Getting Crafty

Back in late October/early November of last year, rumblings about NaBloPoMo were made and since I had participated in 2006 on my personal blog (and succeeded!), I didn’t hesitate to put my name back in the ring this time around. I decided to offer a set of my marble magnets up as prizes.

The moment the prize winners were announced, I emailed each recipient about their favourite colour schemes so that I could make them magnets that they’d proudly display. The first winner to get back to me was easy: she wanted a set I had just finished making, so all I had to do was bundle them up and mail them off.

The second winner knew what she wanted too, but sadly it wasn’t anything I had in stock:

My favorite color is red and I like almost all earth tones. I tend to go for modern/simple designs.

I think you would be surprised at how hard it is to find red paper with designs that work well for marble magnets! You need paper that provides sufficient contrast or the magnet ends up looking uninteresting and very blah. On my first paper seeking trip to Michaels, I ended up with this:

It’s pretty but because of the size of the marbles and the size of the design, I wasn’t sure how much of the swirl would actually show up on each magnet. Would it just look like blobs?

Back I went, a couple of times. I hit upon this pad of paper early in my search:

but wasn’t sure if it would work for my purposes. It has a lot of different papers that I might never use but here are the ones that I am considering using:

So pretty! I just love new paper and new patterns!

As you probably noticed, NaBloPoMo has been over for over a month now, so I’m late. I emailed the poor winner who’s probably wondering if something went awry at the post office and told her they’ll be in the mail by Saturday. Wish me luck!

Well after my initial excitement over sewing on paper, I went into a full blown frenzy last week, staying up until about 2 in the morning several nights in a row making cards. Despite all this work with paper, I promise you, I am not Kari!

Some of the other cards that I’ve made are:

This is my favourite because it was a true labour of love, getting those little squares to sit still while I stitched them down. I learned a trick or two as I went along (put a bit of glue to make sure they stay in the general area they’re supposed to stay!), and I find that every card I make gets better than the last, even with respect to sewing straight.

Another one that copied that patchwork idea.

I have a fair bit of paper that doesn’t have those “Christmassy” colours (red, green, gold, silver) in them, and I wanted to make a series of Winter wonderland type cards. So far I have only made this one:

(more…)

As promised late last week, I spent some of the weekend making Christmas cards.

I love simple cards but my poor, neglected sewing machine was calling to me this weekend: “Try out my zigzag feature on some of your plainer cards and see if you don’t love using me!” it said. “Even with the zigzag or just a simple straight stitch, your cards will still have that simple feel that you like!” it said, repeatedly, so I gave in. After a quick practice on some scrap paper to make sure I still knew how to use a sewing machine (it had been sitting unused for literally years!), it was show time. First up was this card:

Very simple, all I did was affix a strip of festive paper with two rows of zigzag stitching! Very quick!

One of my pet peeves when using brads, is what to do to cover up the underside of the sheet that you have poked holes into. One suggestion is to never put brads directly on your cardstock, but rather on a sheet of paper that you later attach to the cardstock (thanks, Kari!) but I find that even when I do this, the bump on the other side of the paper makes it hard to glue securely (and flat) to the cardstock. It gets messy and wrinkled and it looks unprofessional. Not sure what I’m talking about? Here’s a picture of that I mean:

Yuck, right? Well, what I discovered is if I put the brads on the sheet of paper then sew it onto the cardstock, it looks much better, and I don’t have to worry about gluing a strip of paper to the inside of the card to hide the back of the brads! You might think I’d care about covering the stitching marks on the other side but for whatever reason, that doesn’t bother me as much….although, if I do decide it bothers me, the stitching is flat so it would be a breeze to cover up!

Want to see more cards? Have a gander:

All the remaining cards used one of two types of cardstock with the same sheet of 12 x 12 printed paper and brads, meaning they all look pretty much the same, but there were some different arrangements (give me some credit, darn it!). I must say it’s been quite addictive using the sewing machine; now I just need to learn how to sew curves: my attempt to sew a heart cut out of patterned paper onto a sheet of cardboard was disastrous:

(It looks much worse in person, like I was going it with my eyes closed or something. how do you get your needle to follow the curve of the “material” (paper in this case)?

Why is December moving so fast? It’s already six days in and those of you who are planning to make gifts need to look at your projects and decide if you’re going to get them done, come hell or high water, or start something a little smaller in scale or just buy your gift this year.

My goal for this year is to make all of my Christmas cards, but I have already sent one store-bought card. I thought I could make a card or two every day until I have enough but I am now realizing that I have to go on a card-making spree and make them all up at once, or over a day or two. The effort of being creative simply does not justify stopping at one card! They don’t even have to be fancy: just home made and something that makes use of all those supplies that I have.

With this card I tackled those terribly prickly five pronged things (brads) that I used when making my brother’s birthday card, using the edge of a pair of scissors to flatten them down and I got my fingers pinched many times over for my troubles. If you recall, the original brads look like this from behind:

Very sharp, let me tell you!

