Paper craft

The lost art of the pillow box

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With all these wonderful papercraft tools it can be easy to overlook the basic pillow box for those little (in size, not necessarily value) gifts.

Rescue a humble empty loo roll or paper towel tube from recycling, flatten it lightly and cover it with your choice of lightweight paper- wet glue is fine if it doesn’t soak your chosen paper. (Some people sterilise their tubes in the microwave before crafting with them)

Take a round object, such as the tape roll shown here. Lay it so you can score an arc from side to side of the tube on each ‘side’ of the flattened tube and at each end, four scores in all.

Gently push each scored arc towards the middle to create the pillow effect.

Decorate and maybe add a tag to finish.

Paper tassels

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A quick, fun embellishment for wrapping and home decor wreaths …

Cut an A4 sheet into three long strips. Stack the strips and cut a deep fringe all along one long edge (much quicker than cutting each fringe separately.

Stick a strip of red liner or strong double sided tape along the unfringed long end

Cut twine or thread to chosen length, loop it and stick the raw ends across the tape at one end of the strip

Roll the strip tightly starting from the end with the loop, so the loop is encased in the roll.

Fluff the tassel up when finished!

 

More card casing

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this time from Joanna Sheen cardmaking collection…

The shadows are achieved by masking and effects by pulling up the ink with water – useful practice.

I thought I would be using the die and stamp set from this mag but got sidetracked by an article on blending distress oxides with the stencils that came in the kit. Here are my two ‘casing’ efforts.

Papercraft magazine challenge

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3884CB10-3A26-45DB-A194-34E8014A8F4CIt may look like I have only made 5 cards, but I have worked my way through the magazine, tried out the stamps, dies and stencils and ‘cased’ these cards so far.

The challenge now is to use up the remaining tags, fussy cut flowers and papers that I have prepared. Meanwhile they sit with my other Craftwork cards kit remnants waiting for a second burst of enthusiasm.

This magazine was a bargain from Craftstash bought with birthday money (justifying paper addiction here). Will keep my eyes peeled for issue 2…

Book page pockets

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01A9F173-04DE-42F0-B022-293982075ED7Four pages from a proverbs dictionary and a few moments at the sewing machine…

glue pairs of pages together at the very edges (so you don’t get glue on the needle later on)

trim one set down by about a third for the front and chamfer the edges of the back set so you can later fold it over

if decorating now is the time to stamp or stick, here I stamped in black then outlined with distress crayon which makes it look layered

sew across the top of the shorter front piece, clip front and back together (don’t pin or you will make holes) then sew all the way around the edge

now fold over the flap

when you have filled the envelope you can seal with double sided tape or a glue dot as you choose

 

Clean and simple cards for men

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The hardest cards to make…

The greetings were printed from the laptop on photo paper. The metal embellishments did all the work on those cards. I cut out the stamped flintstone image with the scan n cut, coloured it with whatever pens came first to hand and stopped myself embellishing beyond a few enamel drops.

I stuck to my objective of making at least two similar cards at a time and now have some masculine cards ready

Mini gift basket

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A quick cut project using  the scan n cut based on Applelover53 berry basket (free from her blog cut files).

Ready for Easter or biscuits or to present home made goodies when filled with crumpled tissue paper. I used red liner tape to fix the two top ‘holding strips’ to the sides and the handle to the basket but it won’t be weight bearing. I also added a little felt tag tied to the handle as I have a pile of them to use up somehow …

I guess you could devised your own pattern and hand cut – pieces shown below – but I am grateful to find the file ready to use. For this version I used some Kanban light card which has a two tone pattern on one side and is plain on the other.

No measure gift bags

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You tube easy gift bag how toimage need a gift bag but no time to fuss?

just fold a rectangle of paper as below … or watch the video

place the paper face down and landscape (long sides north and south)

fold  a small border on the west edge of the paper, just wide enough to later run some tape or glue along, then fold the remaining width of paper in half and  in half again to create four equal panels. With the paper still folded in four, crease up from the south a panel that will  form the base of the bag. An optional last step is to open out the sheet then fold down a little collar along the top this is only needed if your paper is flimsy and you want to strengthen it a bit

cut – cut out the little rectangle at the south of the border fold then cut up the three bottom creases just as far as the first width crease – if you are being smart you can cut either side of the creases to make final assembly even easier

stick – if you have a collar  stick it down

then fold the little border over so a little bit of the pretty side of the paper is facing you, run tape or glue down the border and then fold the eastern side of your sheet over and on to the sticky border. once the glue is set wobble the paper to form a floppy box,  crease each of the panel folds to encourage the paper to set in the final shape

now fold each of the bottom panels up, you may need to crease them with your fingers to set the folds in the right direction, add some tape or glue on the plain side of the last two bottom pieces. You may need to put your hand inside the bag/box to ‘set’ the adhesive.

close and decorate with paper clips, pegs, stickers, brads, staples or ribbon threaded through punch holes

 

Laminated, snap-close folders

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Thank you Sam Clayton, Mixed up crafts channel. I have been following your laminating projects and now made a bundle of folders and file envelopes, this time secured with the snaps you motivated me to buy.

This is such an easy make and uses up papers that would otherwise be gathering dust in the ‘one day I will get around to liking these’ pile.

Now I have durable, fastening envelopes for keeping stamps, receipts, presenting gift cards and tickets or holding assorted papers.

I now plan to print some photos to make some personalised wallets as gifts…

Method

Just sandwich paper in a laminating sleeve then, when sealed, gently slice along the inside sealed edge between the paper layers to create a pocket. Trim any excess laminating plastic and send the folder back through the laminator to tidy rough edges. Follow one of her tutorials for clear demonstrations.

For the pink wallet I glued on a strip of paper as a tab, to mimic a wallet closure. This worked surprisingly well.

The size of the folders and combination of pockets is only limited by the size of your laminating pouches.

Fixing the snaps is easy. Again lots of you tube tutorials but my kit came ready set up to use and was logical. The only hurdle is positioning the snap near to the edge of a sheet as there isn’t much of an ‘elbow’ on the crimper.

Paper roses, paper roses … oh how real?

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I have an ear worm of that song and a vision of marie osmond singing it. Never mind that though,  I am happy with the paper flowers produced in this crafting session.

The flowers look quite different depending on paper used and the container/ vase displayed in. The blue themed group are my favourites but the patterned paper flowers aren’t trying to be real and look cute.

I was determined to use up some of my craftwork cards paper stash and I set the scan n cut to work. But you could cut a similar set for each flower quite easily by hand.

5EE86A4F-36D1-4858-8438-E67BB9842876Tips

soften the paper fibres by rolling each petal around a barbecue stick or rubbing it against a bone folder

I used hot glue to form each petal layer into a cup shape but tacky glue works as well – albeit making assembly a little slower

I made a hole with my pokey tool in the centre of each glued cup then impaled a set of petals with an I-pin, a long sewing pin would work as well. Then I glued the single petals, including the rolled one, over the pin head. Some flowers have some Candi ( a small circle of paper that came with the paper pads from craftwork cards) at their centres. These were fixed with foam pads and hid the pin very well.

I stuck the pins directly into oasis in the bucket style containers and for the vase bound the pin against a length of barbecue stick. I used washi tape to bind, florist tape would have been better.

Some leaf shapes filled in the gaps in the arrangements, I needed far more flowers than I thought I would to fill the containers. Next time I will distress the leaves with ink to make them look softer.