Here’s my Trick & Treat: a tutorial on cute little paper butterflies (great as an embellishment!) Paper Butterfly Tutorial (I saw this on Papercraftcentral) You’ll need: Patterned Paper (I used one sided regular weight paper) Scissors Bone folder Ribbon/ twine/ raffia Pen to trace template Step 1: create your template: you can use a compass if you want the circle part to be perfect or trace something round such as as a small glass or lid. You can make this in any size. I just did mine freehand. Step 2: next cut out your template and trace it onto your patterned paper. Cut the shape out of the patterned paper. Step 3: Fold the entire shape in little accordion folds. Use a bone folder to make the folds sharp. If you have one of those handy little paper crimpers, that would work really well here too. (I wish I still had mine!) Step 4: tie a piece of ribbon or rafia around the center of the shape, then pull all the edges out to create the butterfly! This is quick and easy and it’s a great way to use up scraps of paper!
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Tutorials
This month’s prize, a new challenge, classes and a tutorial!
This post is strictly scrapbook related! I will post an update post in a few days – about the fires here last week, another new ratty baby, zoo life and more stuff : )
First of all, September’s challenge is due by tomorrow (also if you just want to enter the draw for this months prize, please post your comment by tomorrow night at midnight (Oct 2). All challenge entries get 2 ballots.
Here is the mini I finished for this challenge – sorry for the awful quality of the photo – I’ll take some better ones – and also of the inside pages – when its light outside tomorrow and post them up later.
I did a tutorial on how to make this mini if you’re interested – it’s really quite quick to make (and easy and cheap – what could be better than that?) The tutorial is posted at the bottom of this post, so scroll on down : )
Here are a couple other entries for this challenge:
Hop on over to Leigh’s blog to see all the other pages in this adorable mini! Isn’t her pup just the cutest?
Here is Rose Stannell’s awesome mini about changes in the homes that she’s lived in. Great idea Rose!
Now for Octobers Challenge!!
Theme: A week in the life
Mini Book style: Accordion – there is a tutorial here for this particular type. (If you use this tutorial, just add a couple extra pieces on so you have 7 pages in total)
These are the most fun to look back on I think, as our lives tend to change so much, even in the span of a few weeks or months. Do it on a week in your own life, your kids life, or your pets life! Have fun with it!
Remember for this challenge, you can choose to do both the theme and mini book type, or just one or the other.
I will post a picture of October’s prize after September’s winner is announced on Oct 2.
Online Classes are coming back!!! I will be offering my series of FREE techinque classes again with Techinques 101 starting on October 12. If you’d like to sign up please send me an email or leave me a comment here. There will be 4 weekly lessons and you can do the class at your own pace. Techniques 102 will start at the end of November and will run for 6 weeks, then 103 will be offered in January and is also 6 weeks. I am thinking of adding a new class in the new year – Mini Book Techniques. : )
Now for the mini book tutorial:
You will need:
– Crafty board or chipboard sheets
– various papers
– binder rings
– crop-a-dile to punch holes through chipboard
– various embellishments
This is a great project to use up scraps! A very low cost and quick mini album to make.
1. Cut you chipboard sheets into squares measuring 4.5 x 4.5″
2. I like the look of rounded corners right now, so I rounded all 4 on each piece
3. For these pages, I kept some just as straight chipboard as I love that natural look. For the others, I covered them with patterned paper and trimmed the corners off.
4. Sand all the edges of each page with a sanding sponge until they are smooth.
5. Shaped paper is fun to cut up and use – remember that you don’t have to completely cover each page – use a shaped piece and you’ll get a fun look.
Glass Tile & Pebble Magnet Tutorial
Here it is – the next tutorial!
This one is on homemade glass pebble (or glass tile) magnets. Basically any shape or size of glass pebble or shape will work as long as there is one flat side to it.
What you need:
– glass pebbles or tiles
– Claudine Hellmuth Studio Multi Medium in Gloss (mod podge or silicon clear rubber sealer will also work)
– foam brush
– small magnets
– craft knife
– tiny photos or patterned paper
1. Find (or print) some photos that are the right size for your tiles and pebbles
2. Brush on a coat of the medium to cover the entire flat side of the tile.
3. Immeadiately stick the tile to the photo
4. Smooth the backside of the photo out using a craft spatula. Make sure you get all the air bubbles out.
5. If using small pebbles, cut some small squares of patterned paper or small photos if you have some printed that tiny.
6. Using the same process as above, stick the pebble to the photo or paper. You will most likely not need to smooth out the back of the photo in these ones.