These are very simple cards to make: all you need is festive coloured cardstock and brads. Put the two together however you want and voila: instant cards! If you like to have words on the front of your cards, make use of rub ons, or if your writing is neat and legible, grab a sparkly pen and decorate the front of your card with your wishes.

Come back at the end of the weekend to see what other cards I’ve created—cards must be made this weekend so that I can send them out before Christmas.

For a limited time, Michaels will be carrying Rockstar scrapbooking papers from DCWV!

This cardstock paper is not your ordinary paper: expect to see pages with flocked metallic accents, shine and shimmer. I haven’t seen it “live” but from what I’ve heard, none of the pictures floating around do it any justice:

(Image “borrowed” from here)

For inspiration on how to use this paper, check out this altered frame.

All my life I have dreamed of being creative, of being an ideas person. I have always wanted to be the person who’s given an empty room, 100 yards of fabric, a sewing machine, a bag of goose down and ribbon, and who manages to transform the room into something wonderful.

However, the creative process is continually stalled by one of my biggest sins: overthinking. And this tendency towards overthinking is related to my affliction of procrastination. While taking the time to think things through might seem like a good quality, when it leads to the halting of all possible and potential creative processes, it is not a good thing.

I was given some good advice about combatting this problem: Just do it! Cut up that sheet of paper to make that thing you want to make. If it turns out badly, a) now you know that the idea doesn’t work so well and b) you can start again. It seems so simple, so basic but I can read and dream up the coolest things but until I actually make a step towards turning it into reality, it’s pretty useless to the world (and to this blog). So I will try to do that more often. For example, last night, I took the following with the intention of making a “Happy Housewarming” card:

And almost two hours later, I hadn’t gotten any further. I spent an hour moving pieces around, thinking of the different things I could do. Why didn’t I just stick something down, decide I hate it and start over? I don’t know. But what I do know is that I will do that now. And tomorrow, I’ll report back on how the process went. To those of you who ever feel like this, I challenge you to go for it, do something, even it becomes a mess. Chances are it’ll give you some insight into your finished product!

I can’t stop buying paper. I have thousands of sheets of solid and patterned paper and this weekend I added some more paper to the collection:

I see this making a very lovely set of magnets.

I love how light blue and light green look together. The shades of this set really would be great for thank you cards, which is fortunate because with all the cards I have to make, all I need is time to actually use this paper. Next week I’m on vacation so that is when some serious crafting will be taking place!

Last entry’s talk of unfinished projects made me feel sufficiently guilty enough to share two of my unfinished projects.

My most recent unfinished project dates back to last November or December. I was feeling fairly proficient in my knitting so I decided that I would knit scarves for some people as their Christmas gift. Thank goodness nobody was depending on me to prevent them from catching hypothermia or I’d be in trouble!

The pattern for the 1 x 1 rib scarf came from last year’s special issue of the Martha Stewart magazine, the holiday Handmade Gifts edition. I recommend you get your hands on this magazine if you’re thinking of making your own gifts this coming holiday season. You may want to start now if you tend to procrastinate!

My second unfinished project is a scrapbook.

I started this in the spring of 2006 and I’m still labouring away. My hope is that this scrapbook (my first!) will not see another spring in my hands (it’s a gift).

Your turn: what unfinished projects do you vow to finish?

unfinished projects, knit, scrapbook, scarf, Martha Stewart, knitting, Christmas craft, holiday craft

I stumbled across the neatest little craft yesterday and I just had to try it. Check out this paper wallet:

(Instructions can be found at the Instructables site here)

This wallet is made from one sheet of A4 or 8.5 inches by 11 inches paper. Thirteen snips of the scissors and two pieces of tape later and that is what you end up with! There are two pockets for credit cards and a section for dollar bills.

This is a nice craft for older kids (age 10+ in my opinion) and takes about five minutes to make. You can make a new one daily or hourly to match your clothing choices. If you want to pretty up the closure and make it look less like a billfold, you could incorporate a ribbon closure that wraps around a brad, or use eyelets and tie a pretty piece of ribbon through it.

The only thing missing is a coin purse section!

Edited to add: I’m now obsessed and making them for everyone and anyone:

Some of my favourite types of crafts are paper crafts and I will be tuning in regularly to All Paper Arts to see what is cooking on that front, and I will also showcase on this site paper crafts that catch my eye, and hope you will share any neat crafts you come across too!

I will be a bridesmaid in a wedding soon and I have started working on the card that will accompany the happy couple’s gift. There is something very formal about black, grey and white for a wedding and although some balk at the idea of using black on a wedding card, it makes me think of tuxedos and surely that can’t be a bad thing?

Here is what I have so far for the card. Lavendar is a key colour in this wedding and the bit of lavendar ribbon is a tribute to that:

I used some square brads as the centres of the daisies and I will be covering up the backside of the brads with a piece of cardstock or perhaps more of the grey paper that’s on the front of the card.