Cheri: This is my second ornament in the Christmas Ornament Countdown. I like to work in paper and when I can use paper that was something else at one time, that makes it doubly good. These ornaments are made from paper and toilet paper rolls. They are really quite easy to make.
All you need to do is take the roll and flatten it. Then take a ruler and measure in ¼ inch increments. After that is done cut them apart with scissors, or if you have a large paper cutter you can use that. You will have several rings of cardboard. I like to start out with a flower pattern and work from there. You can bend the cardboard into any shape that you want and just let your imagination take over.
After I had them glued together, I spray painted them with silver metallic spray paint, then I sprayed adhesive glue and sprinkled them with glitter.
When you are faced with an empty paper roll, you may want to think twice before throwing it out. You never know what you can make out of it.
Simply elegant ornament made form scrapbook paper strips and floral wire.
Cheri:Kristin’s ornament was so awesome that I have to admit I was a tad bit intimidated by this challenge. Actually, this type of challenge really brings out the best in both of us.
My ornament was made with scrapbook paper too.
I cut about 35 strips of paper and pushed a hole in all of them on both ends. I then took some floral wire that I had and made a loop in one end, and fed all the strips onto the wire. I then took the very last strip and threaded it on to the other end of the wire and continued to do this until all of them had been put on.
I fanned them out into a ball, and made a loop in the other end. I really like to use scrapbook paper that has stripes on it because the pattern seems to flow better. So one down 7 more to go.
The ornament hangs vertically with two balls strung together.Christmas Ornament Paper Strip Balls
Cheri: I love ballet. I like to watch it. I liked to dance ballet when I was younger. And I like any art form connected with it. When I decided to make this collage I wanted to convey this in this piece.
The idea for this started when I bought a book at a garage sale that was a child’s book of ballet. The book was from the 60’s and it had a very stylized look to it. As I flipped through the book I came across this picture of a dancer in an arabesque. This picture was going to be the focal point. After I cut the picture out I flipped it over and felt the reverse side with the text was the better option.
I went through my scrapbook paper until I came across a pattern that I liked. Then I chose a frame. (I have several to choose from). I used spray adhesive to glue the paper to a mat and sized it to the frame. The frame says a lot about the piece and often if I can get the frame correct the rest of the piece seems to fall into place.
The fun part begins after that. I colored the dancer in and then I took little pieces of newspaper wrapped them around the end of the pencil to give them the form of flowers. I then dipped them in glue and placed them as the skirt for the dancer.
As I have said before I have all kinds of odds and ends that I picked up and sometimes these pieces just kind of call to me to be placed in a picture. The round paper disc was one of those. It has a vintage feel to it and I felt that the placement of it made it feel like the dancer was balancing on the tag. The butterflies were cut from tissue paper and have a really nice light, pastel, look to them.
Last but not least is the dancer that seems sad in the corner. She was another figure that I cut out from the book and I chose not to have the complete figure show for this. The piece does say some things about life to me, and I think that is what really makes me love collage so much.
Close-up of the dancer and her butterflies.Curled newspaper wrapped around a pencil forms her skirt.My incomplete sad ballerina in her corner and a close-up of the label tag.
Crafty challenge number 3 is no one’s fault but my own. While I was making my hardware-store handbag for the last challenge, I began to think of a challenge that would be mostly confined to materials that were incidental to an item I had bought. Things that you do not buy to use, such as packaging materials, plastic sacks, and styrofoam drinking cups.
There were two materials that had particularly caught my fancy. One was sales slips. Every time I clean my car, I cannot believe how many slips I can accumulate in just a few days. The other was the paper wrappers that hamburgers and breakfast sandwiches come wrapped in. These materials are perfectly suited for their original purpose, but could I think of a secondary recycled purpose?
The sandwich wrappers are plasticized on one side and I thought that perhaps they could be used as an element in a plastic fused-fabric, but the sales slips proved harder to recycle. Sometimes when I don’t have any deposit slips, I’ll grab a sales slip from the floor of the car to write my information on, so I decided that they could be made up into some kind of notepaper.
Since I could only think of notepaper as a use for the sales slips, I knew I would need to make a notebook. I could use other types of wastepaper for additional pages and the various plastic items I had been saving could be used for a plastic fused-fabric cover. One unintentional consequence of this challenge was the ever rising pile of junk on my work table. Just as I found myself putting something in the recycling or the trash, I would think: “wait that may be useful.”
