Continuing with the embellishment theme, I created some clusters. I’m using a few punches to punch circles and other images out of paper, music paper, book pages, magazine pages and wall paper. Wall paper has a nice weight to it so I usually use that as the base. Some magazine pages are thin and won’t punch properly, I would then glue 2 magazine pages together and then punch out the circles and images.
Then it is just a matter of selecting the images you want to stack on top of each other to form a cluster. Some clusters I will fasten with the stapler, other I will embellish with a brad.
I made these cute little rosette embellishments to add to anything that needs a bit of …more…:):) The process in a nutshell. I use my 1″ hole punch to punch about 8 or 9 circles. ink around so the edge stands out and fold them in half. I dab a bit of glue to the side and slide it in the next folded circle. Continue till you are back at the beginning.
I really enjoyed my spurt in making Boho Beads, and here is how I went about it. First I needed a base, I used book pages to make the core where I will build the bead on. The paper strip for this core is about 4″ long by the with I want the bead to be long. Yeah, say that again? Okay, if my bead is going to be 1″ long, the width of the paper strip will be 1″ wide by 4″ long. Using a bead roller I will roll the bead, add a bit of glue to hold it together so it won’t fall apart. Next I find a strip of 1″ wide fabric by about 6″long and glue to the paper core. Now I will add beads and end caps onto 22 gauge galvanized steel wire, not too thin but thick enough to hold everything.
Materials usedbeads and end caps on wire
First I make a loop on one end, string the beads and close the end with another loop. The next step is to add a bit of yarn, I’ll wrap this a few times around the bead, sometimes the bead gets completely covered, depending on the yarn, I do try not to do that so some of the fabric is still showing. If the yarn is nice and has a bit of glitter/shine to it, I will stop here as I find this bead finished. if the yarn is plain, I will add the seed beads, I string the beads onto 28 gauge brass, copper or galvanized steel, depending the colour I want.
left to right: brass, steel, copper 28 gauge wire, below the 22 gauge steel wire.
I cut about 24″ of the thin wire, make a loop at the end to prevent the seed beads from sliding off, and string about 3″ of seed beads for the longer Boho beads, 2″ if the Boho bead is shorter and 1″ of seed beads if the Boho bead is 1″. I wrap the beginning of the wire around the Boho bead a few times to fasten it, I then wrap the wire around the Boho bead, sliding the seed beads in place while wrapping the wire around the Boho bead three times, finishing the wire as I did at the beginning by wrapping it tightly a few times around, tucking in the ends.
Boho beadspendent and earring made from the Boho beads
I did manage to make a pendant and earrings out of a set of Boho beads.
A video of the making of these Boho beads can be seen here:
Last November I started making bookmarks to be send out instead of sending cards at Christmas, so here is a quick recap of what I did.
I started with a chipboard base using old boxes, the size is approximate 2″ wide by 6″ or 7″ tall. The back got either paper I coffee dyed, or an old book page. The front is a layering of marbled paper or textured paper I described in my last post, and an assortment of fabric, cheesecloth, lace and yarn or jute. I finished the layering by adding a word and some dots of paint as embellishment. I threaded a few strands of yarn through the hole at the top and it is ready to send off. I made envelopes to match the bookmark as it is an irregular shape for an envelope.
Making your own textured paper is a great way of adding something different to cards, tags, bookmarks or journal pages. You don’t have to use the full sheet, cutting bits and pieces to add to cards and bookmarks makes for an interesting background. What you need:
plain paper, fabric or interfacing or anything you can think of as the base.
used tea bag, remove the tea into a container and tear the bag into small pieces
thread ends, cut into 2″ – 3″ pieces
cheesecloth, cut into small pieces
feather, cut small sections off it
raw wool, tear off small wisps of wool
one back layer of a paper napkin
Of course you can add different things that make for interesting texture.
