More Progress on my Scrap Studio

A couple of months ago I shared pictures of my new floor and painted walls.  The whole renovation project has moved slowly, but last weekend my youngest daughter came to visit ,and she helped me out by cutting all the contact paper I needed to pull all my plastic 12X12 drawers into my décor scheme. 

My original idea was to make these paper covers and labels.

However after thinking about the use I give these drawers especially the ones that hold my scraps, I began to think that after awhile the paper would begin to look tattered and worn.  So I came up with another idea.

I decided to use contact paper to cover the outer front of the drawers and still use the label I’d created from Gypsy Wanderings.  But when I went shopping for roles of black and white contact paper.  Crazy, but I could find no black, so I made a compromise and bought a white role with black and grey speckles on it. 

I made a couple of other adjustments and came up with this. 

I stamped the little border using Black Ranger ink and Studio G dollar stamp I’ve had for a while and used black satin ribbon using Fabri Tack to fasten it to the contact paper.  I hand wrote the words using my best penmanship.  However, I don’t think I ever got an A in penmanship, so the results are a bit uneven.  Still, I like the result. 

I like the look and think it turn out every bit as well as the paper idea.  Frankly it is quicker too!  Now to finish them and I’ve run out of ribbon, so that will take a run to the store.

A Little Flower Tutorial

After making my spooky banner, I thought that I might pay a bit more attention to the flowers that really made my banner much more effective. 

My original idea was to have flowers that looked dead and sort of moldering and using the dark purple and black fit into that idea.  I first started just making regular flowers with Cricut cuts, but I wasn’t really satisfied with them because I didn’t feel they were dimensional enough for my purposes. 

The technique of this flower is not my original idea.  The gathered flower has been around for a long time.  I did give it a little twist by adding Cricut cuts to it.  Anyway, I thought I’d share the process with you especially if you are not familiar with the idea. 

I started with about 15 inches of 1 1/2” organza ribbon.

I seamed the ribbon so that I had a circle of ribbon.

Then I ran a gathering stitch about 1/4”  around one edge.  I did this flower by hand, but you could also use your sewing machine.

As you can see, I changed the background so that you could see the flower better.  I pulled the gathering stitch until I had a tight circle and whipped stitched it together and fastened it off to keep it together and gathered. 

Then I turned to my trusty Cricut and my Walk in my Garden cart and cut two of the daisy cut at 1” and 1 1/2” and leaves and added them to the flower.  Regular glue doesn’t work that well with this flower, so I used Fabri Tac.

Then I added a button . . .

and leaves and  . . . VIOLA!

I have a neat little flower for one of my next projects. 

I hope you find a use for these lovely little flowers and add your own special twist on the idea.

Tool Box

I've been saving this little project until I gave the tool box to my daughter. She visits my blog, and I didn't want her to see the gift before I gave it to her. She visited last weekend, and I gave her the tool caddy to hold her scrapping tools I made her out of a IBC Cream Soda caddy.

I traced the various parts of the carrier and covered it with paper and Mod Podged it! I cut the label from Gypsy Wanderings and the letters from Cuttin UP. I welded the letters with my Gypsy. The ribbon is from Hobby Lobby. The Mod Podge gave it some heft. My daughter loved it.

More photos

Until the next post . . .

A Spooky Banner and apology!

I’ve been gone for a week and I am sorry.  My work schedule got really hectic and I was battling a sinus infection .  I pretty much went to work and then came home and crashed only doing what I had to do.  I didn’t work in my studio for over a week.  I missed it and I missed blogging.  I am back and promise to be give you as much inspiration as I can muster. 

This week I am getting ready for my spooky dinner party with my grandchildren.  I started this banner a week ago and then when I wasn’t feeling well and my schedule was a bit more hectic, it rested on my work table unfinished. And really what I had to finish was very little.

