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Sometimes you just need something small and fiddly to craft while you can’t move about much, while you lie on the couch feeling fatigued and sorry for yourself. Say, if you are feeling really under the weather. Just in time for Valentine’s. So: These tiny little paper roses are perfect. So easy to make you can do it even if you have a fever, promise!
There are plenty of tutorials for these out there, but I followed this one by Ann Martin over at All Things Paper. Excellent! Be sure to check out her other projects and tutorials as well.
There is a special place in my heart for recycling, and so I decided to make these paper flowers out of newspaper. There’s this local paper that someone sticks in our letterbox once week no matter what notes we put up. It’s fairly annoying: It takes about 2 minutes to flip through, and then it goes directly in the recycling bin! Such waste of paper. So, I thought I’d give it another round before it got tossed out.
I cut long strips from an entire spread, and was lucky enough that one of the pages had a huge picture in it with a big blue sky. So, folding the strips in half I got the blue colour on both sides of the strip, which lead to the blue effect in the middle of the roses.
Quick, easy and so very pretty! Love making my own embellishments!
Stay safe everyone. Thanks for visiting!
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I have some special things to send off to a new home, and I wanted to make something nice to send them in. So I made these tiny mini shopping bags, which turned out to be much easier than I expected! Perfect way to pack a shiny little thing, I think, and so much fun to make! Great way to use that patterned paper from your stash that you didn’t have any specific plan for. Now it can be a cute little bag instead of being stashed away!
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I’ve been on a big purge lately, trying to get rid of a lot of old stuff that I’ve been holding on to for years without even thinking about it. Some of it reminds me of less happy days in my life, and there is no need to hang on to them. Some of the things will come to a much better use for someone else. In the end I just want to make room for life: room to relax, room to craft and cook, room for things that make me happy, like good books and photos of friends and family and happy moments.
Some things has gone directly in the trash but most have been donated to our local charity shop, which means someone else will buy it and hopefully take good care of it :) The money it brings in will help people in need. But, when I was at the shop I found a couple of old frames in a corner, unloved, with no home, so I bought them and brought them home, and after a bit of fixing up I think they’ll look pretty great. So the whole kerfuffle was a win-win-win sort of deal.
Hopefully they’ll make a good addition for some of the photographs I’ve been taking lately. Also, I want to put some of my old family photos on the wall. Once I’m done with my purge and cleaning I hope to have these frames ready. The thought of adding something really personal to my walls feels very good.
Painting the frames
This is an easy technique to give a wooden frame a fresh look with the hint of wear and tear. I think it’s what the cool kids now days call “Shabby Chic”. I just think it looks nice and homey. And less boring than a plain frame from Ikea. But really, any cheap or plain wooden frame is good for this project. You need:
- Waterbased matt acrylic paint, 2 colours: dark or sand-coloured, and white
- Wax candle
- Sandpaper
- Brushes (I used foam brushes)
- Glaze or coating after preference
- Picture frame
Sand off the frame lightly and then wipe it off with a cloth. Paint it with the primer, like black, chestnut brown or sand. This will be the colour that will show through in the end. If you want some of the original wood to show, rub those places of the frame with the wax candle. Let it dry completely. The rub edges and spots you want to highlight with the candle again.The reason for the use of the candle is that it’ll make the paint come off easier when sanded in the end, and not having to use a lot of force with spare the paint you actually want to keep.
Now paint it all white (or linen or antique or maybe even pastel green or pink). Some people like the dark base to show through the top paint, in that case you’ll only need to paint the white paint on in two layers. I did however did 4 layers. Acrylic paint dries fast, so it wont take long. And it’ll look like this:
Now it only looks shabby in the non-chic sense. It is after all an old frame painted in cheap acrylic paint and it is way to bright. Now for the fun part, because when the top coating has dried it’s time to rough it up a bit. Use the sand paper to sand down the edges, and some areas that would like it had been worn down over time. Imagine your poor family portrait being hoisted around in a box and forgotten in an attic for years. Poor thing. It will look like this:
Dry it off again with the cloth and it’s basically done. If you want to keep enhancing the look there are a number of ways of distressing the frame:
- Paint it with crackle paint/varnish/glaze in the areas that has not been sanded
- Use half and half wood stain and glaze to darken the frame if it looks to bright
- Sandpaper it between painting the layers
- Use a third colour after the first and second white layer, but only on the very edges
- Decoupage some old yellowing book pages on to the frame and paint over them
- Splash or spray lightly it with contrasting paint stains
I am trying things out slowly, trying to think of how to organise my photos and what photo would go in what frame. This really is a very dear side project that is pure fun. It’s easy, you should try it! And don’t forget to pay a visit to your local charity shop for those finds.
I like to think I do my part when it comes to the climate issue; I recycle my trash, mainly travel by public transportation or walk, buy organic food when I have the chance… I do believe that everyone can contribute and that even the choices that seems minute matter. So, taking up scrapbooking as a hobby sometimes seem a bit ironic to me. It’s a hobby and an industry that seems to thrive on production and consumtion of paper, plastics and gawd knows what. Wasteful, some might say, but when one’s grandchildren flip through the scrapbooks, that might be the thing furthest from one’s mind.
I get as starry eyed as anybody when it come to the shiny, sparkly, colourful and pretty products intended for scrapbooking, and I would be lying if I didn’t admit that, yes, I want it all and do my best to build as a big a stash as possible of papers, stamps and embellishments. Sometimes though it’s just nice to look back to the roots of it all, beyond the brands, trends and prestige.
Scrapbooks used to contain… Scraps! A little bit of everything; your photos, memorabilia, old tickets, programs, pretty napkins, pressed flowers and whatever else. Decorating with what scraps you had and things you wanted to keep safe to remember. Far from the modern scrapbook by miles. The collective voice of the Wikipedia says, for instance:
Old scrapbooks tended to have photos mounted with photomount corners and perhaps notations of who was in a photo or where and when it was taken. They often included bits of memorabilia like newspaper clippings, letters, etc. With the availability of printed material it is likely that the content of scrapbooks shifted away from one’s own hand-writing or drawings or those of one’s family members toward commercially available printed mat ephemera, memorabilia collections and journaling.Modern scrapbooking has evolved into creating attractive displays of photos, text, journaling and memorabilia. Wikipedia
It’s not only just about collecting tickets and tags and photos, it’s about re-using, about recycling. So use what you have. Collect keepsakes and take photos of special moments. That is often where it all begins, not the other way around. Go nuts, go eclectic! Reinvent yourself, be true to that inner voice who thinks it has artistic freedom. Use what you have at hand, look around and you’ll find plenty of recourses. Many items have more than it’s intended use. Recycling has so many advantages; not only is it good for the environment, it’s also a more than affordable source of materials and tools. I always end up saving a heap of things that seems usable; cardboard, buttons, clothes tags, gift wrap, post cards, stamps, string, ribbons and the like. It’s free, give it a go!
Here are some things I did last year:
 A postcard made of maps from a phonebook, stamps, train ticket, fashion catalogue and newspaper.
 Flowers embossed in black on newspaper, lefs made of newspaper and a pocket made out of a home made over lay from a plastic wrapping.  Unbleached, recycled gift wrap glued to a round post card I got in the mail from one company or other, patterns stamped with some juice bottles and a wine bottle.
On the finished product I added a home-made overlay made from a plastic wrapping from a catalogue. I sketched a pattern I liked with a Sakura Glaze pen, and then attached a modified tag form a T-shirt.
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