First I place a non stick Teflon baking sheet on my work surface, this way the final project will come away without it being glued down to the work table. I also tape book pages together so it is at least 1″ bigger then the paper I”m about to texturize. Place the paper to be used as the base on the paper pages. Next I will glue the whole page wet with watered down glue, about 50% water to 50% glue, to glue down the texture to the paper. My preferred glue is gel medium, it keeps the finished project soft and pliable. If using regular school glue, the paper, when folded might crack. Before the glue dries I sprinkle the dried tea on the paper. Add the thread ends, small pieces of cheese cloth, teabag pieces, feather pieces and wool wisps. The glue will dry while I add more texture, but that is fine. The glue is mostly there to keep the loose tea from blowing away, while adding the rest of the texture.
When all the textured is sprinkled randomly on the paper I’ll place one layer of the napkin on top. Most napkins come in either two ply or three ply. Separate the two or three layers, make sure to save the image layer for future projects like collaging. Place the plain white napkin layer over the textured paper and use the same glue to adhere the napkin to the paper. Be very gentle applying the glue, the napkin paper is very thin and delicate and it might tear.
Check for air bubbles, you don’t really want those, you can add more glue and pat them down and if they persist, you can poke a small hole in the centre of the bubble with a pin to let the air out.
I then move the page off the Teflon sheet to the floor to let it air dry. When the paper is dry I cut my new textured paper away from the pages it was glued to, if the pages stick to the paper you can gently tear it off.
As I have the supplies out, I will keep making more, I have used thin interfacing both as the base sheet and as the cover sheet. Another thing I tried was using used dryer sheets, the funny thing is, I don’t use drier sheets, ( I had them in the house as mouse deterrent…) so I hand washed a few to try it out.
I also used a light coloured cotton fabric as base, sprinkled the texture on it and covered it with the thin interfacing. I did try it on a commercial printed fabric, but in my opinion that was not successful, the print obscured the texture so the whole thing is pointless…. A video of the process can be seen on YouTube:
Every journal benefits from a paperclip pen holder, it marks the place you left off, you don’t have to look for a pen when you want to write something and of course it is a nice embellishment to any journal.
How I make them: I start with a 5″ by 2 1/2″ base of chipboard, a cereal box kind of cardboard. The size of the base depends on the size of the box and how many I can get out of it. I determine the halfway point to make a slit for the elastic and paperclip. Only one side will be embellished with a collage of paper, fabric, laze, images or anything you fancy.
Slide the paperclip in it’s place and secure on the inside (wrong) with glue, or as I have done with the sewing machine using a small zig-zag stitch (the little dot on the left picture, just below the paperclip). Add the elastic and sew just under the slit to fasten the elastic. Close the holder by gluing the cardboard to each other. I like to use the sewing machine to stitch around the perimeter.
A video of the process of making these paperclip pen holders can be seen here:
A studio never has enough space, be it shelves or cupboards to store our supplies. A lot of items only need a shallow space to live in, when stored in tubs they might get buried under a host of other items.
I saw these shallow shelves at a friends house and thought I could do that. So I set out to make my existing cubicles more accessible for shelves. I made 2 extra sidewalls of 1/2″ thick plywood. I used the table saw to cut the grooves into the plywood by lowering the blade so it would only cut 1/4″ deep. The grooves are about 3/8″ high to accommodate the 1/4″ thick mdf shelves I had bought for this purpose.
But we need to contain the items so they won’t fall of the shelves. I made the trays from foam core board, using strong adhesive painters tape to adhere the walls to the bottom. It is surprisingly strong.
But I had a bit of trouble getting the trays out of the shelves so I added a drawer knob. By making a hole at the front of the tray, I could thread a piece of wire through to the outside to attach the button. I than wrapped the wire around a pop-sickle stick on the inside of the tray to keep the button in place.
Below you can see the shelves being put to use, this is only one of my 3 work stations, but the only one with the shelving unit.
One of the trays is decorated with wall paper, but the wall paper had a hard time to stay glued down so I won’t be doing more of that. Although it does looks nice.
A video of the process of making these trays can be seen here.
