much better and the subtle pattern really allowed the collage to show through.  I added layer of glue over the whole front and pressed the paper napking layer into it.  For my last layer of glue I used some thinned gold glitter glue that I found in my glue bucket.  Love the look!!  Just a bit of nice glitter overall and the whole front is nicely sealed.  On hindsight, the next time I will cover the handle on the front as well.  For these ones, I will be adding some doodles on the handles to make them coordinate a bit better with the whole look of the bag.  

Very happy with how they turned out and I really enjoyed making these quick collages this morning!!

Therese

Serendipity backgrounds

My grand daughter was visiting this week and we made some quiltie serendipity backgrounds with the scraps I had sitting on my desk from last week's class.   She managed over 20 and I had just over a dozen!!  It was nice to be just gluing paper down on old card backs and spending time together even if not much was being said.  She has already used one of hers on a card!!  I will put mine in my stash and I am sure they will emerge shortly in my next few cardmaking sessions!!               Therese

Covering paper beads with paper

I am working on a project and finally am going to be using these white paper beads I made a while back.  I made them white so they could be customized for a particular project.  For this project I am wrapping them in decorative paper.  I found the papers I needed in my Serendipity supply box.  I decided to cut the beads in half, cover them with paper and then stitch them to my project incorporating beads in between them.  It took a while to customize them with the paper I had chosen and will certainly find that a draw back when deciding to use the rest of them.  The other option is to colour them when I make them but that may mean that they will never get used because they are not the right colour OR that I do not have enough to complete the project.  So I am not sure which I the best way ahead but I will see how it goes and decide after I have used them.          Therese

Collage buttons for cards!

 I made a batch of collage buttons for a set of cards for my cardmaking class this week.  It is always fun to make these!!  I used serendipity paper, gift wrap, hand decorated paper, fabric paper, foil, decorative paper from an envelope and several colour washed stamped images.  You can check out the instructions by clicking this link, or Clicking Tutorials on my top bar and scrolling down to click the Collage Button Tutorial. I will be posting the cards later this week and will see about adding a link to that post here once they are up!

Therese

Artsy Cards - Collaged buttons with doodling

I needed cards for my monthly card exchange and decided to revisit collaged buttons which I created earlier this year.  They are fun to do and fairly quick.  I combined a plastic circle die cut with some paper scraps and then punched two holes to make it a button!!  Check out the this link to find out how to make them!!  OR click the Tutorial tab above and click on the Collaged Button Tutorial.  I made several and created these cards.  I traced the button onto white cardstock using a pencil and then doodled that line with a fine tip Sharpie and continued until I was happy with the design.  I considered adding colour but so far have not - maybe next time!  I tied the button to the white layer then layered it onto black and then onto coordinating card fronts.  For the top one, I used a black marker on the edge of the white, layered it onto lilac and then onto a green card front.  I added a stamped greeting to one of them.  These were fun artsy cards!!
Therese

Paper Beads that can be customized

I have been wanting some slim beads for adding to my projects so I decided to make some paper ones that would fit the bill.  As I was prepping for this project I had white 24 lb paper scraps sitting around from another project that my grand daughter was working on so I decided that it might be best to use those scraps to create the beads which would allow me embellish them later to coordinate with my projects!  I used a piece of wire to wrap my beads around so that the hole would be a good size and I used short pieces of paper (2" x 3/4")  to make the beads not too bulky.  I just applied a layer of glue to one side of the paper leaving some space at one end to start the bead wrapping.  I made sure that the far end was well glued down to the rest of the bead as I finished it off.  I am happy with these!!  I will be able to embellish them with paint, markers or decorative paper depending on what works for my project.  I will likely give them a final coat of clear sealer before I use them.
I Love Paper Beads has a few paper bead making resources so you can check them out if you have never made paper beads before.
Will let you know where these end up as time goes on!!

Therese

Tutorial - Collaged button

I made several collaged buttons a few weeks ago and thought it would be fun to provide a tutorial to describe the process I used.  

I started with a piece of thick plastic packaging which provides a good substrate for the process and makes a sturdy button.

I used a Sizzix Circle Die to cut a circle.  In this case, I used the smallest circle which is about an inch.  For this one I used the second largest which was 1.5".  

I sanded the edge and one side with fine grit sand paper.  The edge can be a bit rough after cutting so it may need sanding to smooth it out.  Sand the roughest side of the plastic circle - generally the one that has been on the outside of the packaging which leaves the nice smooth side for the good side of your button.  The sanding will provide tooth for the glue you will use for your collage.