The Spooky Banner!  It really was fairly simple.  I used purple and dark orange cardstock as well as paper from the Old World DCWV stack and the orange patterned paper  is from Debbie Mumm’s Seasonal stack from 2009.  I used purple and black organza ribbon for the pleated ruffle under the orange layer from Joann's and the ball trim was from Joann's as well.  All the ribbon comes from Joann's and Hobby Lobby.  What did take a lot of time were these organza flowers.  Sorry the photo is blurry.  No matter what I did this morning I couldn’t get a good photo. 

The construction was simple but time consuming.  I seamed a length of ribbon 13 inches long for the large flowers and 7 inches for the smaller flowers and then ran a gathering stitch around the inside of the seamed ribbon.  I pulled the thread tight and fastened the thread.  Then I glued a paper circle and a button in the center.  Some of the flowers only have a button.  For the small flowers I folded the width of the ribbon in half when I ran the gathering stitch and it made a smaller flower.  I used a flower on each letter and as the center of my bows. 

The letters are from Storybook and the background  cuts are from Gypsy Wandering and its  designer tags.  I cut the chipboard with the regular blade, but set the Cricut to cut 3 times. All the layers were inked with black ink and faux stitched with a black gel pen.  You can’t really see the bottom layer, I pop dotted the orange and organza layer up from it the letters and strung the banner using three different ribbons and adding the scalloped oval between the letters. The ovals include words like boo, eek, weird, and shriek! 

And that’s that!  I have no idea what tomorrow will bring but I hope to be back tomorrow with something new. 

Something different

Yesterday while I was visiting some blogs I regularly cruise for ideas and inspiration, I stopped by http://craftystorage.blogspot.com/ to see what new storage and organizational ideas she had collected. While there I saw a blog that interested me and I popped over to see what her craft room looked like. You can see her room here: http://gmglimmerglass.blogspot.com/2010/06/lets-get-this-party-started.html. What really intrigued me however was this picture.

I love this idea, and I loved it so much that last night when I stopped at Joann's, I bought two stryofoam balls so that I could figure out how to make them myself. I have saved several IBC Cream Soda bottles and they would be perfect for this project.

Don't ask me why I saved those bottles. Sometimes I fear I will become one of those old women on Hoarders with piles of junk surrounding me and not being able to find anything! Oh, and I saved the carrier too!

Anyway, I'm going to try to recreate one of these snowmen later in my blogging future, and I hope to share them with you.

I leave you on this happy Friday with this unrelated blog post but will return with my remaining Halloween projects.

I Wanna Hold Your . . . NAPKIN!!!!

No, it’s not the Beatles this morning singing to you.  It’s me singing to you about my napkin rings.  Napkins rings that nearly didn’t get finished.  I had some real construction problems with these deceptively simple napkin rings.  My real intent was to offer you this Gypsy cut file, but it has too many problems I still have to work through. 

Even with all the problems, I finished them and show them to you this morning, hoping you won’t look too close and see all the imperfections. 

The cuts are once again from A Child’s Year, Paper Doll Dress UP, and good old George!  Sometimes I forget to mention this multipurpose cartridge. The orange cardstock is from the 12X24 Provo Craft primary colors paper pad and the rest from scraps.  The ribbon is Hobby Lobby. 

Here are some close ups. 

OOPs! That last photo is a bit blurred!  I took the pictures on the run. 

Tomorrow will be a day a I don’t post until late in the day or it might be Saturday morning before I get the next project up here.  Until them, have a great day! 

A Place at the Table

Wow!  Today has been an incredible day!  Were you all glued to the TV last night as the first Chilean mine came to the surface for the first time in 8 weeks?  All those empty dinner table seats empty for such a long time will be filled tonight!  The thought brought tears to my eyes and makes my heart swell with happiness for all those families. 

So I guess it’s appropriate that today I show you the table place cards for my Halloween Frightful dinner party.  There’s no question at my house.  If you are here for dinner, you have a seat, but it’s fun to make an extra effort to the make the occasion more festive. 

I used Coredinations cardstock for the base, and the purple, dotted paper is from the Hobby Lobby Halloween paper collection.  The characters are cut from the odd scrap.  The ribbon is once again Hobby Lobby.  You can see the details as I show the individual place cards.  But first a little peek at what my table might look like for the night. 