I decided that my “fast food folio” notebook would be composed of three signatures of paper. A signature is a sheet of paper which folds to page size and is then bound with other signatures to form a book. My signatures would be made from sales slips, paper fast food sacks and sandwich wrappers. I glued the sales slips into 8 1/2 inch by 11 inch sheets and cut the paper sacks and sandwich wrappers to the same dimensions. There was just enough material to make eight sheets of 8 1/2 by 11 inch paper per signature. When folded those 8 sheets gave me 16 sheets of 5 1/2 by 8 1/2 inch paper and with three signatures that gave me 48 sheets of paper in a notebook that would be approximately 6 inches by 9 inches with its cover.
I decided that I would make the cover from layers of plastic bags, bubble wrap and sandwich wrappers. I wanted the bubble wrap to give the cover a honeycomb texture and to make the cover stronger. The plastic bags would provide the graphics and the sandwich wrappers were unique in that only one side is plasticized and I could use them as a protective layer on one side and a fusible layer on the other.
When fusing plastic into fabric some people use wax paper to protect their iron, but I believe that parchment paper is sturdier and less likely to become a part of the fused fabric.This fusing plastic bag tutorial has excellent instructions. The one thing to remember is that when you start mixing different types of plastics, you can have unexpected consequences. Not all plastic materials melt at the same rate and at the same temperature. You have to keep experimenting and have some back-up materials in case a “shrink and shrivel” happens.
When I had the cover and the signatures made I sewed them together with a large-eyed blunt needle and cotton kitchen twine. I used beeswax on the twine to make it slide easier through the holes in the cover and the signatures. This youtube video ‘simple bookbinding part 1 and its companion video part 2 were the most helpful to me in explaining signatures and how to sew them to a cover.
Most of the time we keep our projects secret from each other but Kristin was in town and I did not wish to spend our time together alone in separate rooms while we worked on our projects. So Kristin saw my project and had some helpful ideas. I wanted to use drinking straws in my project and had experimented with melting them onto a sheet of plastic vinyl. The straws do melt, but not in the way I wanted. Kristin suggested slicing the straw into small circles and then melting them onto the cover. As you can see below, the idea worked extremely well and is quite decorative. She also suggested using a straw as a bookmark. I connected it to the end of the binding twine and used beads as stopper knots. That is the one problem with these challenges. We miss the feedback and suggestions from each other that make our projects just that one step better.
I am surprised by how good the plastic cover feels and by how sturdy it is. I was also very curious how the different types of paper would respond to ink, markers and colored pencil. The brown paper works very well for my squiggles and surprisingly so does the plastic side of the sandwich wrappers. However, the sales slips are treated to accept the ink of their cash registers and are hard on markers, pencils and ink pens. I am thinking of covering them with gesso and if that doesn’t work, a few collage pages will look very good in my notebook.
Our crafty challenges have challenged us in ways that we never anticipated. I have been surprised and amazed at the results. Enough so that we are already working on crafty challenge number 4.
Outside cover and view of hand-sewn binding.Pages made of sales slips and sandwich wrappers.Detail of beads used to cap the drinking straw bookmark.Inside cover and first page with first squiggle on brown paper bag.
Beatles at The Cavern with Yellow Submarine and Strawberry Fields Forever.Beatles at The Cavern with Yellow Submarine and Strawberry Fields.
-Cheri: As I have mentioned before, I really like to make dioramas. They tell a story and it always amazes me of how detailed you can make your creation. So when I decided to pay homage to The Beatles, I felt that a diorama of them at The Cavern in Liverpool would be a fun idea.
I spent about a week drawing out my characters and getting them colored and cut out. I looked at a photo of The Cavern to get a good idea of what it looked like and how I would make the stage and the equipment that would be there.
After I had that all designed it came time to glue all of my items in their place. This is always the best part of the project and is where I really start to tell the story of the scene.
Diorama close-up. Is that George behind the mike?Diorama close-up. John at the mike and Paul on guitar.
After I had all the pieces glued in I looked at the outside and felt that it should be included in the story. I really didn’t want to make a copy of the streets of Liverpool, so I decided to make a yellow submarine diving through a strawberry field. I never get tired of looking at this diorama, I hope you feel the same way.
The Yellow Submarine.The Yellow Submarine in Fields of Strawberries Forever.
Happy Halloween to all our readers who celebrate this weekend (and Monday)! My SO and I have a particular fondness for this particular holiday. Not for any specific reason other than we like to come up with good costumes. This year, after some serious debate and wishy-washiness, we decided to be attendees to the Goblin Ball. For those of you who are devout Brian Froud and Terry Jones fans and who love the movie Labyrinth, you should know what I am talking about. For those who don’t know what I am referring to (or who have forgotten, after all, the movie is getting a little old now), here is an excellent video of the ball scene from the movie (and yes, that is David Bowie as the Goblin King).