Apply glue to the rough side.  I used Dimensional Magic but any clear glue will do.  Spread it over the whole surface being careful to not miss any spots.  If you miss some spots you will be able to see them from the front of the button and the collage will not be adhered properly to the plastic.

For the project I am working on I needed a gold button so I applied gold foil to the back.  Here you can see that the glue is well distributed and makes contact with the foil on the whole surface.  

This foil is combined with the brown and gold paper medallion which I used on a few of my recent cards.  You can check this featured post to see if you can figure out which tasty treat this packaging has housed.  Leave me a comment with your guess!

I roughly trimmed the extra foil and applied small binder clips to the edges.  I did, in this case, include a circle punchie on the bottom side so that the clips would not damage the foil.  It is best to leave this for a few hours or over night to ensure that the glue is dry. 

Once dry, I trimmed the foil to the edge of the circle and sanded lightly from back to front to ensure a smooth edge for my button.  You will likely have to clean the front of your button as well because there will be dried glue on it.  I use my finger nail to scratch off the dried glue as to not damage the front of my button.  

Now, you can use this as a 3D embellishment in your work as it does provide a nicely finished collage element.  Consider using a tag shape instead and make a hole at top instead. 

So many possibilities!!

I marked the holes with a black sharpie marker before punching them.  I am using the standard two holes but you could certainly use four if you prefer.  If you are using yours as an embellishment you could certainly punch the holes near the edges instead and attach it to your project with brads.  

I punched these holes with a 1/16" hole punch.  I used a 1/8" punch on the larger buttons I created.  

Use whatever size suit your purpose. 

Here is my button used on my project.  I layered it over a teal fabric circle and then onto a scalloped circle of sheer gold fabric.  It was exactly what I wanted!!

So I hope you will find this tutorial helpful.  I had been finding that adding buttons to my paper crafting and small fabric projects meant that I had to apply extra postage to send them on their way. 

These buttons have less dimension and therefore do not incur that cost.  The fact that they are artsy and fun is also very cool.  I love that I can make them to suit any project I am working on.  I can certainly see making some that would be used as 3D embellishments instead and be attached to my project in a different way instead of the holes which makes these ones buttons.  

A bonus is that most of the supplies for this project you likely have in your stash!!

Enjoy!  Please feel free to leave a comment if you have enjoyed the tutorial or if you have made up some collaged buttons!!

Therese

Winter Fashion Tag

This afternoon I took the time to create this tag for a swap on AFTCM themed Winter Fashion. It was such fun to make!!
I started with corrugated cardboard - light bulb packaging - and cut my tag to 3.5 "x 6.5".  I painted the corrugations with a bit of blue acrylic paint and let it dry.  Next, I used a bit of diluted white glue and added a layer of silver snowflake tissue paper which had previously been painted blue on the back. I used the foam brush to ensure that the paper settled into the valleys of the corrugations.   Once that was dry, I added some lace to the bottom edge, covered the joint with blue ribbon and stitched both pieces to the tag.  I added a bow layered with a pearl button over the lace using hot glue.  At the top, I added a 1/2" circle and punched a center hole.  It still needed a bit of something so I used a small script stamp and randomly stamped it in black on the upper portion, used the black stamp pad to slightly distress the edges and a silver pigment ink pad to highlight the top of the corrugations with a bit of  shimmer.  That was better!!
For the main element I sized, laser printed on white cardstock then fussy cut this dress image from CLKER.  I painted the bodice with shimmer acrylic paint and once dry added a row of clear rhinestones to the upper edge. I adhered some sparkly snowflake fabric (dryer sheet stamped and embossed with silver embossing powder) to the lower portion of the dress and trimmed it to the edge.  Next, I fashioned a billowy skirt using shimmery tulle.  I used a double layered rectangle which I machine basted across the top, gathered tight and tied off to stabilize the gathering.  I folded over the raw edge and machine stitched the top of the skirt to the dress just below the bodice.  To finish it off neatly I added a length of ribbon (same as the tag) over the stitching using double sided tape and also attached the edges of the tulle to the back of the skirt using double sided tape.  I used a brad to anchor the top of the dress form to the tag and 3D foam tape down the center back of the dress to attach it to the tag.  I backed the tag with black paper to hide the printing and the stitching.  I tied a long strip of tulle to the top of the tag through the hole and added a couple of short pieces of ribbon and lace.
I am most pleased with the results of my creative afternoon!!  I really love that image and have used here  previously.  The tag will be on its way to my partner early next week!!

