Xmas colouring book boxes and more cards.

I found this unique colouring book in a local bookshop last week.  Each page is removable, to be coloured in and then made into a gift box.  Very clever!

I've made two so far.  Here is one of the sheets coloured, and yet to be made up into a box, and a box already made up.  I'm using mine to put handmade soaps in to give to friends.

I have also made another card, for a friend who has recently adopted a Scotty Dog.

And added stars to a couple of my paint sample chip Xmas tree cards.

Three more Christmas cards made.

Everyone who seen my handmade cards loves the way I've used paint sample cards as above.  So far I've only made stylised Xmas trees, but I've seen other shapes on Pinterest, and hope to made some more cards using different Xmas icons.
The button card at the top of this page is the first one I've made using buttons.  Again, I have sourced Pinterest for ideas, and this was a quick easy design to start off my button cards!

Hand made Christmas cards

This year I am in a Xmas card exchange on a forum. In fact, it was my idea to have the exchange as I knew there were quite a few members who loved making cards, and I thought it would be fun for them all to swap with each other. I got so enthused, I looked up the card ideas I'd been saving on my Pinterest account, and made these cards all in one afternoon! Some of my friends said they were amazed at how quick I was, but really, once you have all the bits and pieces on a table in front of you, it doesn't take long to make up a few cards. I don't spend a lot of money on expensive cardmaking equipment; I'd rather recycle things like old sheet music, paint sample cards, and cutting up old Xmas cards. Then with some card stock and glitter glue - away I went!

Felt and fabric coasters

Like most of us who are into crafts, I get many emails from various organisations and online forums, with ideas for projects and new products.  I browse through them quickly and save what interests me, then delete the rest.  Last week I noticed this project on one of the emails, and couldn't wait to try it, as it is so quick and easy.
Find a square of fabric (mine is 5" square), and find a square of co-ordinating felt that is slightly bigger than the fabric.  Machine sew the fabric to the felt, around the design, or at random, then around the edge of the fabric.  Cut the edge of the felt with pinking shears.  That's it!  The samples on the craft forum were florals, and they had machine stitched roughly around the flowers, so the stitching on the reverse side, showed up as a design on the felt.  I chose to use Christmas fabric for three of mine because I wanted to see if they would be good enough as small Xmas gifts.   They will, but not these ones - next time I'll be a bit more careful with the stitching, and use contrasting thread so it looks better on the back.

Hand made cards

One of my friends always makes lovely hand made cards for me for birthdays and Christmas.  So when her Mum passed away within a week of my friend's birthday, I wanted to make two special cards for her.  This Sympathy card is based on something I saw on Pinterest, using paint sample cards.  I used black marker pen to black out the names of the colours on the card, and the flower was on a sheet of decoupage images that I had in my stash.  I glued the paint card on to a plain white card, and added the thin brown line around it.

For her birthday, I made this one, also based on something I'd seen on Pinterest.  Yeah I know, I am a copycat, but there are such great things out there, and I don't have much imagination :-(
I folded a piece of light cardstock, glued some Japanese paper at the top and bottom of the front.  Drew the snails in green marker pen, and glued the buttons over the snail image.  Added the words on a separate piece of decorative paper, and circled that in black marker pen.

Hand made cards

I try not to get too involved in making cards, as like a lot of crafts, it can become addictive, and you can end up with dozens/hundreds of cards that you don't know what to do with!  So I only make them when I have a specific reason, or person to send it to.
On the Down to Earth forum, the moderators recently organised a swap, where the participants exchanged three recipes, plus a hand made card or a photo of your home town.  I decided to do the hand made card because I'd seen something on Pinterest that I was keen to try.  We crafters all know how important it is to have all kinds of paper and/or fabric to play with, and two item that can be used to make lovely cards or collages, whatever you are in to - are sheet music, and Asian printed newspapers or books.  I have bought both at opshops in the past, and have found many uses for the pages.  Such as this:

Mystery origami!

