WIPWednesday: Christmas + Books

Between Thanksgiving, my birthday on the 2nd, and a crazy busy week at work I haven't had much time for crafting, but I made time yesterday. I found some reindeer at the local craft store for fifty-nine cents a pop. So of course I grabbed a bunch.

I didn't finish this guy because I had to clean up and get ready for work- boo. So far so good though, yeah? I used pages from Charles Dickens' Christmas Carol. I also plan on some sheet music reindeer, too. I should have a whole mess of these little guys soon!

Finally finished: Friends bookshelf project!

I actually finished this a while ago... and never got around to blogging it. Go figure.

I'm really quite pleased with how it came out!

It feels so nice to have it done.

Have a great weekend!

WIPWednesday: sidetracked

Not much crafting this week. I'm trying to clean out my closet and read some of the books I've got laying around. I've got a big stack that I want to read but probably aren't keepers, so by reading, I'm also cleaning and decluttering! My logic is sound, right??

I did work on this WIP for about five minutes before I got distracted. Ok, maybe ten minutes.

I traced out the letters using an old drafting pencil- light lines, and a long, sturdy lead to get into the tight corners of those letters! Once I glue them down I'll have to do some trimming with a razor, but they turned out pretty well!

I started looking for my mod podge and instead I found... some tiny toys.

I got totally sidetracked taking pictures of them and never found my glue. 

So now I still haven't finished this damn project (that really should have taken, like, a day) and my desk is littered with PVC figurines and micromachines.

I suppose it could be worse.

Paperback Correspondance: The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

I love love love writing letters and kind of hoard stationary. I also love making cards, and as I mentioned in my last post, I made some with an old copy of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz!

I first read The Wizard of Oz in fourth grade for a board game making project. I vividly remember staying up late the night before with my mom pouring green sugar over swirls of Elmer's all over my board because we didn't have any glitter. To my delight I learned there were several other Oz books and I read them all. I didn't see the movie until I was in high school (though I watched Return to Oz all the time on TV as a kid).

It is absolutely one of my favorite books and I had so much fun making these cards.

I made one for each of Dorothy's faithful companions- the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodsman, and the Cowardly Lion.

I also made one with an illustration of the Munchkins, too. I plan on making more this week!

I'm really pleased with how they turned out. I don't know if I'll be able to bear actually sending one of these away!

Work-in-progress Wednesday

I think I'll start trying to post a work-in-progress or two every Wednesday. I haven't had a great track record with this sort of regular weekly stuff (or, you know, blogging period), but I'll give it a shot. WIPWednesday is nothing new, and hopefully doing it myself will both encourage me to finish projects and connect with other WIPWednesday-ers.

Yesterday I started working on something for my mother- a special book-plate to mark a shelf at the library that holds her personal recommendations for patrons.

She found the image with the ship and text, but wanted something more. She loved the card I made last week with book pages and asked if I would help her with something similar. Of course I was happy to!

We'll probably glue the image down over what I've done and trim it into a border for the image. One reason this is a WIP is that I'm out of glue and couldn't get out to the store for more.

I'll be sure to finish the finished project!

Getting back into blogging...

Well! I have done nothing for this blog over the summer. I've spent my time moving, adjusting to change, working, introducing my mother to Dr. Who (she loves it!), and reading. Lots of reading. I do want to try giving this blog another go, though. Maybe this time I can make it stick.

You may notice that crafting (of any sort) was not mentioned in my list above. With moving and all the other things I've had going on, I have not have time; it doesn't help that all my buttons, beads, papers, glues, and tools are still packed away.

I've made a start though. I'm slowly starting to catch up on blogs I used to follow, though I really don't spend much time online anymore. I also made a card a few days ago, and finally got around to snapping a picture of it this morning.

 

Do you like it? I used pages out of a beat-up collection of Hauff's Fairytales to put it together. The book is filled with wonderful illustrations and I plan on creating many more cards from its pages!

Valentines: delicious on paper

Hope you had a good one! I decided not to give chocolate this year, which is a weird first for me. This holiday has always been about chocolate for my family, and every year we gave each other little tasty gifts. I had a sudden inspiration for chocolate cards a few days ago, though, and they turned out pretty cute!

I just used a circle punch and a slightly larger scalloped circle punch and glued them together! I already had some blank red cards and envelopes from another project. Easy as chocolate pie.

