Festive Upcycling...

... of a piece of Ikea furniture that kept on giving...

We bought a chair, and the chair is very nice.. but I think I was just as happy with the BIG cardboard box it came in as with the chair itself.. & we put the cardboard to good use...

* ... I made festive little trees form the very small off-cuts - little squares increasing in size cut from the cardboard, edged in glitter and glued together with matte medium (is there anything that can't be stuck together with Matte Medium?!):

Here they are in a little scene I made with bits and pieces.  The 'Noel' blocks were originally a hanging ornament but I prefer them horizontal.. a bit more versatile

Here is a close up and you can see the 'trees' on either side of the group - I think I want to add a star or 'something' to each of them....

*...  I created the solution to the 'we don't have anywhere to put christmas cards now that we don't have a mantelpiece or window ledges in the lounge anymore' problem (windows were replaced by doors, so no more ledges - I miss those useful ledges!).  I made a tree!!
I cut the cardboard into 10cm deep lengths, laid them out and cut them progressively longer to create a tree shape, and added a pot.

I attached them all together using a length of hessian 'ribbon', I used this rather than a strip of cardboard so the tree is flexible - I need to allow movement so that I could get behind each panel to staple the cards onto the tree....

Ta daaaaa:

A really simple tree - all we needed - to staple/paperclip cards to! Easy, lightweight & hung onto the door with a length of hessian rope, I decorated it with die cut stars, snowflakes and circles to pretty it up before the cards were attached.. (and hanging it on the door also stops people using the door - which is good as there a christmas tree on the other side! lol)

*... and finally - we cut the box up and made the prototypes for a shelving unit we're planning for the reconfigured lounge (next to the chair that started it all off):

That's our contribution to recycling/upcycling for the holiday season..  I hope its made you look at cardboard boxes in a new light :o)

x

The PaperArtsy play day that wasn't!

I tried/planned to spend a day over the weekend with PaperArtsy stamps but the plan was hijacked slightly by M, but in a good way - a hallway destash/clearout was in order to get ready to pull up carpets so that new carpets could be laid - and one job seemed to have a knock-on effect to another...
so here's one of the pieces I made - keeping them simple was the aim of the day! oh, and flat!

(These stamps are from the 'Nature' plates of Urban Snapshots)... Simple & Flat! (well, simple-ish - distress inks, acrylic paint, stamping, embossing, colouring...)

PS - carpet is in (and looks really nice.... ) ..now to get the Estate Agents in for a valuation - and then the 'for sale' sign goes up....

Just playing....

I bought Kelly Rae Roberts' 'take flight' book a while ago - great book... & yesterday decided I was going to make something - nothing in particular - just something - just play around and see what happened and I took my inspiration from the book & made a mixed media panel.

Started with this:

I added pretty much every type of medium I had at my disposal and made this.  I cut the panel into 4 and accented each panel with different colours of pencil...

I really enjoyed making this - kept thinking ooh I'll add this and then worried about what if went wrong... so what?! - paint over it and try something else - its only cardboard & paper covered in ink & paint!
(and if its really terrible I'll keep it to myself and not tell anyone! rofl  but I quite liked it (well, liked it a lot actually) so I thought I'd show you....)

In case you're wondering what I used here is the roll call:

we are memory keepers scrapbook papers

watered down acrylic paint (blue - horrible, babywiped that straight off - though it did stain a little)

watered down acrylic paint - white

Glimmer mists over a flower stencil

Pearfect Pearl mists

CraftyNotions Shake'n'spray

CraftyNotions Opaque white

masked circles

stamping & embossing in white

Stamping & embossing in pearlescent green

colouring pencils - blue, black, green, white,

Phew that's a lot of stuff - could have used more...
and there still time......

but maybe i'll save that for the next masterboard.....

Thanks for popping by... I'm off to tidy my poor neglected craft room.