The most time consuming part of this was trying to decide how we would go about creating our costumes and how much of an homage we wanted to pay to the creators. We ended up doing our own versions of two guests at the ball with a little more color added as we were no longer just background scenery for Sarah and Jareth.
The masks were the first things we started discussing and working out designs. My SO based his on a raven king plastic mask found at the costume shop while mine is based on a paper-mache (papier-mâché) domino mask found at the same costume shop. Then we added lots more paper-mache and plaster to complete our goblin masks.
My goblin mask before painting.My goblin mask after painting.
At this point (for my mask much more so than his) there was quite a bit of carving to do to get a sinister, craggy face. With a dremel tool and some clay carving tools I had left over from an old art class, we proceeded to make an absolute mess on our kitchen table and floor. After some agony and repairs done by my SO to my mask, we both finally had something that we really liked. My SO painted his with a tea stain and mine he painted green, then overlaid that with a darker pearlescent green. Overall, my SO finished his mask in about a day and a half, and we worked on mine for about the same amount of time in total.
If you haven’t figured our between the lines, the masks were mostly done by my SO. He is an excellent artist and crafts-person when it comes to plaster and painting. He used to make the scenery and set pieces for the table-top role-playing games he played.
His goblin mask.
Our costumes were a bit more difficult to come up with and I will dedicate a whole other post to those tomorrow. We are definitely going to have some fun tomorrow night! I will certainly post some pictures of us in our completed costumes.
-Lynne: Our hardware challenge sounded straight forward when we first proposed it. The idea of being turned loose in a hardware store seemed more like a dream than a challenge and the $5.00 limit on materials cost did not daunt me at all. We are “make-do” sisters.
Earlier this spring, I found the book “Simply Sublime Bags” by Judi Kahn. In it she shows how to make “no sew” purses using fabric and duct tape. I was so taken by the idea that I made myself a keyhole clutch from a feedsack with matching duct tape. The pattern can be found here online, but the book is well worth getting for all the wonderful ideas.
Beyond being extremely cute and novel, my clutch has been surprisingly durable. I have been wanting a slightly larger purse and this challenge seemed like the perfect time to make another one. After all, duct tape is to a hardware store like water is to a duck. Besides with a project like this, all I would need was the fabric and something to hold the fabric together in its purse shape.
I’m afraid that I became rather testy when I realized that glue, thread, staples, paint, ink and tape would count towards the $5.00 total. I can tell you right now that no hardware store can sell you 50 cents worth of glue. We had to buy what materials we needed in the quantities available and we could not buy a quantity and divide the price by the number we used. I only wanted 4 yards of fishing line, but I would have had to buy 700 yards for $2.99. That was more than half my budget. I needed to rethink how to “sew” the purse together.
I wandered the aisles of all the hardware stores in town. I had knowledgeable, helpful men following me trying to help me find the “right part.” They would always take a step backwards when I told them that not only did I not know the part I needed, I did not know what the part would be for. Hardware by its very nature is made to be used in the manner it was made. Wood screws are for wood and metal screws are for metal and never the twain shall meet. People who work at hardware stores are bewildered and confused by browsers.
When I saw the fiberglass window screen, I knew I wanted to use it as the fabric for my purse. I could buy one foot of the 36″ wide screen and stay well within my budget. I noticed a roll of clear plastic vinyl next to the screen and remembered that plastic can be fused into a fabric by heating it with an iron. Heat unlike glue and staples would not cost me anything. I could sandwich the screen in between two pieces of the plastic and have both my fabric and my “glue.” I added some electrician’s tape which is cheap because it doesn’t stick to anything, a carriage bolt, a foot of copper wire and a brass hex nut to my list and I was 14 cents under my $5.00 limit.
I found that fusing the “fabric” could be tricky. You have to keep in mind what will melt fastest and that plastic can shrink in odd ways and iron accordingly. The holes in the fiberglass screen allowed the plastic to adhere to itself, but I found that where I needed a strong bond I had to use just the clear plastic. By cutting the screen smaller than the plastic, the seams were only plastic and strong enough to hold all the stuff I put in a purse.
I desperately needed some decoration for my purse and I only had 14 cents left in my budget, but I had become a crafty challenge participant. I gathered up the paper bag I had used for the free popcorn, the plastic bag for my purchases and the free telephone directory at the end of the counter and felt crafty as well as rich in materials.
The electrician’s tape strengthened the open handles and made a nice decorative statement around the top of the purse. I fused the logo from the plastic bag to the front of the purse to add the graphic text and some much-needed color. Once you start fusing it is hard to stop. I fashioned the copper wire into my initial and fused it in a sandwich of clear plastic, fiberglass screen, the label from the paper bag and another layer of plastic for a hang tag.
