Paper craft

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.

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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.

 

Themed treat box

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02F12E8E-24A5-4732-A97D-C646E5BA27B7A treat box or table gift ready to hand out which uses up some mini mint sachets…

It is basically a sandwich of matching shapes for front and back with a strip of scored card around the diameter to hold the contents inside.

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For this one  I cut a 3 inch pumpkin on the scan and cut, put acetate behind the apertures and fixed front to back with an improvised strip of card cut and scored as shown. To decorate I coloured, with a marker, the eye hole negatives put them back in place and then stuck on googly eyes and the little tendril to finish it off.

Now to make cars with windows, boats and other animals from the scan and cut. Easy project, good fun.

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Washi Wednesday part 2…

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A cheapo frame covered in washi tape is upgraded enough to display an old photo which came to light in a rummage through the albums.

Patterned washi is forgiving enough to allow for overlaps, so all the visible frame is covered and little creases can be smoothed out too. Long term I will coat this with mod podge to stop any lifting.

This green bird patterned washi came in a set from paperchase, lovely stuff. The mount is made from paper brought back from South Africa as a gift, I am told it was made principally of elephant dung!

Washi tape

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Who doesn’t love washi tape? The challenge is to use it, particularly as I am now two thirds of the way through this year’s resolution to “use what you have”. So today is declared washi  Wednesday and I have been taping all sorts of objects in an attempt to use some of 50 (! How did that happen?) rolls of tape hanging in th craft room.

I have made fridge magnets from wooden pegs and magnetic sheets, and decorated more pegs that I use for clamping in the craft room. I covered corporate pencils and plastic coat hangers and also made the binder clips that I use for sewing very pretty.

(tip for covering pencils with minimal creases, run a strip of washi around the top and bottom of the pencil before spiralling around with the full length of washi )

I copied the bunting string from various pinterest posts and will use it to prettify a parcel

I have beautified spray bottles and tea lights but still haven’t made a dent in the stash, so  covering  journals and making cards is on the list for the next washi Wednesday.

Not being ambitious enough to do wall decor with washi, I would welcome suggestions for practical uses for the washi mountain. Polite suggestions only please,

Year Round Crackers

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A 22cm x 16cm piece of heavy paper or light card is simply scored to become a classy table gift or place setting … I found this in papercrafter magazine and used it to try and stashbust a bit. Using assorted papers is fine as the washi edging unifies the group.

1. Score the paper along the 16cm length every 2.5cm leaving a 1cm tab at the end

2. Turn the paper and score at 4cm, 5.5cm and 7cm from either end of the 16cm sides
3. Flip the paper on to the reverse (unpretty side) and fold under each 5.5 cm score line

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4. Trim out triangles within each section as shown – the triangles don’t have to be equal, just within the scored boxes so they help the cracker fold at the end of the make. I drew over the score lines to show them more clearly

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5. unfold so you have diamond shape cut outs and then flip the paper back to the pretty side then crease all the other score lines

6. fix double sided tape to the tab and form the paper into a tube

7. tie string or strong cotton at each 5.5cm line and pull the cord tight so it draws the cracker closed (pop in your gift before you tie the second time)

8. decorate with washi tape at the ends as shown. You can add embellishments or names or flowers or …

When using paper other than A4 try cutting 16cm by 23 cm for a bigger cracker body… You can scale this up to make full sized crackers from wrapping paper and/or pop in a snap and joke for a traditional Christmas ‘make’

Envelope wallet

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four standard c5 office envelopes, a trimmer, double sided tape, decorative washi tape and paper from the stash. This project takes as little or as much time as you have…

Being challenged on the spacial awareness front I had to follow a you tube tutorial called coupon/receipt organiser by JustaFewDesigns

I added a couple of magnets and omitted her mini binder clip element but to decorate I just grabbed a pack of paper image1.jpg

and my stash of washi tape, and kept going until I felt enough was enough.

I stuck the magnets with glue dots and covered them with paper hexagons but am not sure it works too well, or is necessary.

This will hold gift vouchers, coupons and loyalty cards in my bag. Wonder how long it will hold together…

No glue gift bags

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Exacto knife and paper is all you need to make a quick, cute and quite strong gift bag…

The pattern for this came from ohappyday.com where they are intended as brown paper picnic snack bags but they are far too cute to stay in brown paper.

I started by downloading the template from the diy picnic basket post. It makes a quarter of the template needed so should be placed on a larger piece of paper folded in four to get the whole template. You can just cut round the folded paper with an exacto knife. Or you could follow their instruction to rotate and trace the template, but I found that a longer process.

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I decided to trace mine on some wallpaper remnants – only 50pence in the end of line box at B&Q. This made for an even stronger bag and handle than a brown paper version.

Once the shape is cut, the side flaps are folded in and round and the handles are just threaded through the slits in the flap and the bag pulls together. So satisfying.

I couldn’t resist embellishing with a cheater’s ribbon made from three strips of the paper scraps – yes this was taped together and stuck on the bag. But tags tied around the handle would look good too.

The first bag was filled with shredded paper, the second one had its handles clipped together with a mini peg which pushed out the sides to make more of a handbag shape. Oh this is addictive.

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Buoyed by success I then scaled the template down to make a mini bag from a piece of unloved 12”x12” paper.image

 

Even cuter. Can’t recommend this highly enough.

 

quick cut cards

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Precisely cut cards using my stash of lovely papers

The ‘hello’ card was made with 7 equal squares and one double size from assorted papers with little motifs from the scan n cut library to embellish them. The card base was dry embossed at half inch intervals and then the panels mounted on fun foam and then adhered in place.

I found it easiest to position the small corner pieces first , then the large piece and then centring the remaining pieces afterwards. The embossing helped with alignment

For the baby card I used the Docrafts papermania pastels craft collection paper. I covered the card base with the small hearts paper, stuck a strip of the large icons paper centrally over it and then cut words in different fonts from brown card for the greeting.

Inside I stuck two hearts and a footer strip from complementary papers from the pad – keeping towards the blue tones. To finish I brushed the greeting with Wink of Stella glitter.