Therese

Fabric beads!!

I have been investigating making fabric beads in order to create bracelets for a swap that I have signed up for.  These were really fun to make!! There are a lot of different ideas out there for making fabric beads so I ended up sort of combining several to get what I was looking for.  I used a strip of fabric about 5" long x 1" wide.  I folded in the edges and added a short piece of double sided tape at my starting end so that the bead would hold together when I started rolling it on the skewer.  I rolled up the fabric strip as neatly as I could and at the end folded over the short end and stitched it up to create the bead.  To keep them from falling apart you really need to add some sort of stitching so, while I was at it I decided to use my floss as decoration as well. I wrapped two different colours of floss around the bead all the while adding stitches as I went.  I added stitching to both ends as well to keep those nice and neat.  Once done, they looked a little plain so I decided to stitch on a row of white seed beads as well.  I really like how they worked out.
On hind sight, I chose floss that coordinated with my fabric but I see that the fabric does not show very much now that they are all done.  Using double sided tape on the inside of the bead made stitching it difficult by gumming up the needle.  I may have to stitch the beginning end similarly to how I stitched the finishing end to create a base for the bead and maybe some other kind of glue that would be better for stitching.   I will have to experiment.
So in the end, though I love the look of the beads and I am sure they will make a beautiful bracelet the time commitment to making enough beads to make a bracelet for each of my swap partners is more time than I have!!  Darn!!  So I will be looking for a different project for that swap.  In the mean time, I have decided to make a bracelet for my self with my beads!!

Therese

Cards, Cards, Cards - Christmas - a bit of bling

What's the best thing about making Christmas cards??  You can add bling as often as you like!!
Here is another design inspired by Splitcoast Stampers.  I have been seeing this embossing folder used in every format and with several different techniques for the center image so I decided to see if I could find a way to use this embossing folder - Cuttlebug Flourished Frame - for a card in this class.  I perused my digital images and found that these ones had almost the perfect proportions for the frame!!  These are by Melissa Jenkins and were downloaded from her blog when she was offering free images regularly.  They were perfect!!  I laser printed them to the right size, watercoloured them and used 3D foam tape to layer them over the embossed layer which I had already glued to my card front.  Just a few rhinestones glued to the flourishes finished off these cards!!  THRIFTY TIP:  Check out this link on my sister's blog that talks about using a fine tip bottle for applying glue.  The rhinestones we used today did not have a sticky back so I brought my little fine tip glue bottle - works so well.  My bottle used to be filled with dimensional fabric paint made by Tulip, I think.  I used the paint to make decorative paper and filled the cleaned out, empty bottle with white glue.  Just a little dab will do you and it dries clear so if the glue expands a bit beyond the edge of the rhinestone it just disappears once the glue is dry.  I am willing to bet that in your stash of crafty supplies you have a bottle with a fine tip which you could use for this purpose!  If you don't, no worries, there are several glues out there made specifically for paper crafting that have fine tips so check out your local craft or scrapbooking store.

Therese

Restructured paper

First read about restructured paper on The Gingerstamp Creations blog in an article written by Petra Berendson here!  I thought it would be a perfect way to use up scraps to make paper for reusing in my art!! We all have papers we love and hate to see any of it go to waste.  In this technique you can create a base of basic paper and then embellish it with any scraps you want to highlight.
I have been saving these newsletters that my sister gave me for a long time and even though they have been sitting I have not read all of them but they were much too beautiful to throw out

or recycle.  So when I read this article I thought they would be the perfect candidates for my first attempt!!  So I went through the pile, read four of them, tore out the articles I wanted to keep and ripped all the remaining pages into 9 pieces. It created quite a stack!!
To get started, I laid a large piece of plastic over my table, thinned some PVA glue and found a foam brush.  The process is easy.  Apply thinned glue to both sides of the paper scraps and lay them down on the plastic overlapping them all as you go.  These are calligraphy guild newsletters so there is some

beautiful writing and great illustrations which created  very interesting looking paper.  I will be using some of this paper to create art for the calendar I am making with my group of young people so I resisted using colour and kept it neutral.
You can see in the top photo the wet restructured paper on the right and the loose pieces on the left.  I can see really having fun with this process using all sorts of scraps.

