Paper craft

Papier-mâché experiment

~ guernseyjane ~ 2 Comments

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A charity shop papier-mâché kit find motivated me to try bowl making… the kit suggested moulding the paper pulp provided around semi inflated balloons but my balloons were perished (the kit had probably been lingering in the shop for a while ) so I wrapped two bowls in cling film before moulding on the moistened pulp.

Pulp was much faster and less messy than tearing up squares of paper and pasting with glue as we did at school.

however, it was harder to get a level surface with pulp and when dry was rock hard, so when I tried to pull the bowls from the mounds they lost a little of their shape.

metallic finish paint to the rescue! Haven’t a clue about brand or colours as it came in the kit, but thre blues and the gold were lovely and I have saved the dregs for painting another box one day

Conclusion, my dexterity is not good enough to gift these bowls but I am glad I tried my £1.50 experiment. if I repeated the exercise would decoupage the finished bowls to distract from the flaws.

Who needs to buy a Fuse to make shaker pockets?

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not me! Thanks to the brilliant frugal crafter blog, I dug out the hot fix soldering tool (meant to put gems on fabric) and sealed up some page protectors into mini pockets.

img_0194I used a steel ruler and silicone mat to avoid mishaps and tried not to worry about the burning smell!

i sealed three sides of my pocket and checked the seal was good before adding sequins and glitter then sealed the fourth side.  I then cut off the excess with scissors to make everything neat. Sometimes I did a double seam if I wasn’t confident everything was glitter tight.

Somehow I have lots of (unwanted) glitter and sequins which I managed to use lots of, so stash reduced and lots of card or tag ready sparkly little pockets created, for free!

Little bag of tags

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Scraps of card were cut into label shapes with the scan n cut then decorated with die cuts from the enormous , seemingly endless,  Natures Gallery Docrafts bundle. I stamped ‘to’ and ‘from’ and tied twine in place then made a mini folder pocket to hold them in.

I then got in the mood with old Christmas cards cut the same way and a shaker card version too. This required a bit of organization to put the same weight of card through the scan n cut at the same pass but really effective.

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Paper napkin, cling film card make

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img_0190 img_0191Seal part of a decorative napkin on card to use as a card topper? I can’t  recommend this but it maybe worth a try if you are out of other resources… I had a go while tidying away my Christmas stuff

method

place a sheet of light card (I used a whole A4 sheet ) on your ironing board then lay a piece of cling film smaller than that on top. Peel the top ply of your napkin away from the plain underside ( or sides if you have a 3 ply napkin) and discard the plain bits, cut down the image  to the size you want for your final card topper ( I used a quarter of a napkin for an 8 inch card base), lay it face up on top of the cling film and cover with a sheet  of cheap copy paper. Iron with a hot, steam free, iron for several seconds until the cling film seals the napkin to the card.

Remove the top paper to check everything has stuck, you can have another go if it hasn’t, then use scissors to cut the card flush with the napkin- take care, a trimmer will probably tear the napkin.

I had to fix brads in the corners as I couldn’t get a proper seal and when I used wink of Stella to embellish the reindeer, the napkin puffed off the cling film. Liquid pearls and stickles worked well though and my sentiment was peel offs stuck on card and foam tape mounted on the plainest bits of the napkin.

So at least one card in the stash for Christmas!

 

Scrap buster card makes

~ guernseyjane ~ 1 Comment

img_0188I have a new year resolution not to buy until the stash is reduced… plus a friend donates a pile of orphan envelopes and ribbon so I start making one off cards.  I have tried to use new techniques, such as heat embossing on vellum – which is beautiful – and take the embellishments a step further as with the sequins stuck on glitter card

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Sour cream pouch, quick wrap idea

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I love this papermania owl folk paper kit and used a sheet to wrap some beauty treats using the pouch method.

place double sided tape along the west  side of a rectangle of paper.  (Plain side facing up . Roll the east side over so that you form a tube with the pattern side sticking to the tape. Burnish the taped seam so it sticks well

flatten the tube lightly  with the seam roughly mid way along the back and tape inside the southern (bottom) edge to make an open top packet. Pop in your goodies leaving plenty of space at the open top.

Now push the east and west sides together and staple or hole punch them together to form a wedge shaped pouch.

I added a flap of contrast paper which I trimmed with decorative edged scissors and hole punched then laced some ribbon through. A tag from the kit was added and then a brush of ‘wink of Stella ‘ for sparkle and some liquid pearls finished it off.

 

 

 

 

Cache-pot

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A quick fix for an awkward size plastic pot

quality paper cut to form a tube to fit snugly around the plastic pot (if you want to taper the tube see glass lampshade post from this time last year for cutting angles)

drop tube over plastic so it can be removed for watering but doesn’t gape

cut strips of contrast paper and concertina them before sticking the folds to the top of the tube, I overlapped three strips to get all the way round and used quick grabbing liquid glue so I only had to hold the concertina strip in place for a few seconds

a final strip was cut in half lengthways with decorative scissors and taped to the bottom of the pot

Brown paper packages for christmas

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I am using brown paper for lots of my wrapping this year with scan n cut embellishments and stamping for most parcels, but these simple sewn packets are a joy to make and look very classy

fold your paper in half then trace the shape you want to end up with one side ( I used a frixion pen in case I needed to erase it but light pencil would do as well).

then choose a decorative stitch to sew around all but one side of your image. I used a white thread here but Am inspired to try lots of threads from the sewing basket now.

I had my walking foot on the machine so nothing slipped but you might want to help the paper through if using a standard foot

trim the paper close to the stitch line to tidy it up (pinking shears would add a good effect, but too much use on paper might not be good for your expensive scissors)

pop in the present then sew up the final side

tip: make the packet larger than the contents or you will struggle to sew the final side closed and don’t want to sew through the contents

if you want to decorate the paper or write on the addressee details you will need to finish it all before you put the gift inside

some people keep old machine needles for their paper projects, I will just dispose of this needle before I start my next fabric project as the paper will blunt it.

With thanks

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imageWhether it is to say  a big thanks or a little one I like to make simple, happy cards and have a few ready for a variety of recipients

I found theses pennant sentiments printed on the back of a ‘pay per box’ carton when tidying my paper stash and couldn’t bear to waste anything, so four quick cards were created by fussy cutting around the pennants and using saved embellishments, craft card bases and docrafts backing papers.

I have glued white paper inserts inside to make the message easier to write and see.

First steps to Christmas

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Smart and simple card thanks to scan n cut

three of the library baubles cut from a paper set :(docrafts)  stuck on a mat – same paper set- with foam squares and the strings of gold thread tied on then stuck behind with tape runner as the mat was taped to the card blank

no sentiment, no insert but classy card blank

6 down, 94 to go