A friend was playing with this when I visited her a few days ago.  She was looking on the internet for ideas for kids papercrafts and found this on a site called Grandma's Toys, or something similar.  She remembered making them at school when she was a child in the 1950's but can't remember what they were called.  I remember having them too; we used to sit around and wiggle the paper with our fingers in the pockets underneath!  There were numbers or letters written on the paper and we used to count or spell, but I can't remember exactly what it was.

I don't think many people read this blog, but if you do, and you remember this game, please let me know, either by leaving a comment, or emailing me!

Mail art workshop with the Calligraphy Society.

Last month I attended a one day workshop with my paperlovin' friend Val.  We had done workshops with this particular tutor before, and she (Marg) is a lot of fun to work with.  She has a large studio in her back yard with every imaginable pen, paper, and ink that you could think of, and she is very generous in sharing it with her pupils.

She started out showing us how to make our own envelopes, origami style.

Then we went on to decorate them, using various mediums and styles of lettering.

The above photo shows bits of sponge that we cut into shapes like hearts, starts, fish, etc. then dipped into inks and used to decorate envelopes.  Who would have thought?!

Crafts with used stamps.

I used to collect stamps.  From when I was about 10 years old, up until a few years ago, but by then I had long lost interest in saving, soaking, peeling, and putting them in albums.  So I sold most of the albums to a stamp dealer, and hung on to the few albums that I wished to keep.  Old habits die hard, and I still tear stamps off envelopes and toss them into a tin for some future purpose.

I have seen this technique before, but I saw it again on Pinterest recently, and decided to play :-)
The idea is that you glue stamps close together on a sheet of paper, then cut out a shape.
So I glued stamps on to paper last night, giving them time to dry.

I don't know what other people do, but I figured the best way to get a good shape is to draw an outline on the reverse side of the paper, and cut it out from there.  I chose to draw a rooster.

I will do this again, but first I'll look for a different glue, as I only had Modge Podge, Napkin Glue, Glue sticks and white craft glue.  I tried all of them, but none were really suitable, and the best of the lot was Modge Podge.

Felt figures and mini clothes pegs.

The first time I saw one of these mini clothes pegs was at an office where they were being used in the same way as glider clips, to hold papers together.  I was entranced by these tiny pegs!  Years later, I discovered them again, being used in various craft projects.  So when I saw a picture on Pinterest of a mini clothes line complete with pegs, I decided to have a go.
There were no instructions, so I drew the clothes on to freezer paper, pressed them on to iron-on interfacing and cut each piece out.  Then I fused that to coloured felt pieces, machined around the edges, and cut them out.  I wrote the LAUNDRY letters on to the felt in permanent marker, but I'm planning to embroider over that later.

Various paper crafts in progress.

I am taking a short break from patchwork and stitching, to play with some more paper crafts.  The first item is a simple mail art envelope to a friend with whom I swap cards and envelopes from time to time.

This is one of "Val's boxes"  I used a paint sample card to make this.

   More paint sample card art.  You can do millions of things with those sample cards!  I used a craft punch to cut out the hearts from one side of the sample card, then glued them back on the other half of the card.

This didn't turn out as nicely as the one I saw on Pinterest.  I cut the fish and seaweed out from the paint sample cards, and glued them on to a sheet of pre painted paper I did last year, using watercolour and salt to give the mottled effect.  There is silver foil on the right side, part of an experiment, so it doesn't really give the effect of the sea!

These two were fun.  I downloaded a bunch of stencils on to my hard drive, and printed them out on old sheet music that I found at the opshop.  Saw this idea on Pinterest - where else!

Little boxes

My friend Val has been making cute boxes out of greeting cards, and invited me and another friend to her place last week to show us how to make them.  We had such a fun afternoon!  I can see myself making little boxes in spare moments over the rest of this year, and giving all my friends one next Christmas, complete with a chocolate or two inside!

I made these two at Val's place - two different styles.  The next day at home I made two more of the box style, while I still had the technique in my mind, as I can forget things very quickly if I only do it once!  I haven't done the triangular box again yet, but I do still remember how to do it, so I'm not too worried.