7. Let them dry for as long as you can, (overnight is best), then trim the excess paper off from the edges. Finish off with a craft knife
8. Use a sanding sponge to smooth off all the edges.
9. Put a blob of medium (or you can use a hot glue gun) on the back of the tile and push a magnet into it.
10. for the smaller pebbles, trim the paper off the edges and sand if you wish
11. Use a smaller amount of medium (or glue) and stick the magnet to the back of the pebble
Today’s Tutorial and some random stuff…
Happy Wednesday!! It’s not even 11:00am here yet but it feels like it should be almost dinner time already! For whatever reason, I could NOT sleep last night. Well, I know the reason, but anyway. Too much on my mind, too much to think about, too much on my to-do list that hasn’t been crossed off yet… I fell asleep around 10 and was wide awake at 3:30am. As in, ready to get up and start doing stuff. Since it was pitch black outside still, I forced myself to stay in bed but by 5 I couldn’t stand it anymore and got up.
My scraproom is now almost all packed up. I have all the items I’m taking with me nicely organized and within an arms reach so if I need to find something I can do so quickly.
I greatly downsized my ribbon collection. It went from this:
to this:
I rolled the thicker ribbons, and then made little spools to wrap the thin ribbons around.
I still have a bit more work to do in there today (like cleaning the closet out, yuck), so hopefully I’ll get that accomplished this afternoon.
Some potentially really exciting news this week was that I was asked to teach at the upcoming SA Scrapbook Convention in SOUTH AFRICA!!!!! WOW!!!! I couldn’t believe it and was super excited! However, with my hectic upcoming school schedule, I am not going to be able to go : ( I would have needed to be away for 12 days at the end of September/ beginning of October, and there is no way I’d be able to do it with school. I’m still sad over it, it would have been such an amazing experience to go teach in South Africa.
Answers to a couple questions I got from yesterday’s post:
Angus is a Westie (West Highland White Terrier) : ) and Zoey is a Scottie (Scottish Terrier). They are actually “cousin” breeds in the Scottish Terrier Trio along with the Cairn Terrier.
The Ice Cream Cone Cupcakes are simply whatever your favorite cupcake recipe is, poured into the cones and baked right in the cones. Just make sure you only fill them up to about 1/2 an inch from the rim of the cone and bake them on the higher rack in your oven or the bottoms of the cones will burn. (yes, found this out the hard way. Good thing we had lots of batter and cones to make another batch! ha!)
Now onto today’s tutorial! I actually have another tutorial almost finished as well, so watch for it this weekend sometime.
I got this idea last week when I was doing yet another load of dishes. It’s just something cute, and another way to use up some items in my stash : )
Dishwasher Magnet
What you will need:
CD
2 pieces of coordinating patterned paper
1 piece of matching cardstock
Strong adhesive (such as zipdry glue)
Thickers letter stickers
Claudine Hellmuth Sticky Back Canvas
Paint
Sanding tools
round flat magnet
round punch
1. Cover one side of your CD with the plain cardstock. Trim around the edges and sand until the edges are smooth.
2. Glue your magnet right into the very center of the CD
3. Glue one piece of patterned paper so it cover exactly half of the CD
4. Glue the other piece on the other half of the CD. Let the adhesive dry completely.
5. Trim all the excess paper off, then sand the edges smooth
6. Using a punch (or if you don’t have the right size circle punch, trace something to the size that you want), punch out a circle from your cardstock and glue it into the very center of the CD
7. Using some sticky back canvas, draw a cute sheep with a black pen. (or any animal or image that you’d like)
8. With a fine paint brush, paint part of the sheep in with black acyrlic paint
9. Once the paint has dried, cut the image out, then stick it to the cardstock circle in the middle of the CD. Add some letters stickers to spell “Clean” at the top and “dirty” at the bottom
10. Now go and stick it to your dishwasher- simply flip it over so it reads “dirty” when the dishes are dirty and when they’re clean, flip it to “clean”. : )
New Giveaway and Heart Shaped Gift Box Tutorial
It’s giveaway Monday again! This week’s giveaway is for a set of See D’s stamps by Inque Boutique.