So there you go! Tomorrow I’m going to show you more of my table scape.  Be sure to check back tomorrow.

A Spooky Enlightening Project!

I want to say right up front how excited it is see all the visitors who come to see my blog, and I hope you all get some inspiration when you visit.  You are inspiring to me!  I am almost to 2500 hits!  You are all great!  You inspire me to keep coming up with new projects and ideas.  Thank you! 

I have a quick little project for you today that involves lighting up your Halloween celebration.  I have a couple more lighting ideas that I might try later but here is my offering for today. 

These little votive cup covers were super simple to make and assemble.  As has been my goal for several months, I bought nothing to do this project and I was very happy to use some vellum that had been in my stash for several years.  I also had a bunch of votive cups squirreled away from a previous celebration, so with all my supplies in hand, the project was a cinch. 

The very first thing I did was measure the circumference  and height  of my votive cups and then used my Gypsy to set the size and added the little ghost about a 1/2” apart. I did not weld the two images. The little ghostie came from Paper Doll Dress Up and was cut at 1 1/2”, but really you could cut it at any size that would fit on the paper you are wrapping the votive in.  I added ribbon, double layered on the edges to give the wraps a finished look and glued the vellum to the back of the wraps so that the light would shine through.  I  purchased this colored vellum years ago when I was using vellum a lot in my scrapping.  The purple and green colors turned out to be great for this project. 

Once I’d completed the wraps, I slipped them over votive cups and added votive candles.  I would not recommend using candles for a long time burn because of the paper. I used them for the photo because I didn’t have any tea lights or battery powered tea lights.  I  plan on using the battery powered ones for the ghastly dinner I am planning for the kids. 

Here are some close ups of the little covers. 

Tomorrow check in for another piece to our spooky table setting. 

Halloween Party Invitation

Here we are at the beginning of a brand new week.  Are you excited?  I am.  You just never know what a new week will hold.  For me here on my blog it’s all about planning a gruesome Halloween Dinner party for my grandchildren. 

I’ll be making all sorts of goodies for the dinner, and I am going to share them all with you. 

First up is the invitation to our bloody feast!  I think it turned out great.   

The silhouette comes from A Child’s Year and the word Halloween is done with Cuttin’ Up using the Comic feature, and it shadow feature and the card stock is various bits and pieces that I had in my scrap drawers.  The sentiment is a wooden Studio G $1 stamp and the ribbon is Hobby Lobby.  Here are some close-ups.

 

Tomorrow I am going to show you a project that will shed some  spooky light on our little dinner party! 

A little something for Friday

It’s Friday!  How many of you have a busy weekend planned? I know we do.  Our youngest grandson is coming to stay for the weekend, and he and his Papa are going to a car show tomorrow morning.  They both love cars and the biggest boy, my husband, is the most excited of all!  I don’t know if I am invited.  I am pretty sure I am.

Today I am sharing a little notebook I’ve made for my granddaughter.  It’s a simple little offering using Hello Kitty and a flower from Forever Young that I welded together to create a border.  I think it turned out great and it’s in her current , favorite color palette. 

Sorry about the shadow!  I couldn’t get rid of it!  But it did turn out cute!  I can’t tell you where the paper came from because once again, I have had it for a long time.  She is going to love it!  I can’t wait to give it to her! 

Scraps left on my work table

Yep!  I did it again!  I looked at the scraps left from doing the Halloween Countdown book and decided to make a couple of cards.  Now I barely touched the heap of scrap left but I did use some of the cuts. 

Here’s a representative look at the pile of scraps leftover from the book: 

And here’s the two quick cards I created with them. 

I used a Studio G $1 stamp for the sentiment and none for the spider card since the paper had so many words on it.  The little pumpkins and the spider’s web behind the spider are also a studio G $1 stamps. I colored the pumpkins with my BIC markers and then used orange Stickles and cut them out.  The cuts are from Cricut cartridge Paper Doll Dress Up. 

How about some close ups? 

And . . .

Now I am off to work on some projects for next week and to do some of that pesky housework!