ArtsyCrafts October 2010

Now that the ArtsyCrafts weekends are over I can share pictures.  I really, really enjoy working at these events run by Leandra (PaperArtsy) & Lin (LB Crafts) - so many lovely ladies come and make so many lovely pieces of art! 2-3 (?) years down the line I enjoy them just as much now as I did the first time! (though I have learned to pace myself a little better - lol).
The Team (Leandra, Lin, Karen, Lynne, Linda and myself) all make versions of the projects in the different colourways so people can see samples, hopefully be inspired, and also so that we can give advice & answer questions that may arise...
Aaaaanyhoo enough waffle - here is my version of the main project in the Citrus Sorbet colourway...

Yellow!  Yes yellow!!  and I loved working with these colours - its was a challenge to start with because they're not colours that I find easy (or would not normally choose) to work with but now - now I am embracing yellow!!
But I did counterbalance the above by creating a different project in 'apple blossom' which is my favourite colour combination of pink & green... (back in my comfort zone)

There'll be more ArtsyCrafts events coming up in 2011 details will be on PaperArtsy & LBCrafts sites as and when.

November!

A pinch & and a punch for the first day of the month! by that I mean a pinch of embossing powder and a Martha Stewart punch - of course - what else could it be?! {chuckle}

The pc is now mended - yay - though after the tower was fixed the screen died! ......

So, I like a tag, or several, they're great for using up scraps from the desk, or testing out new stamps and/or techniques - whatever the reason - I like tags!! (and now I've bought Tim H's big tag die I'm liking them all the more because I can cut them out of all manner lovely cardboards, acetate, paper etc etc etc - the list could go on!

This tag was created with a plain luggage tag & a piece of leftover corrugated cardboard - love the HotPicks PaperArtsy stamps : the flower head is from HotPicks 1005, long 'branches' 1008, & words are from HPXT04.  I liked how this turned out - especially as I am continuing to embrace yellow (if you've been reading my blog for a while you'll know that I'm really not keen on yellow but now I coming around to it)(when I find the photos I'll show you my recent ArtsyCrafts project - lemon&lime!! bring it on!)

You'll have to excuse the wierd angle of this photograph (in the folder its landscape oriented but on screen Blogger seems to think it would look better portrait! gggrrrr) aaaanyhooo - I wanted to include it to show two level of black image stamping - I stamped the long branches, dried them, and then stamped the flower heads & added embossing powders and heated.  I liked how it made the flower heads 'pop' as they are now 'shiny'. (you can just about see that in the photo - tilt your head to the right.....)

Edit:  I altered it in Photoshop - yay for me! lol - see you learn something new every day!!

This tag is again using a parcel tag & another piece of leftover corrugated cardboard - there's a lot of that on my desk at the moment! lol  These dimensional paper flowers are all over crafting projects at the moment - I think this is first/second one I've made and they're really easy to make - though to glue them in future I'm going to use hot glue.. Leaves are PaperArtsy dies, the loopy border strip is a Martha Stewart punch (punching atlas paper) and the wording is a Tim H stamp.. oh and there's a little Sizzix flourish die in there too.. & some distress ink, silver versacolor & a scrap of book text....

Take care

2010 'resolutions' mini book

I've been making this mini book over the last week or so - creating a bit here and there when time allows - it measures approximately 6x4 inches and is created from bits a pieces left over from another project and bound using the Bind-it-All (great tool - I don't use it nearly as much as I should). Quite a simple book - each page features one word and on the reverse is the thinking behind it and what the word means to me for the coming year. I like working on a page with one large single word and then having the journaling somewhere else - keeping the page 'simple' in that way. uncluttered.

During my current 'tidying up' project (and I'm using the term loosely because I just seem to moving things around according to M - but its all part of the process!) I found this photo (on the pc - tidying that up too!) of a book I made from lots of bits of cardboard, all different sizes, bound together with the bind-it-all. Its a book that I keep on my studio desk to try out bits and pieces in rather than on random bits of paper/ card or in my sketchbook (different surface). This page was created using a scroll cuttlebug die I'd just bought (so of course had to use straight away! lol) and Banana Frog alphabet stamps - these ones are great because they are quite large (about an inch-and-a-bit tall)... I like the page because of the metal effect to the scroll (didn't photograph too well) but at the same time am not too keen because it looks a bit 'halloween' - due to the colours - I might go back to it and try and alter it in some way.......