The details on the chocolates were a bit tricky. I used my Xyron 1.5" sticker maker and it felt like cheating, but glueing those tiny bits of paper would have been a sticky nightmare. I think the cards would have been perfectly fine plain, too. Brown or clear glitter might also look nice, but I kind of hate glitter (sorry) so I don't have any.

For my little brother's card I cut out a "chocolate" heart and let the scalloped circle punch take a bite. Simple but effective.

Hope you had a delicious holiday! All this chocolate talk is making me hungry, and while I did not give chocolate, I did receive some. Bon appetit!

Tutorial: Record cover postcards

This is one of my favorite paper upcycling projects: making postcards out of old vinyl record covers. Easy, useful and super cool- not to mention cheap! I've found records as low as a quarter a pop, but I'd say they average a dollar at most thrift stores. I might shell out two or three for a really cool cover.

 PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE make sure you're not cutting up something really rare or valuable! A quick ebay search will save you from kicking yourself later. If you pick your records up at a thrift store or a music store's dollar bin, you're probably just fine, but better safe than sorry.

Pretty colors!!

Once you've got your covers, it's time to cut! If your album has a thin paper slip cover, set that aside for now.

My little brother got to this one before I did, and cut out the robot on the front. But that's ok, because the back is covered in SPACE!

Figure out which rectangle-shaped (or square, let's not be picky) areas on your cover will look best. Grab your cutting tools of choice and have at it!

Ta-da!! How awesome is this? Now I can send someone a little piece of the universe. I was able to get four postcards from the back cover. This is unusual for the back side- usually it's covered in words.

Most record covers, especially the older ones, are made of paperboard. This means the back side will be brown. Which is fine, if that's what you want, but it's easier to write and read on a white background, yes?

I glued my post cards to the "wrong" side of a slip cover, the thin paper jacket many records have. It's not the end of the world if you have to use something else; I like the ecofriendliness of using the slip cover, though. Sometimes you can even find big bunches of old slip covers and other inserts from old albums that were orphaned, grouped together, and sold cheaply. 

But wait! The back will be blank. wouldn't it be nice to have some guidelines for a stamp and address, to make it look like a real postcard? I think so.

There's more than one way to achieve this. You could free hand it, use a ruler, make a stamp, or make a stencil like I did.

Grab old postcard. Or two or three, if you think you'll screw up like I did the on the first try. I used a craft knife and ruler to carefully cut along the guidelines and where the stamp box was. Then I used a small pair of scissors to widen the cuts so I could get a pen tip in there.

This was not my first try. As you might guess, the lines I get from this stencil are not perfectly straight and even all the way across. And I like them that way. The possibilities with this project are endless! That's what I love about upcycling.

I'm going to put myself out there and say this is the first craft tutorial I've ever written, so if anything is unclear please please please let me know! I would be ever so thankful.

Paperback correspondence

I started making cards- Christmas cards, specifically- to create something new out of something old. I use as much recycled material in my greeting cards as possible. Closer to Christmas I'll share that story.

This is what I'm working on right now.

A while ago I happened upon a very worn paperback copy of Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass. I finally made use of it, and I'm quite pleased with the results. 

It had the illustrations and lovely, yellowed, easy-to-tear pages. I just needed a little time for the ideas to sit on my back burner before I could really get them out.

I wish you could touch them- the feel of layers and torn paper edges is lovely.

This next one is my absolute favorite. It's from the chapter where Alice finds the garden of live flowers, and it's one of my favorite illustrations from the book.

I do have a confession to make: I had not read Through the Looking-Glass when I bought this book, and I did not read it before I tore it to pieces. After making two or three cards, the idea occurred to me that maybe I should read it, especially if I plan on sending or selling these cards!

I'm nearly done reading, and it's a fantastic book. I wish I had read it as a child. There's a lot of children's fantasy I didn't read until I was an adult; The Hobbit and The Chronicles of Narnia are also on that list. My reading habits when I was a kid were primarily influenced by my mother, who much preferred mysteries and historical fiction, so Nancy Drew, Betsy-Tacy, and Laura Wilder books filled my shelves.

For anyone interested in reading Through the Looking-Glass this instant, you can find the original text with scans of the illustrations on the University of Virginia website here.