Lavender pouches
Use What You Have
Upcycling packaging.
A crafter gets as excited about the packaging as they do about a gift received. Just cover any commercial messages with paper from the stash and put the beautiful box ready to present home made gifts in the future!
Travel kit
A quick make as a gesture for a traveler.
I like the matt laminating sheets I have. They create a subtler effect without the gloss.
To use up the laminating sheets I made a storage pouch (slipping a second sheet inside and turning it inside out) and extra book marks for another day …
Decoupage dabbling
I salvaged a pretty serviette from a coffee morning and decided to use it up when I upcycling a cheese tray about to hit the recycling and scallop shells from a yummy ready meal.
I just pasted the top ply of the napkin on with mod podge (using up the giant pot of gloss where I can so I can get some Matt finish glue soon).
Layers of mod podge not only stick the paper, they also seal it enough for casual trinket dishes.
Mod podge also sealed the paint I put on one of the shells and I finished off the edges with some Goldfinger burnish effect.
Slow, slow, quick, quick, slow stitch.
I don’t have enough patience to slow stitch large projects so finished this 6” mat with machine embroidery.
A good practice of embroidery stitches and a little using up of the fabric and ribbon mountain though.
Paper embroidery
I bought a cheap die set from Globeland on Amazon and have been stitching on paper for the last month.
The set includes a die to make Aida effect punched paper, dies to make different sizes of hoops, buttons and sewing accessories. Well worth the price at about £7.
Serging ahead?
Our library has a ‘fab lab’ where you can play on machines such as 3d printers, sublimation and sewing machines. I decided to see if a serger was something I might find useful.
A one hour session making up assorted bags and pouches was enough to convince me NOT to buy one. Fiddly to thread, scary to use and I can do a mock overlock with my standard machine.
Thanks to the library for the trial run though.
Practice makes… better
This beautiful Swedish mat had a small stain on it so I stitched (simple straight and cross stitch with embroidery floss) over the printing until the stain ‘disappeared’ and now it is back in use as beautiful as ever.
Stamp for mailed cards
Another attempt to empty the patterned paper remnants bag…
This time I used a stamp die for the bigger stamps and my scan n cut for the smaller ones. I finally chopped up pages of butterfly, floral and birds paper and used long neglected franking stamps and some old paper distress ink to create the collage on a sheet of magazine paper.
Wonky houses
Experiments with fabric, ribbon and patterned paper remnants to create a series of cards.
janecrafts 