Just leave a comment here by Thursday night at midnight and I will have random.org select a winner on Friday : )
This week’s question is: What are you looking forward to most this summer?
I loved reading about everyone’s current obsessions last week! I share a lot of them with you such as organizing my craft space, fabric, and watching the Bachelorette (Which is on right now actually!). Seems many of you are into Twilight – I actually just saw the movie!
I just wanted to answer Patty W’s question here about the healthy cocoa ball cookies I made. This is what she asked:
They look like the standard no-bake cookies we make, except we use more ingredients (and sugar) and cook them on the stove.
Did these hold up when eating?
I know these exact cookies you are talking about Patty – my mom used to make them all the time when I was younger and I loved those!! These new ones that I made did in fact hold up – really well actually. but I kept them in the freezer and took them out just before I was going to eat them. I only let them thaw for about 5 minutes. (lol- I am not patient!).
Ok, tutorial time! Are you guys enjoying these tutorials? Should I work on some more? I am really enjoying spending time in my craftroom right now (probably cause I know I have to pack it up soon…) and I am totally working on using my stash.
Today’s tutorial is on a Heart shaped gift box. (you can use any shaped box for this).
What you need:
– cardboard box with removable lid- any shape will work. I got mine at Michaels
– Claudine Hellmuth Gloss Multi Medium (or Liquid Laminate)
– Pieces of fabric
* I am going to mention here that I have both the Claudine Hellmuth Multi medium in GLOSS and the Liquid laminate. For compariosn reasons I’m going to use both so I can show the difference on here the best I can.
1. Cut up your fabric into various sized pieces.
2. Using a foam brush, brush some medium onto the box, place a piece of fabric onto right away and them cover it with another layer of medium. Do this same procedure until the entire box it covered.
3. After all the fabric pieces are on, cover the entire box with a layer of medium and let dry
For the above photos I used the Multi Medium and for the next set of photos I used the liquid laminate. I will be competely honest here and say that I found the multi medium MUCH easier to use. The liquis laminate is harder to spread as it is very watery so it kept dripping off the sides of the box before I had the chance to smooth it out. It then dried with a dull finish and the edges of the fabric stood out a little. With the multi medium, the fabric dried completely flat and it left a nice smooth and slightly glossy sheen to it when it dried. I actually ended up putting a coat of medium over the entire box – even the part that I used the liquid laminate on. Conclusion: my favorite is the Multi Medium, hands down!!
Gift Card Holder Tutorial
I can’t believe it’s Monday already tomorrow! I will be posting a new giveaway tomorrow and another tutorial : )
Today’s tutorial is a cute little gift card holder. (it could also just be a small card holder, or you could even tuck little photos in it as well.)
(I smudged the ink a little on there…oops)
What you’ll need:
– Plain cardstock and patterned paper
– scoring blade
– small velcro circles (with sticky backs)
– stickers/ labels/ embellishments
– 1 white No 8 envelope (9.2 x 16.5 cm)
Optional: pinking shears or decorative edge scissors
1. Cut your cardstock to 3.75 x 8.5 inches, then score it at 2″ and 5.25″
2. Fold along the scored lines
3. Fold your envelope directly in half
4. Cut the ends off of the envelope as shown in the photo. (I used pinking shears but you can use any decorative edge scissors for this)
5. Glue the envelope to the bottom (middle piece) of the inside of the scored cardstock piece as shown. Now glue the two halfs of the envelope together so it stays folded up. You will notice that you now have 2 little pockets.
6. Out of your patterned paper, cut a piece measuring 3.25 x 2.5″ and glue this to the folded envelope
7. out of the same patterned paper cut a piece measuring 2.25 x 3.35″, then cut a piece out of a different patterned paper measuring 2.75 x 2. Glue the smaller piece on top of the larger piece
8. fold your original cardstock scored piece up so that the larger bottom square folds on top of the envelope, then the shorter square folds overtop. Glue the patterned paper piece ontop so that about 1/3 of it is hanging off the end (as shown in photo)
9. Peel the backings off the velcro circles (you can buy these at most craft stores/ fabrics stores/ Walmart and dollar stores). and stick down as indicated in the photo. (I found the easiest way to line them up was to attach the velcro pieces together, stick the first one down on the top piece, close the flap and the second one will automatically stick to the right place. )
10. Add whatever stickers, embellishments, or stamps that you’d like. Your card holder is now ready to have a little something added to it and given as a gift. : )