Want to See a Valentine's Trick?

Here's a simple, fun paper crafting trick for Valentine's Day:

Start with a regular piece of color.  Any color will do, but red and pink would be traditional choices for Valentine's Day.

Fold it in half:

Trace around your hand with a pencil.  For this trick to work, however, you have to make sure that your thumb and pointer finger are off the page just a little bit:

Cut around the pencil outline you have created:

Are you ready to see the result? 

Unfold, and voila:

Hands and heart for a

HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY!

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Here's a little tip for making sure you get the best result.  Look at the picture below to identify the cut that is going to create the heart in your final piece.  Instead of faithfully cutting out the pencil outline, you might want to modify your cut just a bit to make a true heart shape:

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You can use your paper-crafted "hands and heart" as a Valentine card for a loved one this week.  Add a special message, fun doodles, or whatever  you would like to personalize your paper crafted gift!



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I found this project via Pinterest, which took me this site, written in Russian, but with fabulously self-explanatory photos for creating this project!

Happy Halloween!

Wishing you an evening of happy hauntings!

Micron pens, Derwent watercolor pencils, Loew Cornell oil pastels

Happy Halloween!

Collage for a Cause

My friend Sue volunteers in the Handwork Group of the Hagley Museum in Delaware.  As a member of this group, she uses donated materials to create items to sell at their October Craft Fair.  She asked me to make some framed collages using donated Christmas cards, which could be sold at the fair. 

All earnings are given back to the museum for scholarships that allow students to experience Hagley's programming when they would not otherwise be able to afford to participate. 

I've been working on the collages over the past month, digging into the bag of Christmas cards and stack of frames that Sue dropped off at Studio 791.  My finished work is pictured here. 

I'll tell you, though, it's not easy to photograph framed artwork behind glass.  Please bear with me when it comes to strange flash reflections!

So, as the leaves outside are turning the loveliest autumn shades, it's beginning to look a lot like Christmas around here!

For more ideas of how to re-use your holiday cards, check out this post from January of last year:

Christmas in January:  Recycling Christmas Cards

A Pinteresting Crafternoon

 

The remains of the day

My mom's in town, so you know what that means:  time for a crafternoon! 

Cords and beads

This time we played around with ideas from pins on my Miscellaneous Craft Projects board on Pinterest, using wine corks for key chains and Christmas ornaments. We came away pretty happy with our projects. 

 

We used eye hooks in both ends of the cork to hold a keychain on one end and charms on jump rings on the other end.  Here is one of my mother's creations, using beads, charms, and milagros :

Here are three Christmas-themed ornaments I made, using charm sets from Jo-Ann:

My mother saw these lightweight metal frames in my stash, and had the idea of pairing them with some vintage photos she brought for me. 

Then she used a jump ring to connect a bead at the bottom, and made it into a necklace using a crocheted-bead necklace I had already made.  Pretty, isn't it?

 

I used my framed photo to create a keychain, adding a jump ring filled with seed beads at the top, and a milagro charm hanging from the bottom. 

My final two key chains continued our theme of dangling beads, charms, and Milagros:

Here is a closer look at each one:

Handling such tiny elements got a little rough on our eyes and our fingers, but overall we had a fun crafternoon.  And I was happy to use up some more of my stash.  I knew that set of jewelry pliers was going to come in handy some day!

 

For other cork key chain projects, check out these links that I have pinned to my Pinterest board:

• Artsy VaVa
• Rustic Crafts Chic Décor
• Simple Crafter
• Lavender Clouds

Just what you needed:  another excuse to drink wine!

Favorite Projects of 2013

I spent some time last night going through my blog posts from the past year, giving myself a chance for a little retrospection.  I thought it would be fun to collect some "blog favorites" over the year to share with you.  Today, I am highlighting some of my favorite projects from 2013. 

I didn't keep up with my Christmas in [Insert Month Here] series as faithfully as I had hoped, but it did yield a few project favorites that I will be doing again.  Besides finding ways to reuse all those Christmas cards, which I enjoy doing every year, I also really liked the patchwork/collage effect of the paper stockings I made back in September. 

I gave several of my acrylic and ink painted glass Christmas ornaments as gifts this year.  The results are so varied and unexpected that I can see myself making more just to see how they turn out.

Before I learned proper bookbinding techniques at the CREATE art retreat this past summer, I made these adorable little raisin books using electrical tape and rubber bands.  I've made tea box books, too.  My next books will be from soap and butter boxes with some proper stitching, so stay tuned!

One of my very favorite projects this year has been carving my own rubber stamps.  In fact, I am considering a major rubber stamp carving project for this next year, which I'll tell you more about soon!

Some cute little "object stamps" that are perfect for mail art

The silhouette stamps are some of my favorites!

Though the tag and clipboard stamps are right up there, too!

I'd like to try some more houses on a hill to perfect that design a bit.