– Paper flower and hang tag initial.
Hardware is hard and I wanted to soften it with a flower decoration. I had just noticed these paper flowers on craftgawker and I had that free telephone directory. I used a paper punch to put a hole in the edge of the purse and threaded the carriage bolt through it and the center of the folded flower. The hex nut secured the flower to the purse and made a “cuter than a button” flower center.
I may fuse some more plastic around the handles now that the challenge is over and I don’t have to worry about a budget. But I am very happy with the results. I love the idea of making your own fabric and fusing is forgiving. If you make a mistake, keep ironing things on till you like it. That is the way to Do it Best.
-Lynne: Our hardware challenge sounded straight forward when we first proposed it. The idea of being turned loose in a hardware store seemed more like a dream than a challenge and the $5.00 limit on materials cost did not daunt me at all. We are “make-do” sisters.
Earlier this spring, I found the book “Simply Sublime Bags” by Judi Kahn. In it she shows how to make “no sew” purses using fabric and duct tape. I was so taken by the idea that I made myself a keyhole clutch from a feedsack with matching duct tape. The pattern can be found here online, but the book is well worth getting for all the wonderful ideas.
Beyond being extremely cute and novel, my clutch has been surprisingly durable. I have been wanting a slightly larger purse and this challenge seemed like the perfect time to make another one. After all, duct tape is to a hardware store like water is to a duck. Besides with a project like this, all I would need was the fabric and something to hold the fabric together in its purse shape.
I’m afraid that I became rather testy when I realized that glue, thread, staples, paint, ink and tape would count towards the $5.00 total. I can tell you right now that no hardware store can sell you 50 cents worth of glue. We had to buy what materials we needed in the quantities available and we could not buy a quantity and divide the price by the number we used. I only wanted 4 yards of fishing line, but I would have had to buy 700 yards for $2.99. That was more than half my budget. I needed to rethink how to “sew” the purse together.
I wandered the aisles of all the hardware stores in town. I had knowledgeable, helpful men following me trying to help me find the “right part.” They would always take a step backwards when I told them that not only did I not know the part I needed, I did not know what the part would be for. Hardware by its very nature is made to be used in the manner it was made. Wood screws are for wood and metal screws are for metal and never the twain shall meet. People who work at hardware stores are bewildered and confused by browsers.
When I saw the fiberglass window screen, I knew I wanted to use it as the fabric for my purse. I could buy one foot of the 36″ wide screen and stay well within my budget. I noticed a roll of clear plastic vinyl next to the screen and remembered that plastic can be fused into a fabric by heating it with an iron. Heat unlike glue and staples would not cost me anything. I could sandwich the screen in between two pieces of the plastic and have both my fabric and my “glue.” I added some electrician’s tape which is cheap because it doesn’t stick to anything, a carriage bolt, a foot of copper wire and a brass hex nut to my list and I was 14 cents under my $5.00 limit.
I found that fusing the “fabric” could be tricky. You have to keep in mind what will melt fastest and that plastic can shrink in odd ways and iron accordingly. The holes in the fiberglass screen allowed the plastic to adhere to itself, but I found that where I needed a strong bond I had to use just the clear plastic. By cutting the screen smaller than the plastic, the seams were only plastic and strong enough to hold all the stuff I put in a purse.
I desperately needed some decoration for my purse and I only had 14 cents left in my budget, but I had become a crafty challenge participant. I gathered up the paper bag I had used for the free popcorn, the plastic bag for my purchases and the free telephone directory at the end of the counter and felt crafty as well as rich in materials.
The electrician’s tape strengthened the open handles and made a nice decorative statement around the top of the purse. I fused the logo from the plastic bag to the front of the purse to add the graphic text and some much-needed color. Once you start fusing it is hard to stop. I fashioned the copper wire into my initial and fused it in a sandwich of clear plastic, fiberglass screen, the label from the paper bag and another layer of plastic for a hang tag.
– Paper flower and hang tag initial.
Hardware is hard and I wanted to soften it with a flower decoration. I had just noticed these paper flowers on craftgawker and I had that free telephone directory. I used a paper punch to put a hole in the edge of the purse and threaded the carriage bolt through it and the center of the folded flower. The hex nut secured the flower to the purse and made a “cuter than a button” flower center.
I may fuse some more plastic around the handles now that the challenge is over and I don’t have to worry about a budget. But I am very happy with the results. I love the idea of making your own fabric and fusing is forgiving. If you make a mistake, keep ironing things on till you like it. That is the way to Do it Best.