For this piece of restructured paper I used graphics which were postage from printed envelopes which my sister gave me a few years ago.  These were all owl images  - over 50 or so - which I just glued in rows overlapping each other.  It was a very strong graphic look and I wanted to tone it down some so I added strips of copper and kraft tissue paper, some less than perfect skeleton leaves and some layers of paper napkin that coordinated with the colours I already had.  Everything is overlapping and completely soaked with the thinned glue which creates a new solid piece once it is dry.  I dried the first one over night. The second one I did during the day and found that it took several hours(4-5 hours) to dry but that could vary with temperature and humidity.
I know I will be using this process again. It is very similar in the construction process as fabric paper which I did a while back.  I really like the graphic look of the black and white paper I created and it will do perfectly for the calendar art I am planning.  The coloured one is great as well and I already have a project in mind for it.
I love reusing paper scraps to create unique papers for my art which is why I recycle my scraps into handmade paper.  This process is equivalent in that it reuses scraps as well as larger pieces and creates unique handmade papers for creating with.  You can use old calendar pages, greeting cards, tissue paper, paper napkins, junk mail, handwritten letters, "mistakes", etc.
I hope you will be inspired to create your own restructured paper or to pass your scraps off to someone else who is interested in the process.  You could arrange to swap scraps for unique handcrafted pieces of paper!!!  This would be a fun process for doing as a group as well.   Enjoy!!  Let me know if you give this a try.  I would love to see the paper you have created and the project you used it in.

Therese

Fabric Paper!

I created fabric paper today!! Have been wanting to give this technique a try for a while and discovered it was the Monthly Technique over on Art Techniques so I decided to give it a try today!!

Basically, you are using glue to adhere paper to fabric. Once you have the concept down you can go in so many directions that the sky is the limit as to what you end product is going to look like.

I decided to keep it simple for my first time. I dug into my fabric stash, discovered several medium sized scraps of bed sheet that I had left over from another project and decided to use that as my base. Next, I dug into my collage paper scraps and collected a few pieces - decorative paper, music sheet, book pages, paper napkins, white and coloured tissue paper and a few stamped images left over from previous projects. Rip all your papers into small pieces (2"x3" or so) before you start gluing as your fingers will get all goopy and make ripping paper challenging.

I used glue that DH was prepared to throw out because it had become too thick to use in the shop. You can use any PVA type glue you have. It needs to be watered down so add at least 1 to 1 water. I added more than that because my glue was very thick to begin with. It should be soupy.

Lay a piece of plastic that is larger than your largest fabric piece on your work surface. I used a garbage bag but you can use what you have. This will allow you to remove the fabric paper from the surface once it is dry. Lay your fabric piece down. I started with scraps but I would recommend a piece that is about 12"x12" or so. Smooth out your fabric and start brushing on the watered down glue until your fabric is completely saturated. Now, it is just a matter of laying pieces of paper over the fabric and ensuring it is also saturated with glue. Just keep adding glue as you need it. You can use your brush or your fingers to incorporate your pieces. Once you have covered every inch of fabric with at least one layer of paper the whole thing needs to be set aside to dry!! Fortunately, I have drying racks that I use for my handmade paper which worked ideally for this purpose and my fabric paper dried much more quickly that otherwise. Most people recommend leaving to dry at least overnight to make sure it is completely dry. Your fabric paper is ready to use once it is dry!!

I added stitching to my papers after they were dry. It helps to keep all the layers together and adds wonderful texture as well.

#1 - (top piece) I started by adding a layer of white tissue paper one little piece at a time and overlapping them as I went along. Added some small pieces of music sheet and book page over that. Added some decorative tissue paper, some paper table cloth, some maroon handmade paper and some gold plastic netting (onion bag) and then added some pieces of kraft tissue paper over that.

#2 - (middle piece) I started with a paper napkin ripped in pieces, added pieces of book page, maroon handmade paper, red tissue paper, decorative red tissue paper and kraft tissue paper pieces. Added stitching after it was dry.

#3 - (bottom piece) I started with a flower paper napkin ripped into pieces and added all sorts of flower images from other paper napkins and tissue paper then filled in the holes with ivory/gold paper tablecloth and yellow tissue paper. Added stitching when it was dry.

I am very happy with all the papers I made today!!!!!! Not sure exactly what I will make with them but I expect that at least one or two will end up in my cardmaking class next week!!

You can find instructions by simply doing an internet search for Fabric Paper instructions. Here are a couple of links you can use - CPS , Craft Test Dummies, for more info. Colour can be added during the creation process or afterwards. Stamping and embellishments can be added once it is dry.

This fabric paper is very sturdy so can be used for all sorts of projects - journal covers, collage, 3D projects, etc!!

Have fun!!

Therese