And, ah, the Dennison label-style stamp!

More house stamps...I can't resist!

I really enjoyed learning a gesso resist technique from a Claudine Hellmuth video that created the designs on these hearts back in February.  I have whole books full of paint techniques I haven't tried; hmm....I may have to work that into my plan for the new year, too!

Scripture journaling was another new project I tried this past year.  It's hard work to translate Bible passages into visual representations!  It is such an effective way to internalize the message of the Scripture, but it takes real discipline to stick with it.

Learning some of the symbols, fonts, drawings and designs associated with Sketchnotes has been a fun part of the project, and applicable to other drawing and note taking projects besides just scripture journaling.

I absolutely loved the birdhouse charms I made from a kit from Heather Alexander last month.  I ended up giving a couple as Christmas gifts, and have several more on my craft desk, half-made.  My husband noticed that the wooden crates our clementines come in have triangular wood pieces that could be trimmed to size for additional roofs.  Reduce, reuse, recycle!





And, of course, throughout the year, my love for collage and mail art continued.  My glue stick and sewing machine continued to work overtime to create postcards for friends and just for fun over the months. 

from "Finally!" post in November

Paper scraps, fabric, postage stamps, rubber stamps, stickers, decorative tapes, buttons, ribbons, photographs, text pages, postcards, musical scores, vintage documents, book illustrations--all were pressed into service for collaged mail art through the year.

from "Feeling Stitchy" post in October

 

from "Stitchy Vintage Collage" post in October

 

from "More Mail Art & a Giveaway Winner" post

from "More Mail Art & a Giveaway Winner" post

And finally, I continued creating Zentangles this year, even taking a workshop on the subject at a local arboretum.  The tangled borders on the postcards below were a great exercise in various tangle designs.  With six or seven Zentangle books on my shelves, I'll be revisiting this calming drawing practice again in 2014!

Going back through my blog posts gave me a chance to review my projects, my excursions, and the swaps and challenges that filled my creative year.  I'll be back with a couple more retrospective posts, and some creative plans for 2014 very soon.

Wishing you all the best for these final days of 2013!

Santa Poste

It's the most wonderful time of the year!

But it seems to be going on and on and on and on.  I guess that's what happens when Christmas festivities get started right after Thanksgiving, and keep up for the full month of December.  I even had a brief moment the other morning when I thought that Christmas had already happened!  Who could blame me really, when I've already watched Santa "arrive" in a nearby town, "had lunch" with him at my daughter's school, watched two musical programs by my children's classes, prepared for two parties for my children's classes, participated in the church's Christmas pageant, and wrapped and shipped off Christmas presents to my family members who will be in other parts of the country over the holiday.  You mean, it's not over yet??

But there have been some fun postal-themed elements to our holiday this year that I want to share with you.  First, at my daughter's school, they each got to write letters to Santa and post them right to the North Pole:

That's Bayla, not losing one lick on her candy cane, getting her Christmas wishes off to the Big Guy himself.

Opening our own mailbox each day to find Christmas cards and family photo postcards is one of the many highlights of the season.  At a local store, I found greeting cards for sending money as gifts; they had a fun postal motif, so I turned them into postcards for some of my mail art friends.

A little bit of festive decorative tape and a postcard back, and they were ready to make their way across the country!

When I picked up napkins for my daughter's classroom Christmas party, I loved the postal-theme on them, as well.

After unwrapping one fully, I adhered it to a white paper backing with gel medium, and I know that I'll be using the extras for some fun projects; I love the overall design!

Some other holiday postcards were created from random catalog photos and my Dymo label maker:

My six-year-old daughter has been "wowing" me with her creativity this holiday season.  We have done Advent calendars every year since her birth, so she's very familiar with the concept.  She found a box lid lying around during package wrapping, and decided to create her own Advent calendar.

She glued down little flaps with numbers for each day, and drew a Christmas-themed picture behind each one.  Here's little glimpse of a star, a manger, Mary, and a donkey:

They aren't necessarily pretty, per se, but I thought her idea for constructing the calendar was quite clever!

She also found some peg clothespins in our craft stash and decided, completely unprompted by me, to create her own nativity scene.  She presented it to me when she was finished by setting it up in front of a nativity in our bedroom:

Notice Baby Jesus, lying at the back, and the gifts lying in front of each of the three wise men.  Again, perhaps not the most glamorous of execution (note the stickers that say "Pow!" and "Vroom!" on the wise men), but I was impressed by her initiative and creativity in completing the project!

I am feeling a major need to take this last week before Christmas to really refocus on the true meaning of the holiday.  I've had enough Santa, enough candy canes, enough gift wrapping and "Jingle Bells."  It's time to settle myself down and really prepare my heart for this celebration of the great gift of Jesus, born into this world to be our Savior.

However you are spending this holiday season, I hope that it is filled with joy, health, contentment, and creativity....happy holidays!