-Cheri:Craft challenge 2 was a blast. The $5.00 limit adds an interesting twist to the challenge. But I wasn’t too worried about it. Here in Logansport we have a really cool old hardware store. I think they have some of the same merchandise that they had when they opened maybe 60 odd years ago. I spent a good hour pouring over the store, opening drawers and looking in all the little nooks and crannies.
I had so many ideas I knew I was going to have a hard time congealing them into one piece. I have a tendency to overdo things so I decided I was going to get a few items and work with them for a little bit to see what I could come up with. I picked up a variety pack of O rings, a retaining ring, a spring, a small flange washer and wire. I have spent probably the last 20 years making things with wire so I was pretty sure if all else failed, I would be able to make something with the wire.
I divided the O rings up into sizes and worked with the large ones to see what I could make. I eventually hit upon the idea of twisting the circles to create a centerpiece for a necklace. I made wire links from wrapping the wire around a pencil and cutting them apart, and formed the longer pieces of wire by making a loop on each end. I was thrilled with the outcome and I think that the hardware store may become one of my favorite places to go for jewelry supplies.
The twisted O ring loop supports the two pendant loops.
Lynne: In our last challenge for wooden spools I spent most of the two weeks trying to make a colored pencil stand that would:
1. hold my pencils where I could easily reach them
2. let me see the color quickly
3. keep the pencils from rolling to the floor and breaking
4. keep the point sharp
5. look cool doing all of the above.
Eventually, I came to the conclusion that wooden spools were not the answer to the colored pencil problem and instead I made the embroidery floss project box.
During the big reveal of our wooden spool projects, I began to elaborate on my search for a pencil holder when Loryn brought up the website Apartment Therapy and showed me this plastic grass countertop drying rack. She thought that the drying rack could be something similar to what I had in mind. She was right, but I had no plastic grass and was unlikely to find any cheap enough anytime soon. I kept thinking of things that were thin, straight and pointed and came up with bamboo skewers. Loryn had a website for that idea also and showed me this bamboo skewer knife holder.
Bamboo skewers work because their points allow just enough room for the pencil point to slide in between each skewer even though the skewers are packed tightly at their base. The pencils do not have to be guided into a specific slot which can be aggravating; enough so, that you end up impatiently laying the pencils down where they roll to the floor breaking the lovely point you just so carefully shaped. Best of all, those lovely points are not marred when you push the pencils in among the skewers.
Excited about finally getting my dream pencil holder, I set about finding the container I needed to keep the skewers upright and packed tightly. I didn’t want something too small because there would not be enough room for the pencils and I did not want something too large because there is a limit to the number of bamboo skewers you want hanging around.
Cheri has a talent for arranging flowers and as a gift for my birthday, she had given me a bouquet in a rectangular glass vase. As a bonus, she painted a delicate tracery of lilies of the valley around the outside of the vase. I have used the vase again for other flower arrangements but at the moment it was standing empty in my cupboard. It looked to be the right size and I liked that it was not round because that meant no pencil would be in the middle surrounded by other pencils and out of my easy reach. The vase is shown in the photo below. I love the delicate flowers.
The empty flower vase that Cheri painted for me.
I found the bamboo skewers I wanted at the local farm store and bought 7 packages of 195 skewers each which turned out to be just enough. Sometimes, things just work out right for no good reason at all. The skewers were longer than the vase and I had to find some way to cut them all to the same length. I tried a miter box and handsaw but I could not keep the skewers bundled together enough to cut them without splintering the ends. I finally just grabbed my wire cutters and taking about 10 at a time I turned them point-side down in the vase and cut them even with the top of the vase. This allowed me to measure and cut at the same time.
There is one thing about using the wire cutters that I should mention. When you cut the pieces go flying everywhere. You end up pulling them out of your hair, picking them up off the floor and even out of the chandelier. It didn’t take as long as I thought it would, but I need to sit down and think of a better way to cut bamboo skewers if I ever do this again.
While cutting I did have the foresight to place all the skewers with their points in the same direction in a box. I did not want to spend more time sorting through pointed sticks than I had to. When I was done I stacked the skewers into the vase as shown in the photo below.
Most of the points of my skewers are just a little above the rim of the vase. It has something to do with the curve on the inside of the bottom of the vase. I should go through and cut them all so they are just below the lip of the vase, but I have had my fill of flying bamboo.
This holds about 10 pencils and does all of the things I wanted it to do. I cannot call the project a cheap trick since the skewers were about $14.00 for all of them, but it is a good organizer and I am glad to have the pencil problem solved for now.
The vase filled with bamboo skewers.Top view of the vase.
This view shows the dimensions of the vase from the top.
the crafty sisters 